reset

A hazard of shooting old film cameras is that the variables that determine success or failure tend to proliferate over time.  It gets hard as a result to determine the cause of certain problems that arise, and I find myself sometimes questioning the effectiveness of my developers.  The only thing to do at that juncture is to load some film in one of the cameras in which I have a lot of confidence and see what comes up in the developer.  I chose recently to do that with my Zeiss Ikon Ikonta 35.

I found the '50s era Ikonta about fifteen years ago in a Las Cruces pawn shop.  A little cleaning turned it into a solid performer; the Synchro-Compur shutter is very reliable, and the coated Tessar lens always yields sharp images.  I loaded a roll of Kentmere 100, shot most of it on a walk through Albuquerque's Old Town, and then dunked the film in HC-110, dilution B for six minutes.  As little as 9.4 mL of HC-110 will do for a roll of film, so a bottle of the stuff takes a long time to get through.  I was pleased to see that my half-bottle looks good for quite a few more rounds.