Photographs With A Box Brownie

What happens when you put incorrect film in a 60 year old camera…

  Images overlapped due to the film not winding on enough

   (Click on images to enlarge them)

   Over the Christmas period I have been out and about attempting to breathe life into an old Kodak Box Brownie 127 camera I acquired (see this previous post: Film Photography). The 127 film this camera originally used went out of production in 1995 so I bought some Ilford HP5 400 35mm black and white film. The trouble with 35mm is that it is smaller than 127 and the cartridge doesn't sit in the brackets of the camera (it also means the image area is larger than the film surface area, so you get 'widescreen' style images where the width is recorded but not the height). After some experimentation I managed to fix the film's position by taping the end of the film to the winding spindle, so that I could wind it on, and by using some metal tap washers to wedge the cartridge in place. Then I just had to hope it would stay put and wind on. 

   Before closing the camera to use it, I wound the film on a few frames to try and gauge how many turns of the dial would equate to one image frame. Whilst my estimation was correct, as can be seen in some of the images later on, as more of the film was used the winding mechanism struggled to turn completely and thus didn't move the film as much as required, producing a series of strange, overlapping, panoramic images as seen above (I will explain how these images were digitised later).

   Finally, the camera has a small red window in the back of it which is designed to show what frame number the 127 film was on. Obviously, without 127 film this is a pointless feature, so I covered the window with silver duct tape to prevent light affected the 35mm film, before sealing the camera up completely and heading into Birmingham city centre for the day.

   I didn't have anything specific to photograph, but I thought it would be fitting to capture elements of the city which still existed from the camera's manufacturing period, and earlier. Thus I wandered along the canals and around the former manufacturing areas trying to capture photographs of these areas in the 21st century, using machinery from their 'period'. 

Stephenson Street, with New Street Station on the right

   One particular feature of Birmingham, and indeed the British rail network, is Birmingham New Street Station. The current, much maligned station, was built at the same time as the Box Brownie camera, after Nazi Luftwaffe bombs destroyed the original structure. However, 60 years on Network Rail are rebuilding the station once again, and I thought this would be worth a photograph. The image on the left is Stephenson Street, at the bottom end of Corporation Street. On the right is the new, highly polished, metallic exterior of New Street Station slowly being put into place (the project still has another two years to go). Stephenson Street will eventually see trams running along it again…after they were also removed 60 years ago in favour of cars and lorries. 

   Although the camera recorded this all as one image, when it came to digitising the film I had to scan the film as two separate photographs due to the film scanner only being able to scan 35mm negatives. 127 has a larger area than 35mm, so one 127 frame is equal to about 1.5 35mm frames, thus it required scanning two 35mm frames to get one 127 photograph. This explains why the photograph at the top of this page looks more like a collage than a single photograph, as it is a combination of three  35mm scans which have then been stitched together in Photoshop to restore the original 127 frame format (the photographic overlapping is caused by the film not winding on correctly). There is no overlapping in the image on the left because the film wound on correctly. (Box Brownie cameras also have no aperture, focus or shutter controls).

   The complications with scanning in 127-sized images using 35mm equipment meant a lot time was spent in Photoshop re-joining images together to recreate the photograph captured on the negative. This was made more complex due to overlapping and double exposure, which had occurred on the latter half of the film as the winding spindle had clogged up and stopped winding the film on enough to separate each image. Below is another example of the film double exposing and overlapping. This is actually a single strip of film but the collage effect (uneven edges) has come from the individual scans, and the rejoining of them in Photoshop, which has broken up the 'flow' of the image. However, as you can see, each image links seamlessly with the next, creating an intriguing panoramic view of Birmingham which is entirely impossible in reality due to the scenery being very varied and from different areas of the city. From left to right the image shows: Summer Lane, Old Snow Hill looking towards Constitution Hill (double exposed with Summer Lane) and Digbeth High Street seen from the Bull Ring Shopping Centre.

  Overlapping and conjoined images of Birmingham, re-joined using Photoshop after being scanned as individual 35mm frames 

   Earlier photographs on the film worked perfectly and are shown below, having been edited and re-joined in Photoshop:

    Chamberlain Square. The Town Hall is on the right with the Art Gallery and Council House directly in front

  The Christmas Market and Fairground in Centenary Square, with The Rep Theatre behind

  

       Passengers on a train outside Moor Street Station

   The photograph above was taken on a train just outside Birmingham Moor Street Station. The 'rippling' and distortion comes from the film being stretched tightly as more and more was wound onto the winding spindle. These stretches where then amplified during processing as the light hadn't fallen evenly onto the film surface. It creates quite a strange effect on the image, which coupled with the ghostly figures, makes this quite an odd photograph. More rippling is seen below on some of the last photograph taken with this film. 

    

Finally, below are some of the constituent images of many of the photographs shown above, to highlight the overlapping and double exposing caused by the film failing to wind on or getting stuck. 

Barge on the Grand Union Canal. Note the droplet of rain on the lens, appearing just below the bike on the boat's roof

A double and overlapping exposure showing Constitution Hill (right) Digbeth High Street (left) and Summer Lane (covering entire image)

Lower Loveday Street with the overlapped image of the Digbeth Branch Canal (right)