Afghan Box Camera Help

Grimm · Nov 23, 2013

Hi !

My name is Grimm , and together with my wife Suvi , we got bitten by the afghan box camera project (Afghan Box Camera Project)

So last winter i made one myself , and with a lot of trial and error we are getting closer to a good final result, but somethings stay difficult and thats why i decided it could be nice to ask some advice !

This is the camera , the lens is a Goerz&Berlin F=130mm 1:6,8 . Aperture ranges about 4,6 to 192 , shutter speed 1 - 1/100 + C , B , T
Ive found the lens on ebay for 50 , what seemed a reasonable deal for an elderly lens with a working aperture and shutter.

After a lot of training , we manage to take reasonable negatives most of the times. It was easier in summer to go outside and use the sunlight , but as Finland is entering the cold and dark times , we now setup in underground public spaces with mainly artificial light , stretching the shutter time to 5-7 seconds , f4,6.

This is the best negative we ever made with this camera ,below the positive i inverted in photoshop

The problem is taking the positives of the negatives by putting the negative in front of the lens.
We try and we try , until we find a shutter time that seems to be inbetween over and under light , but then most often , the picture comes out as a mix of grey tones , not such a contrasted picture as we hoped for..

Positive on the picture below was also made with the camera ,

(its a little better in real life , but i just took some quick pictures with the digital camera on the kitchen table to upload here)

This is a positive we made with the camera , the black spot on the top is from a flashlight we used to add some light

The negative :

We made a few better positives that same day and on the 'full' paper size , but we gave them with the models as they were begging us to have it and we could keep the negatives.

We try to dillute the developer as accurate as possible (7+1) , temperature is around 20-25degrees (varying as we arent in a labo) , we develop for about 1 minute ,but we keep an eye on the process through the peeping hole of the camera , everything covered with dark red filter i recovered from theater lights.

What are we doing wrong ? How do we get the positives more contrasted? Any tips, advice ?
Could it be the developer that isn't working properly / too old , how do you know ?
I didn't think of blaming the developer as the negatives can still have blacks whites and greytones..

The paper we are using at the moment is Ilford MGIV rc de luxe glossy (4 1/8" x 5 7/8" ) , and i just got a few boxes of Ilford MGIV MGD.44m pearl 5x7" for free i intend using.

Inside the camera is a developer fluid (Print NE b&w dev,manufactured by compard KG) , and the fixer (we dont have the original bottle anymore so cant give too much details about that one , i remember the box and label was very similar to the developer) .

We don't have a stop bath due to room limitations inside the camera, would that still be recommended ?

I also aquired a cheap lightmeter from Ebay , but i am not always certain how to use it. Should i measure the light on the subject (when making a portrait) , or next to the lens ?
We also found this EV tables on the internet, but also confusion there. So the amount of Lux the meter is telling , gives us an EV value (no idea what the FC is on the same table) , and with the second table , we can trace the shutter time by looking at the aperture setting on the horizont axis , and the EV value on the vertical axis.. Is this a correct interpretation of the tables ?

Our goal is one day to be able to take good negatives portrait pictures on the streets or on events , and be able to recapture the picture into a good , constrasty black and white positive , as this camera was meant to do.

More negatives we made , and then digital photographed for pc use , didnt change any contrast settings in photoshop except changing the color mode to greyscale

sorry for the fingers , the dude wanted it this way