Soxy Fleming

My latest camera…..a butter shortbread tin that has a nicely fitting lid.

Just about everything I make is a prototype….that means it is the shoddy test version just to try out the design. The problem is that my prototypes usually work so well that I don’t need to make the proper version.

This was easily constructed. I did some painting of black poster paint inside the tin and glued an old bootlace around the edge of the lid to help seal it (but I don’t really think it was that necessary…it already fitted very well, just another precaution).

I banged a big nail through the front of the lid in the centre and hammered and sanded until it was smooth enough. I never have a drink can handy so for the pinhole I used a piece cut from an aluminium take away container. I carefully pierced it with a pin and sanded it flat as well as I could. This I attached with some very cheap shiny black cloth tape that I got in the $2 shop. I vaguely attempted to cover the shine with some of the poster paint. I did use a little permanent black marker around the pinhole.

I constructed a swish sort of shutter that spins on a paper clip, but I think I could have just used another piece of black adhesive tape or even a fridge magnet.

The best bit of the design is the cut up fridge magnet used inside to hold the sheet of photographic paper in place.

My most successful exposure was this approximately 20 second one which had areas of full sun. It was latish afternoon.

This one had areas of direct sun but was mostly in shade, exposure about 25 seconds, probably not really enough.

This one was indoors underneath two skylights. I gave this a bit less than two minutes but it obviously only picked up the skylights and there was insufficient light to show any other detail. Try again!

The paper I exposed in the camera was Agfa variable contrast premium mcp 312 rc semi matt, 5 by 7 inch.
It is at least 20 years old.
I made up a coffee and washing soda mixture and used it as a developer for the paper negative. I think I used 10 heaped teaspoons of instant coffee powder, 5 heaped teaspoons of washing soda and about 700ml of luke warm water. I was a bit sloppy about this as I wasn’t sure how much I needed in the tray.

This developer works very slowly, I probably developed the paper for at least 15 minutes. One advantage is that it seems impossible to over develop….I’m sure in the past with regular chemistry I have watched things develop too fast and have failed to catch them at the right point. The only problem seemed to be that there was a bit of staining with the long developing time. I also sustained a few scratches on the print and I think in future I will not use tongs, just my fingers, maybe gloves. I might also try a warm solution and see if that speeds things up a bit.

I used a vinegar stop bath and my ancient hypam as fixer. I don’t know how these negative paper images will last but I don’t really mind as I now have them safely scanned. I tried to scan them at as high a resolution as I could but my scanner struggles with 1200dpi and leaves strange lines. Then into photoshop they go, get inverted and twiddled a bit to bring out the best that can be found. I think better exposures will yield better results, but I am happy to have the system working this well.

I could do with advice about keeping paper and film clean, not getting watery smudges and hairs and the like….any suggestions would be helpful.