Senior Moment

I recently restored a Kodak Senior Six-16 folding camera, circa 1938, and took it out for a spin. This is my third working camera that natively takes 116/616 film and, when adapted to take 120 film, produces a negative roughly 6 cm x 11 cm. My camera has the 130 mm f6.3 uncoated anastigmat triplet in a No. 2 Diomatic shutter with speeds, T, B, 1/25, 1/50, 1/100, & 1/150.

I wanted to share a sample image I took that gives a good representation of the quality of the lens. I took the following shot of a group of lakefront homes, handheld at 1/100 sec @ f16. Focus was set between 50ft & infinity. The film used was Arista.EDU 100 speed b&w in 120 format and developed in caffenol-C.

As I mentioned previously, the negative is approximately 6 x 11 cm and I scanned it on my Epson V600 flatbed at a resolution of 3200 dpi. The above image is obviously a down-rezzed version of the original and I've outlined a 1:1 crop of the last two homes on the extreme right side of the frame. The next image is that cropped area from the original scan but down-rezzed from 2048 x 2048 to 1024 x 1024.

I was quite impressed with the results and the amount of detail I could discern in the cropped area, especially considering the shot was handheld and this is the extreme edge of the frame. I was especially amazed that I could see the openings in the crosshatch skirting under the deck of the house on the right.

FWIW, I used a scavenged waist-level viewfinder from a junked Kodak folder to compose the image so I could press the camera against my body to steady it. Since the camera body is steel, I attached the auxiliary finder with a magnet. It works pretty well but I have to constantly remind myself to leave a little extra room on the long edges of the frame when composing to account for the slightly narrower 120 film. Here's a pic of the auxiliary finder attached for a horizontal composition.

Now, f16 is probably the optimum aperture for this lens and I expect I won't get results as good as this with the lens opened up, but that's a test for another day. Thanks for looking.

Gary

I tackled two 116/616 cameras I had some time back. I had orderd some 3D printed spacers. Which were of mixed quality. They did not have the slot cut. So I runied one trying to figure it out.. it now is the non-engaged feeder spool. I also suffered some light leaks etc.. but I was blown away by the quality of the exposures ie size matters and these consumer grade cameras really delivered. We done work here ..with Caffenol ?? Go Figure!!

Oh BTW the link to the panoramic restomod by Minh was covered right here back in the day .. Pretty amazing. I think if you search you can find them here in CMC Minh or Minh Nguyen. I believe he made or customized a camera for GeneM

I tackled two 116/616 cameras I had some time back. I had orderd some 3D printed spacers. Which were of mixed quality. They did not have the slot cut. So I runied one trying to figure it out..

Hi Chuck. I ordered 3D-printed 616->120 adapters on eBay and they were slotted properly but I had to shave down the diameter with a Dremel to get them to fit without binding. I also have to trim the 120 spools slightly. Kodak designers allowed almost no tolerance for 616 and 620 spool size variations from my experience. In other manufacturers 616/620 cameras, I can frequently fit a trimmed 120 spool with no problems. Not so with Kodak.