Topic: Blackbird, fly ... but I fell

[ndroo]

Lucky enough to borrow a sample unit for a very short test. It's a really fun cam. Don't let my lousy photos mislead you ... I screwed up. Took these during lunch and opened up the back halfway thru rewind (I thought I had finish rewinding!) but I love the leaks. 

As for the sprockets, I was curious and removed the mask ... thus the sprockets ... but ended up the frames were sticking to each other. That caused me lots of pain when scanning them ... I had to carefully cut the strip of neg.

Sharing some of the crap I did ... hehe ... I'm buying few of these when it's out!

[Skorj]

That looks pretty toy like to me! Skj.

[ndroo]

That looks pretty toy like to me! Skj.

  It's suppose to be toy like ... right?  Argh! I can't wait to get one for myself!

[artpunk]

Love the leaks and I'm a fan of the sprocket look. I haven't had any problems with the frames sticking to each other in these cases though - although scanning with the sprockets required some 'tricking' of my scanner's automatic settings (it didn't seem to like the sprockets much)

[ndroo]

Love the leaks and I'm a fan of the sprocket look. I haven't had any problems with the frames sticking to each other in these cases though - although scanning with the sprockets required some 'tricking' of my scanner's automatic settings (it didn't seem to like the sprockets much)

Thanks. So did you shoot without the mask for the sprocket hole shots? Hmm ... wonder why your frames were not sticking to each other. Well not overlapping but the distance between each frame was almost non existent. Yeah scanning with those sprocket holes is madness ... I had to trick the scanner too. 

[artpunk]

Thanks. So did you shoot without the mask for the sprocket hole shots? Hmm ... wonder why your frames were not sticking to each other. Well not overlapping but the distance between each frame was almost non existent. Yeah scanning with those sprocket holes is madness ... I had to trick the scanner too. 

re: So did you shoot without the mask for the sprocket hole shots? - to clarify - when you want the sprockets you use no mask at all in the camera. You only pop the masks in for the square or  24 x 36 style exposures.
also re: not overlapping but the distance between each frame was almost non existent. Oh, I see what you mean by frames sticking to each other now, sorry! I will correct my answer, there is no exposure gap with the no-sprocket look because the lack of a frame mask means there will be no leeway when advancing the film, the exposures will be directly next to each other, no gaps, this is normal for this shooting mode. In some cases I did get a small amount of overlapping frames.
 

[hookstrapped]

Nice vignetting.

[ndroo]

Thanks. So did you shoot without the mask for the sprocket hole shots? Hmm ... wonder why your frames were not sticking to each other. Well not overlapping but the distance between each frame was almost non existent. Yeah scanning with those sprocket holes is madness ... I had to trick the scanner too. 

re: So did you shoot without the mask for the sprocket hole shots? - to clarify - when you want the sprockets you use no mask at all in the camera. You only pop the masks in for the square or  24 x 36 style exposures.
also re: not overlapping but the distance between each frame was almost non existent. Oh, I see what you mean by frames sticking to each other now, sorry! I will correct my answer, there is no exposure gap with the no-sprocket look because the lack of a frame mask means there will be no leeway when advancing the film, the exposures will be directly next to each other, no gaps, this is normal for this shooting mode. In some cases I did get a small amount of overlapping frames.
 

Oh, okay. Thanks for the info.

[ndroo]

Nice vignetting.

Yeah I like the vignetting. Not sure if it's a 'feature' of it though 

[Francois]

So using the square format mask won't give you more exposures per roll?
And the ground glass is rectangular vertical?

[artpunk]

So using the square format mask won't give you more exposures per roll?
And the ground glass is rectangular vertical?

Not normally, but I haven't tried to 'under advance' the film to get more shots in yet. I'm not sure if it would even work, but next time I put the square mask in I'll give it a try. In normal operation you can only advance the film winder a certain distance before it stops and won't advance anymore until the shutter is released. However, you can release the shutter at any time which makes it possible to do double and multiple exposures. If you 'under wound' and then released the shutter I'm not sure if it would then reset the winding distance or not... you would also have to guesstimate how far to wind to prevent overlapped square frames if it did work. (I'm not sure if any of this is making sense, I just woke up and should probably have a coffee before trying to reply to anything)
The ground glass isn't really a ground glass like those found in higher end TLR's - it does have guiding lines to frame your shots depending on what mask you are using however and shooting with the 36 x 24 mask will give you portrait aspect (vertical) exposures.

(edited to correct mask size it's 36 x 24 not 36 x 26)

[ndroo]

Oh ... so the cam comes with several masks eh? Cool!!! The sample unit I borrowed came with only one.

[artpunk]

Oh ... so the cam comes with several masks eh? Cool!!! The sample unit I borrowed came with only one.

Yep, I show them in this video I made http://www.theplasticlens.com/blog/?p=128 - (warning - the camera has got great personality but my narration could put incurable insomniacs into a deep slumber!)