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127 Film Yashica 44 TLRs
Well, let's start with the SuperSlide. A 4x4 cm image, framed in special SuperSlide mounts, will fit in your standard 35mm projector, filling the square screen from corner to corner. This will absolutely knock your viewers' socks off! After years and years of watching rectangular slides, squares can be a refreshing change. If you wanted to use a 35mm camera to make square prints, you'd be wasting a lot of negative, using only an effective film area of 24x24mm. A square 40 x 40 mm is almost double that size. Even though 127 film isn't really big enough to count as true medium format, you begin to get some of the advantages like fine grain and subtle tonal separation. How about the challenge of using an unusual medium, something that not everybody else has? Agreed, this applies to any classic camera, but the finely built miniature TLRs built by Rollei and Yashica are a particular joy to use. Right now, the only manufacturer still making 127 film is a Croatian company, Efke, but re-spooled 127 film is available from several specialists.
Rolling your own 127 film I've done this by hand, and it's not easy. So one of my pet
projects - and please check back here regularly - is to make a simple, cheap and
easily constructed film cutter for chopping down regular 120 film. Latest news - it's been done. Check this link for a build-it-yourself film slitter. Vincent Chan's neat design for a film slitter, both for 127 and the tiny Minox film, should be well within the scope of an average DIY mechanic.
Developing 127 film... Is absolutely no problem with an adjustable plastic reel. Most developing reels - Patterson, Jobo, etc., can be clicked into three positions: 35mm, 127, and 120. You may have to make a mask to fit the 120 negative carrier on your enlarger, but you can probably use your 50mm enlarging lens: 35mm film is 24x36mm, and 127 film is about 38x38mm, so if your enlarger has a square condenser area, you should be OK. If you see vignetting, you may have to set your enlarger up for 120 film by changing condensers and using your 80mm lens, but on my Durst M605 I can use the 50 without problems. Here's a tip if you use 35mm Kindermann stainless steel reels and you have enough of them to sacrifice a couple for 127 format: The newer Kindermann reels have a black plastic core, with stainless steel windings on each side. If you carefully squeeze a screwdriver in between the edge of the plastic and the metal, you can gradually wiggle the two halves of the reel, a millimeter at a time, further apart. Move each half about 5mm, and, bingo! You now have the unobtainable - a steel 127 reel! However, don't blame me if you screw it up and break it, okay? Don't pull around on the edges of the reel, you'll bend them out of shape. Just work on the center core, and you'll be all right. If you don't do your own processing yet, you ought to check with your nearest custom lab. They should be able to develop C-41 and E-6 film for you, since most of them use continuous processors and hooking a couple of rolls of a special size on isn't difficult. Custom prints will probably be more expensive than from regular film.
127 Cameras Brilliantly sharp Schneider Kreuznach lenses, a bright viewfinder
- all the advantages of a TLR in a camera small enough to fit (almost) in your
pocket. That was the whole idea of the 4x4 Rollei - a Rolleiflex small enough
to be taken along, Heavy money for me right now - the glass cabinet specialists have forced the Baby Rolleiflex prices way too high. A pity, because if enough folks actually started to use these cameras again, maybe we'd see a renaissance of 127 film... If the Rolleiflex is too much money, how about a Japanese alternative? In the mid 1950s, the Japanese were copiers rather than innovators. Their cars looked like miniature American vehicles - chromed like jukeboxes, fins and wrap-around windshields. The original Yashica 44 was an obvious clone of the German product, except for the three-element 60mm f-3.5 Yashikor taking lens. This lens was by no means a high performer, the picture shows the original, knob wind model. The next version came with a crank wind, retaining the name "Yashikor" on the lenses but using a revised 4-element Tessar- copy , and the final production versions reverted to a knob wind, renaming the 60mm f-3.5 lens "Yashinon". The final production version included a Selenium cell light meter, the 44LM.
My Yashica 44LM Back in November 99, I was strolling through a flea market in Landau,
Germany. At the back of a table The shutter seemed to work OK, except for the very slow speeds which hardly ever work properly anyway. I didn't remove the case till I got home, and when I unbuttoned it later that evening, imagine the shock when I saw a number eight in the little red window on the back! I slowly advanced the film inside - the first person to move the film for decades. I opened the back, and took out a roll of 127-format AGFA-Pan film of a type I didn't recognize. A web search for the film type came up with nothing about it either, but a call to a German colleague at home identified it as a 50 ASA film last produced in 1970. Processing Ancient Film This was not going to be a straightforward d&p job, that much was certain. In the darkroom, I adjusted two Jobo reels down to 127 width - one spare in case I messed up the loading. In the dark, I had a fight on my hands. That film had been wound up for nearly 40 years, and had no intention of just slipping on to the reel! It was like dealing with a demented watch spring - I’d have most of the roll on the reel when it would suddenly jam in the center. Pulling it back off was no good either, I didn’t want to scratch it more than I had to - who knew what was on those frames? The grassy knoll? I ended up opening the reel again and feeding the film slowly backwards onto the spare reel. After a very lonely 15 minutes in the darkroom, the film gave up the fight and resigned itself to taking a bath. In fact, it got several baths - a twenty minute soak in water with no
agitation, another twenty minutes with agitation, a weak solution of developer
for 8 minutes as a pre-developer, then 12 minutes in normal strength developer,
stop and fix as normal. Well, nothing new on the Kennedy killing. The awful blotches on the negs are typical for old film - moisture forms on the surface and evaporates again, it heats up and cools down, thousands and thousands of times. On top of that, the "light-tight" backing paper is only effective up to a point. Since the effect of fogging from light is cumulative, a teeny weeny bit of light each day for some thirteen thousand days will eventually damage the film. Take a brand new Nikon (or any other make...) camera, load it with film, and hold it directly against a 1000 watt halogen lamp for ten minutes, and I guarantee you'll discover a whole new meaning to the term "Light-Tight"! I cleaned the camera up, chopped down some 120 roll film, and shot some slide film to test out my new toy. The results were startlingly clear and sharp, and after a bit of exercise even the slow speeds began to free up. The self-timer works, and I was able to repair the built-in selenium meter, although I’d rather trust my own judgment than have to rely on it. I did get to run several films though this elderly Yashica. The Yashinon lens proved to be sharp and contrasty, a typical "Tessar" in its performance characteristics. I wish I'd had a Baby Rolleiflex to compare with. Sadly, I dropped this camera and it died under the effects of blunt trauma. Thanks to eBay, I've been able to replace it - though not as cheaply as my original flea market find - and I'm looking forward to using it again.
If you're interested in bringing a 127 back to life, let me know. Foto-Impex in Berlin would also appreciate an e-mail, since they're the folks trying to get a manufacturer sufficiently interested in tooling up for production. Copyright © 2001 by Mike Graham. All rights reserved.
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