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For Christmas, Santa and his elf Carlos got me a bunch of 35mm film. Even though I have 3987 cameras, none of the film ones take 35 mm. (Though Carlos does have a Canon AE-1 that I am going to try some of the film in someday soon!) But Santa and Elf Carlos were thoughtful and tried hard. I found a way to modify my Holga to take the 120 film, requiring just $1.25 in quarters for shims, a bit of paper towel, some tape to hold the film in, electrical tape to black out the film window, and a handy dandy chart that I taped to the back of the Holga to indicate how many clicks/turns to advance after each photo. I was very excited to try this and took several rolls with me to Puerto Rico. I ended up shooting one roll while I was there (17 exposures in the Holga on a 24 exposure 35 mm roll). I had all the film in my carry on bag (one already loaded in the Holga on departure). When we went through security in Boston I made sure to specify that I had unexposed film with me and they said as long as it was under 800 speed (it's 400), it would be fine, exposed or not. I've not traveled with film before but I trusted the TSA Men With Wires In Their Ears.

While in PR I frequently had both the Holga and digital with me and took shots with both. When I got home I sent the roll of 35 mm off to be processed. I asked that they send me the negatives only and please either hand-cut or not cut the negatives at all since they were from my Holga. When I got my negatives back in the mail, my first look at them made me think that there was nothing on them at all. After several looks I could see very, very faint pictures in some frames. There was a green (red when scanned) line across about 3/4 of the film. Out of the 17 pictures I took, these 5 that I uploaded are the only ones that are recognizable in any way. There are some that I scanned and was like, "WTF is that? Where was that???"

Most of the shots show signs of damage by xray or whatever. When you leave PR there is a USDA scanner that you have to put all your bags through and that uses CT scan technology. Besides the carryon scan, that's the only place my film passed through. I forgot to take it out there and I think that's where it got ruined. I was so sad when I saw what the pictures were (or weren't) but what can you do. Live and learn?

I'm not a huge fan of these images but some of them have this weird ghostly quality to them that is kind of cool to me. You can't see the 35 mm sprocket holes on them...I guess you probably could if I had scanned them in the 120 film holder thing rather than 35 mm?

This picture is my favorite of the damaged film bunch. It reminds me of one of those old postcards from Hawaii. I *think* this is at Pools, which means that land mass that juts out in the background is kind of the last point before Rincon turns over towards the Caribbean. I remember looking at the Spanish Wall and I was going to try to walk along the path from Pools' to Domes but the swell was too big and the tide was wicked high.

I decided to upload some better pictures of my Bobette II. This is one of the Ernemann cameras continued in production after the merger that created Zeiss Ikon in 1926. It was ZI model 548. Branded as a Zeiss camera, this one must be from 1926 or later.

This is the front. The lens on my camera is an Ernemann 'Ernon' anastigmat, a 5 cm f/3.5 triplet lens - uncoated of course. It has an everset shutter, giving speeds from 1/5 - 1/100 sec plus B and T. There's no delayed action, but it does have a socket for a cable release.

The aperture scale was missing when I got the camera. I made one by measuring the real iris aperture diameter (with the front of the lens out). This works fine at the wide end; but it can't be accurate at the stopped-down end; my scale easily has room for f/45. I think this is because the aperture should be calculated from the diameter as magnified by the front lens elements. Some time I may get round to a second attempt; in the meantime, British daylight rarely requires stopping down a lot!

For such a small camera, a folding bed with focusing rails and a sliding lens standard seems almost over-engineered. You can see the radial focusing lever on the side of the bed. The pretty table stand has to be unfolded to open or close the front of the camera. The focus must also be set to infinity to close it.

You can see how a previous owner went to some trouble to modify the camera. A brass loop and hook-shaped part have been brazed onto the fixed rail on the other side. These could hold a rod, perhaps to mount a home-made wire frame finder.