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To B’s or not to B’s. That is the question.

Every weekend I stand over my kitchen sink — music blaring, timer ticking — steadfastly inverting my stainless tanks as I develop, stop, fix and wash the previous week’s photographs. Inevitably, my mind drifts to how sweet life would be if only I owned a Jobo machine to do the agitation for me.

So every couple of months, I point my browser to the B&H website and ponder the purchase of a Jobo CPE-3 processor — with its big ol’ tilt mechanism, its big ol’ footprint, and its big ‘ol price tag. And every couple of months, I talk myself out of it. Not only does it cost about three times what I think it’s worth, but unless I want to make a Jobo film processor the centerpiece of my living room decor, it’s simply too massive for my tiny condo. Plus, the bulkiest bit of the processor’s overall bulk is the bulky tub — an utterly pointless component given that I shoot only B&W film, and thus don’t need to submerge all my developing chemicals into a temperature controlled multi-gallon bath of hot water.

If only someone made a device that featured the Jobo’s motorized rotator, but without its colossal plastic tub or its punitive price… and that’s when I remembered the existence of Google.

Truth be told, I half-expected my search to uncover more alternatives than it did… but seeing as how 99.999+% of the world’s photos are taken with a smart phone, I guess the dearth of options makes sense. Plus, if you are a B&W film photographer, the process of occasionally inverting a film tank isn’t exactly an insurmountable burden. If it were, I wouldn’t have done it for the past 33 years. But the older I get, the more time becomes my most precious commodity. And the 11 minutes I spend hand-inverting a roll of HP5+ in Rodinal, followed by the 5 minutes I spend hand-inverting that same roll in fixer, is 16 minutes that I could be doing something else — like cleaning up the mess; or preparing my negative sleeves; or readying new Lightroom folders for the upcoming scans. In the 1990’s, 16 minutes didn’t matter to me. Today, it does.

The first and most desirable alternative, is the glorious Filmomat processor.^{(note 1)} Like the Jobo, it commands the room — but unlike the Jobo, it looks great while doing so. It also costs nearly twice as much as the Jobo, yet (because it fully automates the developing process) doesn’t seem at all overpriced — though it’s well beyond “affordable” to a guy who drives a 13 year-old Ford Fiesta.

The second alternative came from Jobo themselves, via a contraption they call a “manual processor roller base.” Essentially, it’s just four wheels turned upside down. You lay your tank across the wheels and proceed to hand rotate the tank for the duration of the developing/fixing time. This seemed more like an anti-solution than a solution. Using the hand-inversion method, I only have to attend to the tank for 10 seconds every minute. The manual processor roller base would require constant hands-on attention.

The third alternative was basically a category of similar products, which riffed on the idea of Jobo’s manual processor roller base, but used a motor (rather than your own hand) to keep the film tank in constant rotation. There were a few processors with this design — one of which seemed to have died in kickstarter; one of which appears frequently on eBay but seems rather poorly conceived; and something called a B’s processor.

Reading through the B’s literature and watching the videos, I became intrigued. It was small; reasonably priced; firmware updatable; and looked to address some of the fluid dynamics issues that also contributed to my Jobo hesitancy. So, not wishing to lose any more of life’s precious moments to the tedium of hand-inversion, I ordered one.

What I didn’t know to order, however, was the little accessory strap that allows you to mount shorter tanks on the device. My 2-reel stainless tanks aren’t big enough to span the gap between the wheels, so the B’s maiden voyage required that I dust off my 2-reel Paterson tank. Maybe you like Paterson tanks. I don’t. Frankly, I believe they should be classified by The Hague as a torture device and outlawed. But it was the only tank I had that would fit the machine, so I bitched and moaned my way through my first-ever rotational processing cycle. While the negatives came out absolutely perfect, my Paterson contempt remained an impediment.

To eliminate all need for the Paterson tank, I ordered the small tank adapter from B’s. Also, intuiting that a Jobo tank might be better suited to rotational development than my stainless tanks, I ordered a 2-reel Jobo 1520 tank from B&H whilst removing the CPE-3 from my wish list.

I endured one more Paterson tank experience — again with perfect negatives — before the Jobo tank and B’s accessory strap arrived.

I’ve now used the B’s Processor to develop 18 rolls of B&W film — all types, all developers, all sorts of ambient temperatures — and every one of them is perfectly developed. The Jobo tanks themselves work great — the reels load much faster than the Paterson reels, and chemistry enters/exits the tank instantly (unlike a stainless tank). Also, as an added bonus, not a single drop of liquid has yet to escape the tank — minimizing clean up.

My process is straight forward and stolen step-by-step from the method suggested by the B’s manual. Specifically:

1. Fill the tank with water, and prewash the film for 4 minutes, with the processor running in Mode 3 (fast) the entire time.
2. Dump the prewash, fill the tank with fresh water a second time, then run the processor for an additional 1 minute in Mode 3 (fast).
3. Dump the prewash, fill the tank with developer, then run the processor in Mode 1 (slow/pulse) for the full development time one would normally use for hand-inversion.
4. Dump the developer, fill the tank with a fresh water stop bath, and run the processor for 1 minute in Mode 3 (fast).
5. Dump the stop, fill the tank with fixer, and run the processor for 5 minutes in Mode 1 (slow/pulse).
6. Dump the fixer, and wash using a modified Ilford technique — employing a couple of hand-inversion cycles, and a couple of spin-cycles on Mode 3.

Given the price, impeccable results, and teensy amount of storage space it requires, there really isn’t any significant downside to the B’s Processor. The worst things I can say about it are…

• It’s really designed to work best with tanks larger than 2-reel (Paterson excepted). Adding the strap to support a stainless or Jobo 2-reel tank seems a bit clunky, and the asymmetrical weight of a full tank sitting on the left half of the processor makes the unit a bit unstable… but it works… just not elegantly.
• The rotation is controlled via magnets that must be attached to your developing tank. These can be attached via rubber bands or stuck on with some included stickers. Even if you decide to sticker the magnets to your tank, you’ll still need to slip on a rubber band to create a “track” for the wheels. Like the add-on strap to support 2-reel tanks, it all seems a bit clunky. But, again, it works… just not elegantly.
• The B’s design does not allow the tank to be submerged in a water bath, which means (should you wish to use it for colour processing) your developer temperature will cool during rotation — requiring you to use the “average temperature over time” method. Fortunately, I don’t shoot colour film. But if absolute repeatability is essential, you’ll probably want a processor that allows the tank to be submerged… though you’ll spend a lot more in the process (no pun intended).

The B’s processor has quickly earned a spot in my film developing workflow. The fact its operation sometimes feels a bit clunky has not had any actual impact on its usability. When combined with the magnetic stirrer that I now use for chemicals, the whole film developing process makes me feel more like Walter White cooking up some blue meth than some old nerd developing film — albeit without the significant financial rewards, of course.

So, to B’s or not to to B’s? I weigh strongly in favour of the former. Every time I use it, I gain 16 minutes of precious free-time to engage in life’s other mundane tasks. And I get beautiful negatives with 100% repeatability. Hamlet never had it so good.

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©2023, grEGORy simpson

^{note 1 :} At the time of my Google search, Filmomat had only a fully automated processing unit. Since that time, they’ve released the Filmomat Light — a smaller, cheaper, manual unit, which is conceptually similar to the motor-driven processors (like the B’s), but which allows for a water bath (for color). Since it’s not as large as a Jobo CPE-3, it could potentially fit on a shelf in my closet. It’s an intriguing option, partly because it supports installation of two motors, which enables one to simultaneously develop two tanks — ideal for someone like me, who is always shooting different films at different ISO’s and developing in different chemicals. Then again, I could accomplish the same thing (while occupying less space) if I simply purchased a second B’s Processor. Also, I know full well that if I did have a processing tub, I’d inevitably start shooting colour film just to make use of it — and I suck at colour photography.

ABOUT THESE PHOTOS: There’s really no grand underlying theme to the photos — save, I suppose, for the fact that all were shot in the last month, and all were processed using the B’s Processor… other than the digital shot of the machine in action, of course.

Rest Stop, Highway 99 was photographed with an Olympus XA, on Fomapan 100 at ISO 100, and developed in HC-110 Dilution H. Storm Front, Kitsilano was shot with a Contax G1 and a Planar 45mm f/2, on Ilford HP5+ at ISO 400, and developed in Rodinal (Blazinal) 1:50. B’s Processor Processing used the OM Systems OM-1 with the Olympus 17mm f/1.2 Pro lens. Lucid Dream came to fruition in a Minolta TC-1, on Ilford FP4+ at ISO 125, which was developed in Rodinal (Blazinal) 1:50. If You Drink, Don’t Spell was shot with a Contax G1 and a Biogon 28mm f2.8, on Fomapan 100 at ISO 100, and developed in HC-110 Dilution H.

REMINDER: If you’ve managed to extract a modicum of enjoyment from the plethora of material contained on this site, please consider making a DONATION to its continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is neither an aggregator site nor is it AI-generated. Serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls — even the silly stuff.

Those who enjoy a tactile engagement with photographs are encouraged to visit the ULTRAsomething STORE, where actual objects, including ULTRAsomething Magazine, are available for purchase.

What’s great about trilogies, is that you know precisely how many instalments you’ll need to endure… unless we’re talking about George Lucas, who has obviously deemed the dictionary to be a purveyor of fake news.

Still, just because there are three of something, it doesn’t mean you need to consume them all. Which — Lucas example extended — is exactly what happened with me and the Star Wars “trilogy.” I nodded off during the first film; never saw the second (or third, fourth, fifth, sixth, etc); and have been shunned by my technology coworkers for decades since. So I’d like to thank the small smattering of ULTRAsomething’s larger smattering of readers who’ve soldiered through to this, the final chapter in the Folly Trilogy — a trio of articles discussing “taking photos with cameras that are utterly inconsistent with modern visual tastes or with 21st century photo dissemination techniques.”

The first camera in this trilogy, the Kodak Stereo camera, qualifies as “folly” because its images, while likely to engage with an audience, are kept from doing so thanks to a 200 year dearth of suitable stereo viewing and distribution methodologies.

Unlike the Kodak Stereo camera, the second camera — the Pinsta — produces images that can be easily viewed and distributed through traditional means — but it succumbs to “folly” because I, the photographer, can’t be bothered to spend the inordinate amount of time and effort required to produce a single decent photograph — much less a collection.

The third and final camera in the Folly Trilogy — the Ford MVP — is easy to carry and enjoyable to shoot (unlike the Pinsta); while producing standard 35mm images (unlike either the Kodak or the Pinsta). Unfortunately, the Ford MVP is guilty of looking more like a camera than acting like one. So cheaply made, it makes the build quality of Lomography cameras look like Hasselblads. And its image quality? No reason to change the metaphor, because it also makes the output of a Lomography camera look like a Hasselblad. If you ever wanted to smear a lens with Vaseline to get a dreamy effect, but didn’t have any Vaseline handy, this is the camera to reach for.

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Obviously, Ford Motor Company didn’t make this camera, but they did slap their logo on the box — once offering it as incentive for customers to pony up for a new pony car. It’s from the same dubious lineage as the more widely known Time Magazine and Sports Illustrated cameras, which also served to sweeten the perceived value of parting with one’s cash. Unlike those zine cams, which had faceplates imprinted with the words “Time” or “Sports Illustrated”, the Ford is emblazoned with the letters “MVP”. Why? I have no idea, but I’m using it as a motivational tool. Preferable, too, is Ford’s decision to give it a swanky “chrome” body, which definitely out-hips those boring black magazine variants.

I’m guessing the camera dates from around the mid-1980’s, which corresponds precisely with my time at Ford Motor Company — though my job developing Ford’s high-end, acoustically-tuned, premium/branded sound systems left me ignorant of the mechanizations of Ford’s marketing “brains.” This little bit of Egor trivia is precisely why my friend — one of the few people aware of my automotive past — leapt at the chance to connect the dots, and gifted me with a Ford MVP that she stumbled upon in a Portland camera shop.

Belying a body made from Fisher-Price grade plastic, and a rewind crank that falls apart if you turn the camera upside down, the MVP sports a 50mm lens with an actual glass element. It even provides a modicum of exposure control via its pictograph-based aperture dial — its odds of relevancy depending, obviously, on your choice of film speed. Rumour has it the camera’s one and only shutter speed is 1/100s — which I figure is probably correct within an order of magnitude or two.

The MVP is much heftier than I expected, which gives an impression of quality — though one that’s been debunked by various websites, which reveal the presence of a lead weight placed in the bottom of the camera to produce exactly this illusion. I was tempted to disassemble mine to confirm the weight’s actual chemical compound, but given the build quality of the rewind crank, I opted not to risk removing any screws from any plastic.

The bottom of the camera proudly states “Made in Taiwan,” though I have yet to uncover its actual manufacturer, or who was responsible for its development. Not that it really matters, since designing butt-simple film cameras isn’t rocket science; much less automotive engineering.

The better question is “who, in Ford’s marketing department, thought this would make a good promotional item?” Any glee a customer might have felt pulling this from their bag o’ new car swag, would surely dissipate once they drove that new Mustang to the Fotomat™ kiosk and picked up their prints.

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One of the main reasons I shoot half frame cameras (besides the fact I’m ‘cheap’), is their murky fidelity — somewhere between a photograph and a charcoal drawing. It’s a look I love, and one vaguely similar to that from the MVP, in spite of the fact it’s not a half-frame camera. However — not content with just a little smudge — the MVP pushes the murk factor into overdrive. It’s as if you took a half frame image; loaded the film on the developing reel without bothering to use a dark bag; processed it in exhausted chemicals; framed it behind a frosted sheet of plastic; and coated the corners with Canola Oil.

I’ll admit, given the curious inclusion of a glass lens, I expected a modicum of fidelity. But once I extracted the first reel from the development tank, those expectations got slapped down by the big clammy hand of reality. The images this camera produces are an abomination — and this is exactly why I love it.

Unfortunately (from a remuneration standpoint) my tastes are “utterly inconsistent with modern visual tastes.” So any camera that delivers such taste (in spades, no less) falls squarely into the trilogy’s definition of folly. Characterful images are contrary to the inclinations of the literally-minded, sharpness-obsessed influencers of today. Most folks want their camera to define the subject, not interpret it. They want to see details, not suggestions. Perhaps, if this was the late 19th century and the dawn of pictorialism, it would be a camera of desire — much like the Kodak Stereo camera would have been a camera of desire in the mid-19th Century. But now? In a time where the vast majority of humans equate idealized, hyper-realism with great photography? The Ford MVP is going to offer the opposite.

Fortunately, folly will always find a home at ULTRAsomething — because every fool needs a paradise.

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Final Ratings:

Personal Enjoyment Factor : 7. It would have been an “8,” but I dinged it a point for the mindful vigilance required to keep the camera upright, so the rewind crank remains intact. Viewing its photos is also quite enjoyable if, like me, your tastes reside on the outskirts of sanity. The MVP is like many of my favourite, no-budget, 1970’s drive-in movies — so bad it’s good.

Convenience : 8. Sure, it could be more convenient if, instead of manually setting the exposure via pictograph, the camera set it automatically. Then again, imprecise exposure is part and parcel of the camera’s gestalt, so any auto-exposure feature would need to include an element of randomness… which, come to think of it, would definitely be a camera I’d buy.

Long Term Potential : A safe and natural alternative to antipsychotic medications. As someone who has a tendency to occasionally step into a quagmire of banality and literalism and grow woefully depressed because of it, I need only point this camera at the most tiresome and vapid of subjects, look at the prints, and be instantly pulled from my moronic morass.

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© 2022 grEGORy simpson

ABOUT THE ARTICLE : This is the final instalment in a trilogy of articles exploring cameras that are totally at odds with the expectations and demands of 21st Century life. The first was here, and the second was here. Many of you will be pleased to learn that, were it not for my heartless ability to exclude several worthy contenders (including the Insta360, a sample of which is seen to the right), this “trilogy” could easily have turned into an extended “series.” You’re welcome.

Regarding that Ford JBL Audio Systems tear sheet: Toward the end of my time at the company, there was actually a brief collision between my audio design duties and Ford’s marketing department. This glaringly patriarchal ad, which I assure you I had no hand in creating, ran in all the major stereo and hifi magazines that year. Alas, though my hand wasn’t in the ad, the same can’t be said for my face, which is on the far left, looking so very… um… I’m lost for an adjective here. I was paid $1 for the shoot, which marked both the beginning and the end of my professional modelling career.

REMINDER: If you’ve managed to extract a modicum of enjoyment from the plethora of material contained on this site, please consider making a DONATION to its continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is not an aggregator site. Serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls — even the silly stuff.

If patience is a virtue, then Satan’s in the kitchen, whipping up canapés for my impending “Welcome to Hell” party.

Every couple of days, I venture out — camera in hand — for a quick 8 km walk. On an average day, I’ll push about a dozen frames through a camera — rarely bothering to pause for the 1/60th of a second it takes for the shutter to complete its journey across the film plane. Occasionally, with reservation, I might slow down slightly when I snap a photo. But a full stop? Who has the patience for that? Blurry schmurry. I’ve got things to do.

Related to my impatience — and the reason why Satan’s also enlisted a crack team of demon sous chefs to prepare some delightful amuse-bouche offerings — is my pathological need to be unencumbered. I don’t want useless crap weighing me down or impeding my freedom of motion. No backpacks; no bulging pockets; no bulk; no weight. One look at the preponderance of compact cameras in my cabinet will confirm this. The heaviest, most ponderous cameras I own are probably the Leica rangefinders.

So with this is mind, what’s the silliest camera I could possible buy? A large format camera, you say?

Surely, you don’t think I’m that foolish!

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OK. I’ll admit — overcome by a completely unrealistic notion that I would somehow magically become someone I’m not — I did purchase a large format camera earlier this year. But in my defense, it’s “only” a 4×5 (not an 8×10); has a pinhole (rather than a bulky lens); and is made entirely of plastic — placing its weight squarely in line with other cameras in the cabinet. But if you think these caveats somehow exclude me from the rank of “imbecile” on the Levine and Marks 1928 IQ Classification Scale, we need to dive a little deeper.

The camera in question is a “Pinsta” — a modern 4×5 pinhole kickstarter camera, designed to capture images on direct positive paper, rather than on a negative. What distinguishes it from other direct-positive pinhole cameras is the way it doubles as a portable darkroom — enabling you to develop the print right inside the camera. I suppose this is what puts the “insta” in “Pinsta” — at least if you’re the sort who measures time in “eons.” The manufacturer also advertises it as a camera “that fits in your pocket.” Seeing as it makes a twin-lens Rollieflex look svelte, I’m assuming the Pinsta folks must also be in the couture business, and that their new PinstaPocket™ baggy burlap ready-to-wear SackPants™ collection has yet to hit the Paris runways.

So — bearing in mind my Hell-bound tendency toward impatience, and my accompanying pathological insistence on unimpeded mobility — let’s explore, point-by-point, the various conflicts betwixt myself and this camera.

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To begin, it’s a large format camera — designed to take exactly one shot before you need to reload it. And loading a large format camera isn’t as simple as popping in a new 35mm cassette, or unspooling a fresh roll of 120 film. Instead, it requires putting both the camera and direct positive paper into a changing bag; zipping it up; opening the camera; unboxing the paper; removing a sheet from the inner light-blocking plastic bag; fumbling around to feel which side is the emulsion side; inserting it in the camera; putting the paper back in the bag/box; reassembling the camera; unzipping the bag and extracting the camera.

After that, the camera needs to be mounted on a tripod, positioned and levelled — a further interminably exasperating act, which is exacerbated by the fact that the Pinsta is not a view camera. In fact, there is no viewfinder at all — no ground glass focussing screen; nothing. In order to know what is and is not in the frame, I need to crouch, squat, and contort my body to look through the camera’s little sight line aids — one pair for each of the four corners of the image.

And if this wasn’t slow enough, consider that the images are not being exposed on film, but on paper — paper that has an ISO of 3. Yes, THREE. Which is pretty drastic, considering I think ISO 100 film is borderline “too slow.” So recording onto a medium that’s 5 stops slower means standing around 32 times longer waiting for it to expose. For those of you thinking, “chill out, dude — 1/2 second isn’t that much longer than 1/60th of a second,” let me remind you that this is a pinhole camera. Which means I’m not shooting at f/8, I’m shooting at f/zillion (give or take — I haven’t bothered to do the math).

The simple “Sunny 16 rule” isn’t quite as simple when you’re dealing with these sorts of film speeds and aperture openings. So I need to spend a bit of time staring at the scene — peering into the shadows; gazing at the sky; and assessing the overall dynamic range — all in an effort to make a total wild-ass guess as to how long the exposure should be. Usually, on a typical overcast Vancouver day, it’ll take several minutes for enough light particles to march single file through the tiny opening to expose the paper.

Once I make my wild-ass guess, I enter it into my iPhone’s timer app, open the Pinsta’s shutter, and stand around for the next several minutes — waiting for the paper to record an image, and wondering why I don’t just take a shot with that very same iPhone, and move along.

Also, as someone who likes to practice the fine art of invisibility whilst taking photos, I can assure you this is not an invisible act — the changing bag on the ground; the tripod’s footprint; all that crouching and squatting and scrutinizing of some big goofy black box — people will notice you. They mill about, looking quizzically at the process, yet they remain oblivious to the fact that an actual photo is being taken — passing in front of the “lens”, or even parking themselves there in an effort to work out what I’m doing and why I’m now just standing around doing nothing but looking bored.

When the alarm goes off and I close the shutter, a full fifteen minutes will have passed between the time I decided to take a photo and actually took it. Alas, the process doesn’t end there. After all, I can’t take another photo until I’ve developed and removed the film I just shot.

This is where things get particularly interesting, since I’m now required to extract three large syringes from a giant backpack — one filled with developer; one filled with fixer; and the third filled with water for washing — and inject them, one-after-the-other into the body of the camera.

Needless to say — in the middle of an urban location with an epidemic of open drug use — anyone juggling syringes full of brown liquid does not exactly garner positive attention. At this stage, I know I need to move quickly before the cops arrive — but it’s hard to be quick when you’re developing a print.

The contents of the first syringe get injected into the camera and the whole box gets swirled around for a minute or two, making sure fresh developer constantly flows over the print. The syringe protrudes from the camera the whole time — waiting for me to suck the liquid back out of the box and horrify anyone still in the vicinity.

Next I inject the fixer, which requires about 5 minutes of swirling and swishing before it too gets sucked back into the syringe, followed by another syringe, which injects water, which washes the print for another minute or so.

At this point, I crack open the camera, whip out a knife (exhibiting yet more anti-social behaviour) and use it to pry the saturated, shiny, dripping wet print from the camera back. I shake off the excess fluid, sandwich the print in a drying frame, seal it in a ziplock bag, and slide the whole thing into one of the backpack’s outer pockets.

The camera gear gets dried off; the syringes get put away; the tripod gets folded up; the changing bag gets rolled up, and the entire shebang gets stuffed back into my multitude of bags and packs, ready for the next spot.

And speaking of spots, I can really only photograph a maximum of three locations before the chemicals are exhausted — and, truth be told, that third development is rather woeful. So, unless I plan to haul all this around for the purpose of taking only two photos, I need to also carry an additional jug full of pre-mixed developer; another full of pre-mixed fixer; and a third filled with water. I also need to carry an even larger, empty jug for disposing of the exhausted chemicals.

So basically, it takes me 30 minutes to take the same photo I could have taken in 1/60th of a second with any other camera.

Shooting with the Pinsta is not just a ridiculous drain on the amount of time I have left on earth — it’s an equally ridiculous burden on my need for unencumbered mobility. On a normal photo excursion, I carry — in one hand — a single camera with only the lens that adorns it. A tiny, empty bag is slung over my shoulder — just in case Vancouver does its thing and begins to drop rain from the sky. But a Pinsta-based photo excursion means packing a full size backpack, a large shoulder bag, and a tripod — basically the same amount of gear the average college graduate uses to travel the world in their “gap” year.

Fortunately, I can endure anything — even an assault on both my patience and mobility — should the results prove worth it. Alas, one look at the smattering of photos contained within this article indicates they are not. There are far easier ways to take grungy photos — one of which will be featured in Part Three of this trilogy.

I have no doubt this would be a dream camera for someone who isn’t me, or isn’t anything like me. A hermit monk perhaps; or maybe someone who breeds pack mules; or, at the very least, someone whose personality aligns, rather than clashes with their romanticism. There are definitely people for whom the Pinsta will unlock their creativity, rather suppress it; who will bond with the workflow, rather than rebel; and who will use it to create works of art that trample everything I’ve done in my 30+ years of hit and run photography. But in my hands it is, without peer, an object of sheer folly. In the words of Dirty Harry, “a man’s got to know his limitations.”

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Final Ratings:

Personal Enjoyment Factor : On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being most enjoyable), it rates a negative 3 – ’nuff said.

Convenience : On a scale of 1 to 10, (10 being most convenient), it rates a negative 8 – also ’nuff said.

Long Term Potential : Craigslist

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© 2022 grEGORy simpson

ABOUT THE ARTICLE : This is Part 2 of a three part series exploring the use of cameras totally at odds with the expectations and demands of 21st Century life. Part 1 is here and Part 3 is here.

ABOUT THE PHOTOS : As with all cameras, the image is inverted on the film — but because I’m shooting to direct positive paper, the usual film-to-paper image reversal does not occur. Sure, since I’m simply photographing the 4×5 prints for publication, I could just flip the images in Photoshop — but that seems contrary to the spirit of this camera, so all images remain reversed — exactly as they appear on the physical prints.

Also, I should note that the introductory photo — which shows some of the gear required for a basic Pinsta excursion — is missing a few items, such as the aforementioned knife, plus some towels for drying the camera between shots, and a few large ziplock bags for protecting the wet prints — increasing the bulk and the burden beyond what you see here, and what was able to fit on my table. And yes, “The Making of Skeletal” was, indeed, shot with the iPhone while I was standing around, waiting for the Pinsta exposure to finish.

REMINDER: If you’ve managed to extract a modicum of enjoyment from the plethora of material contained on this site, please consider making a DONATION to its continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is not an aggregator site. Serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls — even the silly stuff.

Cheesy British horror anthologies occupy a soft spot in my heart — along with cheesy Italian horror anthologies; cheesy Japanese horror anthologies; cheesy Korean horror anthologies; and… oh, who am I kidding? My heart is big enough and soft enough to accommodate the entire spectrum of 20th century genre cinema.

The point, however, is that sometimes an assemblage of short schlocky silliness is just what the doctor ordered — were I lucky enough to have such a doctor. And if this is true for genre cinema, perhaps it’s true for genre blogs — which I guess is what ULTRAsomething is… though I’ve never really been able to classify its precise genre.

So with this in mind, I decided to craft ULTRAsomething’s next three articles as if they were vignettes in an overarching theme — a theme that, when all three entries were combined, would be about the length of a typical article.

Well, that didn’t happen. This — the first so-called “vignette” — was supposed to clock in at about one-third the length of a typical essay. Instead, it wound up being twice the length. Fortunately, I’m nothing if not adaptable, so instead of calling this next series of three articles an “anthology,” I’m calling it a “trilogy.” Problem solved.

Semantics aside, the thematic structure of the trilogy remains the same as the anthology. Each of the next three articles, whatever their length, will revolve around a different camera — and when I say “different,” I mean “utterly inconsistent with modern visual tastes or with 21st century photo dissemination techniques.” Each camera is a folly unto itself, and each will make you (and me) question whether I harbour some hidden desire to burn my web stats to the ground.

On with the show!

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Our first folly is the Kodak Stereo camera from the mid-1950’s.

It’s a rather unorthodox looking box of brown bakelite — the sort of thing that invites unsolicited commentary from total strangers. For this reason, toting the camera on a photo walk requires allocating extra time for the inevitable conversations it provokes. I discovered this on my very first outing, when I ducked into the local grocery, and quickly found myself engaged in the following conversation:

Curiously, she was only the first of three that week, who asked if it was a “real camera.” I’ll admit, I’m as confused about why someone would ask this, as they are about why I’d sling such a thing over my shoulder.

Had I more time (or had they enough interest), I could have explained that the camera’s two lenses are separated by a distance equivalent to that which separates our eyes. One press of the shutter captures two simultaneous images on film — distinguished only by the parallax shift inherent with such separation. When these images are combined in some special way, or viewed side-by-side with (or without) the aid of a stereoscope to merge them, the two images form a phantom centre image, which has a pronounced 3D effect.

Using some surprisingly sharp lenses, the 35mm Kodak shoots 20 pairs of stereo images on a strip of 36 exposure film. Each image is 23 x 24mm in size, and the way each stereo pair is entwined with other stereo pairs on the film makes scanning a bit tedious, but the results (I believe) are worth it.

I’m sure, to anyone who’s only ever taken a photo with a telephone, 1950-something sounds like an eternity ago. They might even believe this camera dates from the dawn of 3D photography, but they’d be wrong. The fact is, stereo photography is almost as old as photography itself.

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Niépce took his first photo in 1826 — a mere six years before Charles Wheatstone realized you could take two side-by-side photos and gain access to that precious third dimension. But the whole concept really took off in the 1840s, when optical physicist David Brewster slapped a couple of refracting lenses onto a stereographic viewing device, and caught the attention of Queen Victoria. Thanks to the royal thumbs-up, stereographs lit a fire beneath the rapidly evolving caldron of photographic techniques, and within months the London Stereoscopic Company had manufactured hundreds of thousands of stereoscopes plus a million stereographic prints — employing teams of photographers to travel the world to take 3D images.

Unfortunately, Brewster’s stereograph was not very forgiving of those with either non-aristocratic incomes or less-than-perfect vision, and many people — Oliver Wendell Holmes included — would get headaches from using them. This prompted Holmes to partner with Joesph Bates, and invent an extremely simple, lightweight, handheld device with an adjustable lens-to-photo distance that allowed people with crappy vision and a beer budget to also enjoy 3D photos.

Stereography remained popular for a couple of decades, until it became a victim of its own success — attracting photographers with both dubious imaging skills and a penchant for rephotographing other photographer’s stereo cards. With declining image quality came declining interest. An economic downturn further dampened the appeal of the stereograph, as did the inevitable backlash that occurs when one generation yields to the next. In this case, it was a hip, new breed of young photographers — engaged in the hip, new school of “pictorialism” — who universally proclaimed stereography “a gimmick,” and declared photography’s true purpose was to give an artist’s impression of a scene, and not a clinical rendering.

3D fell from favour in the art world, but found new life in the educational market, where ‘clinical renderings’ were considered a good thing. Over time, as movies and television introduced their own third dimension (time) to the photographic image, the educational market began to erode, and stereographic interest shifted to motion pictures, which adopted another ancient viewing method: the “anaglyphic magic lantern.” Unlike the stereo cards favoured since the Victorian era, this technique did not project two separate side-by-side images, but instead coloured one red and the other cyan, and superimposed them into a single frame. In order to see the 3D effect, viewers used special glasses with one red lens and one cyan lens, thus ensuring each eye would see only the correctly coloured image. As ubiquitous in the mid-20th century as stereoscopes were in the mid-19th, I suspect anyone who’s old enough to remember the panic surrounding Y2K is likely to have at least one pair of cardboard red/cyan 3D glasses in the bottom of a forgotten drawer or box.

As the years progressed, 3D continued to go in and out of fashion — and with each resurgence came and went other viewing methodologies. The simple red/cyan anaglyph glasses yielded to more advanced polarized glasses, which yielded to the active shutter glasses that fuelled the failed 3D TV market in the early part of the 21st century. Lenticular prints and their online equivalent, the “wigglegram”, represent two more attempts to create widespread acceptance of simple 3D photographic stills — each but a blip in the trash heap of trends.

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It’s clear that the one unifying factor in stereography’s 200 year struggle to succeed has been (and continues to be) the absence of a suitable viewing mechanism — something I find rather strange. After all, most of us have two eyes with variable focus capability; and there are two images in front of us — so why do we need a mechanical viewing aid at all? Why not just refocus our eyes to form a phantom stereo image between the two projected halves? We can all position ourselves between a pair of stereo speakers, and without donning some sort of elaborate, rickety contraption, we can hear the instruments spread across a phantom sound stage. Our eyes’ ability to localize objects is no different than our ears’.

I’ve had a fascination for stereo photography since, as I child, I first peered through a beige Model G View-Master at a handful of God-awful tourism reels. But it was enough to hook me, and I have subsequently engaged with far more (and far more obscure) types of stereo images than I discuss in this cursory introduction. In the 30 years since I decided to take the leap from photography connoisseur to actual photographer, I’ve wanted to get involved with stereography — but the distribution problem has always stopped me.

Now, however, in my new guise as a photographer who doesn’t give a crap about his legacy, I’ve decided to finally take the plunge.

In general, I’ve settled on three techniques for displaying stereographic images:

Method one (and my favourite, by far) is the classic Victorian approach of stereo cards and an Oliver Wendell Holmes style viewer. Alas, not only is it the most internet-hostile of the techniques, it’s even gallery-hostile — since only one person at a time can engage with a stereograph. This approach guarantees I’m the only one who will see the photos in their greatest glory — hence the need to be comfortable with obscurity.

Method two is the humble red/cyan anaglyph, which can be vaguely satisfying when viewing images online — provided one is willing to rummage around a few drawers and boxes to find that old pair of cardboard glasses. Without such glasses, however, the photos are pure gobbledygook.

Method three, which I find to be the most satisfying for online viewing, is the crossed-view presentation technique. This method requires absolutely no goofy viewing devices and uses nothing more than our own eyes — just like people listen to stereo with nothing more than their own ears. However, many people do need to practice a bit in order to see the phantom image. And sadly, if I’ve learned anything from my time on earth, it’s that most people would rather buy their way to an instant solution than practice their way to a free and better one.

I have posted both crossed-vision and anaglyph images with this article. Those of you without benefit of a ratty old pair of glasses, but who still want to see some stereographs, will need to apply the crossed-view technique. For the unfamiliar, it works like this:

1. Size your browser such that it’s wider than 1200 pixels.
2. Click one of the cross-view photos to open it full size (1200 pixels wide).
3. Position your eyes a little bit more than arm’s length from your computer, and focus on the screen.
4. Slowly begin crossing your eyes until the two images form a centre, phantom image. It works best if you concentrate on aligning only one single element in the frame (preferably in the foreground). Once aligned, the stereo image should seem to almost snap into place and your eyes will lock focus — allowing you to peruse the image in full 3D glory, and without any viewing aid. If you feel your eyes crossing uncomfortably, you’re trying too hard. In general, your eyes only cross about as much as if you were trying to read a book pressed close to your face.

And if, after practicing, you’re still unable to form the phantom image, don’t sweat it — I’ve got an entirely different folly camera with which to horrify you in the next installment…

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Final Ratings:

Personal Enjoyment Factor : 8 – this thing is a blast to shoot. Its only downside is it’s rather addictive and causes me to constantly prowl for scenes that would ‘look good in 3D’ even when I’m carrying a regular camera.

Convenience : 2 – The little aperture slide on top of the camera is a bit fiddly to set, and its through-the-viewfinder bubble level — while both handy and important — triggers 20 bouts of photographic OCD per roll. Scanning is a pain, since pairs are interleaved on the negative, requiring a lot of shuffling back and forth, with every left frame needing its scan exposure documented, so as to set a matching exposure for the right frame. Post processing is also a bit tedious (particularly since I employ three entirely different display techniques), but I’ve mostly automated that now. In general, when you consider the entire process from shooting-to-displaying, this is probably the fussiest camera I’ve used… but it pales compared to next month’s camera…

Long Term Potential : To taunt me from the camera shelf until I finally take that series of impressionist 3D photos I’m planning — photos that will ultimately become my greatest achievement. But with no ability to display them to a mass audience, I will eventually succumb to a devastating psychological breakdown, and a lifelong dependence on anti-depressants.

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© 2022 grEGORy simpson

ABOUT THE PHOTOS: Yes, these images are rather pedantic — so much so that I haven’t even bothered to publish them in a proper ULTRAsomething display format. That’s because, first and foremost, I needed to get comfortable with how the Kodak Stereo camera ‘draws’ a scene in 3D, and I had to devise a scanning and display methodology, as well. At this point, I’m now comfortable with the process, so my next goal (as mentioned in the article) is to start using stereography to create impressionist images — ’cause it’s about time someone thumbed their nose at all the pictorialists who ruined 3D photography in the late 19th century.

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