Camera Talk

Hi all,

My first colour photos, I always wanted to shoot the metro, sadly no tripods are allowed so I have to go handheld with a EV between 7-10.
The film chosen is Portra 400 pushed to 1600.
The first camera is Kodak Medalist II, 8 photos, so far 5 scanned (scan in colour is much harder/time consuming than bw), I would like to have a wide angle inside but I'm afraid I will have a lot of vibration with the Hassy and Distagon 50mm handheld at speed 50 (or mirror look-up + pray).


Taganskaysa.


Navy Heroes at Taganskaya.


Navy Heroes at Taganskaya.


Komsomolskaya.


Novoslobodskaya arc.


Kievskaya.


Belarusskaya.


Komsomolskaya.

Thank you for watching,
Alex

Let's see what do you think about this...
Welta Weltur 6x6 with Portra 400 pushed to 1600, I took it to the lab for developing, it took 22 minutes since I gave them the roll and they return it to me developed. I put it on the classic MF folder sheet and I came home.
Here I started scanning and I find this kind of stripes in every frame, at the negative (emulsion side) I can see very very thin stripes only visible at certain position of the film when reflecting a lamp. Not only on frames but between frames as well.
I checked other photos taken with this camera, all went well, nothing on the photos or negatives. I checked the camera, rollers are clean and moving easily, film doesn't touch from film gate but the upper and lower rails, never on middle parts.
Two examples:

Park Pobedy bench.


Park Pobedy, light and sound.
This last shot the photo has been rotated. Stripes are horizontal.
Other photos has them as well, some more, some less but on every frame.

What do you think happened?

I have left another roll of Portra but I don't feel now very eager to continue, probably I will load it in the Hassy and repeat the shots I liked.

Thank you in advance,
Alex

Edited, duplicated.

The pictures are excellent, thanks for showing us the famous Moscow metro.

From your description and the pictures, these are film scratches. Could be from the lab, could be from winding with the bellows closed. Some of these old folders lens / shutter assemblies might touch the film when closed. It could also be a film defect but this is not likely,

The big question I have is were the negatives cut in strips before you received them? If so, the scratches could be from their cutter stand. My local lab was doing that to all my films so I quit going there.

PF

Thank you, Julio. I'm missing some very important ones but the light is so low that I can't without tripod.
About the film I was very aware of winding only with the bellows open, so I don't think is the case.
Phil, I received the film uncut and I cut it myself on a table with scissors, I handle the film everytime from the side and I don't move/rub the film once it's cut, I take it up and place it into the film holder.

The developing time was very short 22min but they could have dryers, if they could have used film squeegee and this caused the problem?

Alex

Most likely it was the lab, because some scratches are not horizontal. If it were the camera (or winding), scratches would be horizontal.

The problem is that you have to check the film when it comes back from the lab, before you do anything else with it. But that will only tell you the scratches occurred sometime before then, not exactly when. If you have an old expired roll of undeveloped film, you could always run it through the camera, then inspect it right after coming out of the camera. If you don't find any scratches, then yes it could be a worn out squeegee at the lab, or some dolt ran the film across a table edge to flatten it.

PF

The best I can do is to load a new film on the same camera, take two photos and reload it again in the Hassy and finish the project.