Experiments galore!

This story starts a couple of months back, when I hadn’t yet started working full time at the place where I do now, and just when I was running out of ideas

It was one of those days when the events are consequential to many more amusing times ahead. Amusing, I say because they are!

That fateful day, Nandu uncle lent me his old Rollie to experiment with. According to him, it hadn’t been used in decades! At first he was to give it for repair and cleaning up to some professional he knew, but something made him change his mind… someone told him I’d do it decently too… suicide for the camera, you may say, but I was thrilled! He wanted me to make use of it the way I wished to. He even gave me his kind permission to rip it apart, and synthesize it as desired. That’s just perfect! Some exercise for my grey cells (whatever’s left of them) at last!

The rollie is a big camera! Bulky and really old! The viewfinder, although big, was not clear at all, and needed bright light to be able to display images. The other lens was better than that one. This wouldn’t do too well for Ttv (through the viewfinder) I decided. And wanted to experiment with square format photos on film, but getting the film would be the hardest part. And I’m very lazy when it comes to the labour-intensive effort of probing for certain atypical stuff and finding out were it might be available! Instead, I just turned all my messy drawers inside out to search for a few old 35 mm film rolls that I threw in there a year back, when I stopped using Pooja’s camera, borrowed a long time ago!

So the story actually starts a year back, but let’s not get into so many details.

So with a 35 mm film in one hand, and a heavy rollie in another, I was weighing my options… how do I fit the 35 mm film in the medium format camera? How do I use the spools that are there? What happens after the film gets over? How can I spool it back in without opening? What If I open it in the dark and rewind, when I can’t see a thing myself? What about fixing the free end of the film to the other spool? Will it wind after I load and fix in its place? What if the pictures don’t get exposed? What if they get washed out? Too many questions… and I didn’t have the answer. So I did the next best thing: I Googled! Google has the ultimate answer to all of mankind’s problems! Or as a friend said: ‘if no, at least it gives the source where the answer might lie…’ Hallelujah!!

So I found the ‘almost right’ answer. This link by this guy who tried similar stuff had him using the old spool, chopping it off in three parts, and using the sides to fix into the 35 mm film spool hollow ends. He’s a smart dude, I must say! He also had another ‘almost right’ answer to another ‘almost perplexing’ question I had… about how to avoid spooling off in the dark.

He talked about using and old empty 35 mm spool and its central rod to hook up the free end of the new film in, and attaching it to the other end of the camera using similar methods as the first. In this case, the film that one winds is directly getting into the other spare empty spool!! Brilliant!

So I did that too. And I started clicking. Not for the sake of composition, but for the sake of finding out if this camera still worked. It had to! Accepting the fact(s) that the shutter speed lever was broken, the lenses were not clean, couldn’t view the frame in the viewfinder properly, and a meagre improvisation with a 35 mm film, and the camera squeaks protests at periodically… it does not sound clickable! There is a certain need to clean and lubricate the camera for smoother functioning.

Well, I finished the roll a few days later. And had quite forgotten about my little ‘avoid unloading the film in dark’ experiment … And I was anxious as to how I would be able to rewind it and get it back in the spool. So in my room, sans any lights at 2 AM, I opened the Rollie hatch… and hey! What do I see (or rather, don’t see because of the darkness…) the roll completely inside the old spool! My experiment worked… And then… time for a reality check… I furnish the photo studio, my film, unexposed, in the half open spare spool… wondering what they might say to that spectacle called a film roll… They did fuss… acting smart… that over smart female said: ‘there’ll be nothing appearing on it anyway, but if madam wants, we’ll do it’ … Time to swallow some pride. ‘Ok… I said… just develop it for me'

So they did... and i got some pics... and the results... well... not exactly great... but hey! experiment worked technically... so I'm pretty pleased!!