Ilford Advocate by Richard be Bulat
The Ilford Advocate, Series II is a cream enamelled 35mm film camera that superseded the Series I version and was introduced in 1952, making it 70 years old. It has a 35mm lens, which is relatively wide angle, compared to a standard 50mm lens, with a widest aperture of f3.5 closing down to f22. With an aperture setting of around f8, most things will be in focus from 10-12 feet to infinity, making it a handy camera to walk around with. The Dallmeyer lens, considering its age is none too shabby, rendering most scenes fairly sharp, even using slightly grainy film such as Ilford Pan 400asa. I chose this film for its good definition and high contrast, although I probably didn’t need the help as they day I went out was sunny and considerably higher contrast than you might expect for a winter scene. I developed the film in Rodinal 1+25 which will tend to increase grain and that is pretty much in evidence in the shots. The film is at the budget end of the scale and like other such films seems to have a very soft emulsion and prone to marks and scratching, taking into account my faulty squeegee causing track lines, most of which I have removed in editing.
The Advocate is not an SLR – the viewfinder, positioned above the lens gives an approximation of what the lens ‘sees,’ as it were. This is reasonably accurate, but not without an issue that I discovered while out shooting. The camera came with a leather case, the bottom section of which hung down while the camera was in landscape mode, but had a tendency to swing round and into the view of the lens in portrait mode without, necessarily, being noticeable and I took several frames where the camera case intrudes quite substantially into the shot. My rookie mistake, no doubt and I made the same mistake 11 times, which is why there is only one portrait orientation in the set.
The Photographs were taken up on Dartmoor where there are trees and hedgerows as points of interest. I took most on the shots aiming somewhat towards the sun to provide strong lighting and some edge definition to accent the bare winter trees.
To use the camera you need to set aperture on the smallest lens ring, which is a bit counter intuitive as one might expect to set distance on this ring. Distance settings are on the next ring out and shutter speeds, ranging from 1/25th sec to 1/200th sec and B are on the outer ring of the lens housing – all pretty straight forward once you get the hang of it. Zone focussing, as a result of the 35mm lens is very straightforward and works well with smaller apertures; I changed the distance range as I moved in or out of a shot, but could probably have set it at an average distance as I was shooting around f11 and occasionally f16 throughout. The only thing that I found to question with regard to using the camera was the shutter release which you have to pull to the right in order to release the shutter. I was principally worried about camera movement, but in the event there was no evidence of this on the film. There is no film advance lever, you wind the knurled knob on the right to advance the film and this cocks the shutter.
The camera is finished in a cream enamel, which Ilford must have got as a job lot since I remember just about everything was finished in the same paintwork in the utilitarian 50’s. For all that, the camera looks elegant and works well, that is, it is mechanically sound with a good lens for the period. Without doubt, this is a quirky looking camera with idiosychracies that make it quite unique. If you own one, or want to own one, you will not be disappointed. The camera has character and the images you will get will have the slight air of a bygone era; great for country shows and old car rallies, or in any subject where you want to add a touch of nostalgia.
