2008-11

The challenge: shoot hard-to-find film in old hard-to-find cameras — Result: a program that proves everything old is new again

You can’t buy rollfilm at the drugstore anymore — no 620, no 120, no 127, certainly no 828 or 116. And good luck finding an American-made camera that will shoot what you can find (which is most likely to be 120).

That was the challenge that produced the program for the November 2 meeting at Waltham High School: photographs made with American manufactured rollfilm cameras. Several PHSNE members have risen to the challenge, and the results make an interesting program.

In some ways, the Rollfilm Challenge reverses the American 35mm Challenge of two years ago. For that show the film and processing were easy to come by, but American-made 35mm cameras are relatively rare. For rollfilm, the cameras are plentiful, but it’s the film and processing that are rare — and rapidly becoming even scarcer. Creativity had to be the order of the day. Solutions included respooling 120 film onto 620 reels, and a few members had specialized equipment they could fall back on — like John Wojtowicz’s 2 1/4-by-3 14 Crown Graphic with a rollfilm adapter back.

Images from the upcoming November program: Ralph Johnston shot his Charles River view from MIT (top) with a 127 Spartus Vest Pocket Folder. Ralph Damon used a Kodak Brownie 2 folding camera (one of the few 120 Kodaks) to capture the Royall house in Medford (left); Paul Nisula shot the antique steam engine with an Ansco Titan 120 folder. Al Holmy used a Ciroflex to shoot the card-playing ventriloquist’s dummy.

-From snap shots, November 2008.