An Ernemann Film-K

Me, the 13th Duke of Wymborne? Here? In my home town? With a German box camera loaded with Chinese film?At ten o'clock in the morning? With all these people watching? With my reputation? Are they quite mad? Oh well.

 

 

It's along time since I played around with box cameras but this one seemed like something unusual, found in a charity shop for £2. It's an Ernemann Film-K from the early 1920's. There's no need for a hood as the lens is tucked away behind the shutter, which occupies a slim circular assembly secured by two wood screws – the whole body is beautifully made of wood covered with tooled black leatherette. The three settings are M (moment = instantaneous) F/12.5, Z (Zeit = time) F'12.5 and Z F/22. The smaller aperture is only available on the Z setting, no doubt due to the slowness of films available at the time.

 

It takes 8 6x9cm pictures on standard 120 film. Loading is easy, the camera hinges open, the two parts fitting very snugly and I didn't even realise there was a join at first, and the spools are retained by neat hinged brackets. I decided that 100 ISO film would be reasonably well exposed in hazy sun or cloudy bright conditions. In the event it was quite a bright, sunny morning so I decided to reduce the exposure by taping a little yellow/green filter in front of the lens, resulting in nice detail in the skies. I was nervous about being able to see the frame numbers of the shanghai film, but it wasn't too difficult, although I covered the red window with a flap of dark material between frames. The finders provide bright little thumbnails of the subject. In composing the pictures I looked from the finder, which gives an overview, to the scene itself to check on details. But its not really accurate, hence the "unusual" framing of some of the pictures.

Edited September 30, 2018 by John Seaman

So what results to expect of a simple near century old wooden box? I was expecting reasonable sharpness near the centre, more blur towards the coners. I was disappointed – some shots seem to be sharper near the edges and corners. Could it be a film flatness issue? The Shanghai film does seem to have quite a strong curl.

 

 

 

 

These were all done in Leicester one Thursday morning a few weeks ago, processed commercially, and scanned at 1200DPI on my Epson 4870. A small amount of sharpening was done after resizing.

 

Here are the last four. The filter certainly helped bring out detail in the sky. Thanks for looking.

 

 

 

 

Nice work, John. In its day the 6x9 negatives would have made nice sized contact prints. No doubt many thrifty do it yourselfers did just that. Thanks for sharing.

Nice pictures John. Better (much) tonality than I would have expected from oriental film commercially processed.

 

BTW, I wonder how many P.netters got the Paul Whitehouse/Fast show reference?

What a great find! That's a beautiful example of the simple box camera genre, John, and the results are better than I might have expected. Of course Ernemann is better known for high-quality folding cameras, so it's probably reasonable to expect something a little better than one might achieve with a Box Brownie. Thanks for another interesting post. And as for the 13th Duke of Wymborne:

 

And 'ave you seen those new photo shops? You can get your pictres developed in like two hours, two hours, used t' take a week, brilliant.

I'm shocked ! I would have sworn Fomapan or FP4, never from Shanghi. Shadows in my Shanghis' are nothing better than black blotches

 

Nice images and processing John. Without knowing they were from a box camera, I would have easily said they'd be from something more elaborate

 

I must shoot a second roll through my Agfa box (looks like a Synchro, but not identified as such), got the aperture setting wrong with the first film, first time using a box camera, 2 years ago bought on eBay. The lesson learned was to use the larger of the two aperture openings in back yards. The moderate shadows of buildings, fences etc on a bright sunny day required the larger opening, when I thought that the smaller opening was ok due to the bright sunlight otherwise - I guess that's what testing is all about

But Rick D ... this is.. a folder...;)

 

Me too.. impressed with the sharpness. Lovely find. Good shooting John!

Many thanks for all the comments, much appreciated as always. The images reduced in size for photo.net do look sharper than the more revealing full size scans, which is why I say that some seem sharper at the edges, suggesting the film may not be lying flat. Or perhaps the focus is set at a shorter distance to allow for group shots etc.

 

I've got 3 rolls of the Chinese film left.

Nice.

 

from the last Freiherr JDM von Weinberg