A life in pictures

I recently watched a film that was a mixture of documentary and biography, that made great use of informal pictures taken of the subject in his early years before he became a recluse. It got me thinking how important such pictures become.

I know I have written before about the value of family snapshots, but this was different. This was a series of pictures that traced the parabolic rise and fall of a single person. In some ways it was like La Jetée in that single pictures were spaced together to make the story. But different too, in that these were never taken with a narrative in mind, but served later to support the spoken story.

And since you are wondering what I am talking about, the film was Have you got it yet? And it was about Syd Barrett. Now, I have no dog in the fight about what happened between Syd and the rest of the band. I’m sure the film is not the one true historical record, and it states clearly that it is not.

The point I am trying to make is the remarkable series of informal and posed images that were used, and how they showed that glow that Syd obviously had. Now I know and understand that many people don’t want their picture taken. But if ever there was an argument to take pictures when you can, this one is compelling. But, the freedom to take multiple informal pictures seems to be time-limited. Children are not expected to be a part of the conversation between adults, so when I was young I had the freedom to snap away at family events. Indeed, I was encouraged to bugger-off and leave the adults alone. With my friends I could snap away because everything we did was new and wonderful and we wanted to record ourselves doing it. This is the stage where Syd’s pictures were taken – when we were all young and beautiful and exciting and knew everything.

Sid Viscous

Having children of my own gave me a new reason to take loads of pictures. Then they grew up and didn’t want any adults intruding in their lives (they’re not sociopaths: they were teenagers for a while).

But now I’m the adult. I can’t drop into the background and take pictures because I’m supposed to be present. And, as we adults now come with wobbly bits and migrating hair, we don’t want our pictures taken anyway. I admit that I never appreciated my parents’ views on this until later. They were happy to just sit and look at the camera or to continue what they were doing with no coyness. I expect that this is the privilege of being family – I’m not some unknown street photographer stalking them, so my motives are clear. As a result I have lots of pictures of my immediate family acting normally (for the usual family values of normal). These are the sort of pictures that made the film about Syd so interesting: they were taken informally, as normal life was in the process of being lived.

So I’m belatedly grateful to my family for ignoring the one who made the clicking noises (not like Gregor though) and grateful too that I have amassed a long series of pictures of them just being them.

And a PS. If I do have aphantasia (if), then one of the effects is a poor biographical memory and possibly poor facial recognition. Which may explain why I took all these pictures and why I value them. Who knew?

Deathed to club

There was an interesting conversation the other night at my photography club about the demise of this very club. The argument was that photo clubs have nothing to offer or interest young people, so the membership would grow increasingly old until we all stopped clicking. Actually, the conversation was a bit sad, but the idea was interesting. Are the days of the club declining? Or is it pointless to worry about a younger membership, as nobody joins a club until they pass thirty? Or is it just a sad endictment that photo clubs are the realm of the wrinkly with a chronic hardening of the opinions?

We did try to discuss what would tempt younger people (say, in their twenties) to join a photo club, but I don’t think we have anything to offer them. Why would you want someone to tell you how a camera works, when what they are explaining is how they used to work? And what benefit has this expertise to you? As cameras and phones get more clever and capable you can spend less time learning to use it and more time using it to get results. I was at a beacon-lighting bash recently to celebrate our new King’s wisdom in choosing the right mother (I was crowd control, to wrestle down any biddies who rushed the pyre). The beacon was a flaming basket held up against a darkening sky, dripping sparks into the dark foreground. My neighbour held up their phone and took a perfectly-exposed photo that captured the flames, sparks and evening shade. I was still fiddling with a compact camera that made it look like a daylight barbecue.

Perhaps there does come a point when you want to do something more or different with your photography. Online forums can be alligator pits of lurking mansplainers. Some club members are no better, but at least their physical presence and lack of anonymity moderates the exchange. But the function of most photography clubs seems to be to arrange speakers and hold competitions. The speakers are the best part – it’s a great way to see pictures taken by people who are good at it. Competitions are odd though – pictures are awarded points on a subjective scale of things like technical quality and composition. A typical speaker will just happen to mention that various ones of their pictures ‘have done rather well’. This means they were awarded lots of points in competitions. But, as Glynn Lavender of Shutters Inc says, the winners are really just the least-worst in the group. And then another judge scores the same pictures totally differently, proving that the scores are totally subjective. I wonder if it’s this aspect of photo clubs that puts people off?

Imagine that you reached a stage where you wanted to know more about your hobby or develop your skills. Join a photo club and you are faced with gifted speakers and competitions that you can’t hope to win and given non-actionable feedback (one comment I got was “I can’t understand what this picture is and I don’t like it” I should get that on a tee shirt). There is probably no programme of learning and no opportunities to try new things. There may be few or no opportunities to just talk about pictures. Anything that doesn’t fit the standard model for a picture (in focus, grainless, nicely arranged) is dismissed.

AI-generated by Pixray from the description puzzled photographer.

What we could do is swap the competitions for show and tell sessions (or see and say?) where the photographer gets to say what they saw or intended and the audience get to say how well they think it works. With encouragement to bring new versions of the same picture back to see how they progress. As for speakers, get people who can talk about why they took their pictures and what they were trying to show. I don’t care if it won prizes at Crufts – I want to see better ways of seeing and showing.

Do you see what I saw?

Maybe if we did this we would have something that more people would be interested in? Otherwise we are doomed, with smartphones on one side and AI generated pictures at the other, sharing nothing and clinging to our competition scores for validation.

A name arose

What do you call a picture? Do you even need to name a picture? Many pictures that are entered in competitions or shown in exhibitions have titles, but what is the title for? Isn’t the content of the picture what it should be called? It all feels a little weird.

I can understand descriptive titles for things that need to be described. Context can be useful: reportage needs the context to make sense of the image, for example. Most books have titles to give you some sense of what the book is about. Indeed, many non-fiction books also have a subtitle to explain the title. But do pictures need the same level of explanation?

I joined a photo club during the pandemic. It’s fun and interesting. There are frequent showings of pictures, which is great. But it seems that pictures get a title to explain the image. If you have a lovely landscape shot of Windermere it might be sensible to call it Windermere so that the viewer knows where it is and doesn’t mistake it for say, Hartlepool. But you don’t need to call it Light over Windermere. I can see by the picture that Windermere had light. On the other hand, what should I make of a picture called Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico? It is precisely labelled. I suppose you might not need the moonrise, but it does explain what the white spot is for anyone who was uncertain. It’s also not called evening mood or something equally trite. Calling a picture Study in light or Study in form is tautologous and open to error: it is either what you called it or it is not. And if Study of … is just an excuse to take pictures of nudes, then the title becomes a pretence. You want to take a figure study? Here’s two fingers you can start with.

Perhaps worse than the faux-artistic are the humorous titles. If the picture is good, it shouldn’t need a punchline. And if it needs a punchline, why not do it properly and add a speech balloon?

The Treachery of Imaging. (I’m allowed to give it a title as it’s part of the joke.)

I can appreciate paintings, for example, without knowing what they are called. The title is only useful for referring to it in conversation – it’s more accurate than saying something like the big blue one. You might argue that similar titles imply the artist saw them as a set, but good curation can also put a set together, and so can the pictures looking like they belonged together. So perhaps the purpose of a title for art is to allow cataloguing?

I do have some of my own pictures up on the walls, if only to cover the damp and cracks, but none of them are titled. There’s no need: the picture either looks nice or it doesn’t and that won’t change with what I call it.

Photo club competitions and exhibitions though, they are the home of the name. Every image does need a name, for the same reason a painting does: to be able to identify a specific image. But the specific has given way to the poetic. This is where you will find a picture of converging verticals called converging verticals. Or a landscape taken at dawn called dawn light. I confess, I did once put in a landscape shot of a formal wooded garden called something like Crick Castle. The judge queried the title, as the castle was not visible. So I said it was behind the tree. Nul points.

So I guess what I am arguing against is tautology and florid titling. Call it what it is, because if you have to tell people what to see, you haven’t shown them clearly enough.

Kodak No.1 Pocket Camera

I didn’t need another camera, but then I came across this stately centenarian for a fiver. What are you going to do?

Well, check it over first. The lens and bellows looked clean and in good condition. The little pen that was used to write on the film was still present. Let’s just pop the back open… or not. The back doesn’t open; instead the entire lens and bellows block comes out. The film spool is dropped into one side of the camera back, laid across the pressure plate and the take-up spool is hooked-up to a winder. The lens block has rollers on each side that support the two spools and lead the film across the back of the lens. It’s a faff to load at first, but then it’s as simple as taking a turn of the paper leader around the take-up spool to make sure it has caught, then pushing the pair of spools into the corners of the camera back.

It made me think of the Argus C3. That was built for ease of assembly, and this Kodak looks the same. The clever bits – the lens and bellows – could be assembled as a block. There would be no need to reach inside the camera back to attach things or tighten screws, as it could all be done in the open. The camera body had no vulnerable and large opening door, so it would stay light-tight even with a bit of ‘handling’. There was no need to have pivots for the film spools. It was easy to offer a range of lens and shutter combinations, as it was a simple choice of lens panel at assembly. You can see why America became the manufacturing giant it was. German or Swiss engineering may have been more exacting, but the Americans could build good fast. See the story of Liberty Ships for example.

Lens block and back. The rollers (marked) guide the spool and film. The spool can be seen hiding in the end of the camera back.

The lens on this version of the camera is basic – a simple meniscus. But like the model 616 the large negative means there will be little if any enlargement, so it’s probably good enough. The apertures were a bit of a mystery though, being simply numbered 1 to 4. I expect Kodak would have provided instructions like ‘use 1 for normal scenes, 2 for landscapes’ and so on. Luckily the lens is set behind the shutter and aperture, so you can see the hole as you move the aperture lever. Reckoning that most 6×9 format cameras use a 105mm lens and doing some careful work with a vernier caliper gauge, I reckon the apertures are 1 = f16, 2 = f22, 3 = f32 and 4 = f45. Or close enough. These seem to agree with other opinion too, so that’s what I’ll go with.

To use the camera you have to open the flap and draw the lens forward to extend the bellows. Many, perhaps most, folding bellows cameras have a self-extending mechanism that pulls the lens forward as you open the flap. This Kodak isn’t one of them. But with the lens out there is a little threaded rod where your right thumb falls that focuses the lens. The whole lens panel moves in and out, with a small pointer to show the distance set.

Lens deployed. The roller on the left focuses the lens, with the distance scale and pointer on the right (as you view it).

The film counter window on the back was a pale orange colour, so I used a bit of tape to cover the window when I wasn’t winding-on. The bellows looked pretty good with a torch test, so not bad for its age.

And then the moment of truth: I loaded it and shot some pictures. I used a roll of Fomapan 100 film which meant I could use the top speed of 1/50 and aperture 2 (f22) on a sunny day. The bellows were stiff at first when pulling the lens out but got easier as we went along. Probably stiff from years of being stored tightly folded. It kept them in good condition though. The viewfinder is one of the barely useable little things with a mirror in the back. This gives you the same fun as a TLR in trying to get verticals right, with the added joy that you can’t be that sure of the framing.

But for all its weight and solidity, it really is an easy carry. There’s a useful handle on one end and it will fit into the back pocket of your jeans (arse permitting). It’s slow to set up and use though. My Balda is much quicker, as the lens and bellows snap out when the door is opened and the lens can be left pre-focused.

And when I pulled my first film out of the developer, there were eight good negatives on it (I should point out that the camera shoots 6×9 on 120 film, so there were supposed to be eight negatives). There was a light leak appearing to radiate from the top right of the image, making the leak the bottom left of the film gate. This is at the end where the lens block latches into the camera back, so has much less overlap than at the other side. So I added a bit of modern light seal foam to the area and I’ll shoot another film to see if it worked.

How much detail was there on the negatives from the little meniscus lens? Surprisingly good, which shows the benefit of a huge negative over even a simple lens. So what we have here is a very basic camera that would have been ideal for snaps of groups and scenery to be enlarged to perhaps postcard size. Even contact prints would have been useable. It could travel in a bag or large pocket with little risk of damage. And a hundred years later, it still works.

Or I thought it did. I went back to have a look at the bellows just in case there was a light leak I’d missed. But this time I used a proper torch (a diving torch, that is bright enough to have a recoil when you switch it on). Pinhole? More like mouse hole. Some of the corners of the bellows are thin. I did try patching them with small folds of black paper, but they didn’t sit well or hold. So I made up a paste of Airfix glue and black paint and gave the corners several coats inside and out. That seemed to fix it.

Folded paper patch

OK, so not as perfect as I thought at first, but still pretty good for a hundred year-old camera.

Old meters

I’ve got several old manual cameras with no (or no working) light meter. That shouldn’t be a problem, as I also have some old light meters. And that’s how it begins: you buy an old light meter and use it. Then you buy another one that might look or work better. But they give different readings. So you try a third meter to see if two of them agree. And then you have a box full of meters that all give different readings. So what’s a poor nerd to do?

I know there is a movement to not use meters at all and to guess the exposure. That feels to me like guessing how much fuel is in your car. Or I could buy one of these new clip-on meters, but where’s the fun in that? I think my entire collection of meters cost less than a new one. And part of the joy of using old kit is getting it to work.

So what I need is an objective standard to compare my meters against and show me how (in)accurate they are. Some can be adjusted and some can be compensated. But where do I find my gold standard?

Luckily I bought my standard years ago when I was going down the Zone System mineshaft. I have a very good Sekonic incident meter and a sheet of Kodak grey card. I know – I should just carry the Sekonic meter around with me, but I don’t. It’s a bit big and my ideal would be one of my other meters that switches easily between incident and reflective readings and is also smaller.

As an aside, I also have a number of Weston meters. These are things of mechanical beauty and reputed accuracy. But did everyone in the past have amazing eyesight? The aperture and speed scales on a Weston Master II are tiny. It’s like the Mercury camera I used to have – I needed reading specs and good lighting to set the lens aperture. I have a Weston Master III though, which is more legible.

Drop the “1/” from the shutter speeds and the numbers can be bigger

Make sure that the pointer is reading zero with the cell covered. If not, adjust with the screw on the front. Point the meter to a clear north sky at any time between 10 A.M and 2 P.M. There must not be any clouds or haze. An accurate meter will give a reading of approximately 320 Lumens – the scale used before the Euromaster series. That’s just over half way across the dial with the baffle closed. This should translate to f/16 at 1/100, with film speed set to ASA/ISO 100.

http://www.westonmeter.org.uk

So I did the ‘north sky test’ with the Weston meters and surprisingly some of them were good. I’d formed the opinion that they were incorrect because I was comparing them with my phone app (but see below). Right then, here’s the plan:

• Set up my ‘good’ Sekonic meter and a grey card under steady daylight.
• Compare my incident meters with the Sekonic.
• Once I have a dual-type meter that agrees with the Sekonic, use it to get the same reading off the grey card by moving the grey card around.
• Point my reflection meters at the grey card and see if they agree with the Sekonic.
• If a meter consistently misreads, make a note of how I need to adjust the ISO setting to compensate.

The first and most interesting finding was that the light meter app in my phone was off. I suppose it’s more accurate to say that my phone was off. Luckily I had paid for the full licence, which meant I could adjust it. I suppose the lesson in this is not to blindly trust something new until you have tested it.

So how did my tests work out? Far better than I expected. All of the meters bar one worked. The Leningrad meter confirmed my suspicions by over-exposing by one stop. I’d been given a second Leningrad, and that over-exposed by a stop too.

The various Weston meters all seemed to work. The film speed rating they use is slightly different to ISO, but only by a third of a stop. For the sort of cameras I’ll be using, I can ignore this.

One meter, a Danubia, has a design flaw that makes it easy to take wrong readings. Since I have plenty of working meters, this one can go.

Set the meter reading using the little window at the bottom, NOT the EV scale above it.

One surprise was an ancient Ilford meter. Once I’d cleaned the glass over the light cell and figured out what the modern equivalent of its film speeds were, it worked.

For a meter that appears to be old, it has some very modern apertures and speeds.

Perhaps the winner though is a tiny Photopia meter. I took it with me when I went to the local beer festival. There were some bands playing under a gazebo, as it threatened to rain. So I’m taking pictures of people in shade while sat in sunlight, on an ancient Argus metered by the smallest light meter I own. And it worked.

The Photopia meter compared with a Weston for scale

Not the best posed shots, but I was there for the beer and only brought the camera to give it a walk.

The Lydia Bousfield Trio

Richard Halma

So now I have a boxful of meters I can trust. Not a bad result for an hour’s work.