5 Frames with the Ilford Sporti

I am not sure where or when I had acquired the Ilford Sporti but I discovered it in a box of old photographic equipment that I had amassed over the years. Still encased in its original brown fabric case with leather strap it had probably not seen the light of day for many years! The camera takes 120 roll film which I have previously dabbled with when I purchased a Holga a couple of years ago, that is another story that I will save for another day! I do love old cameras and often wonder what scenes and memories that they have captured in years gone by.

The camera

On inspection the Sporti was in relatively clean condition, externally there was a slight dent in the pressed steel lens housing and the shutter did not fire. An internal inspection showed a light build up of rust on the shutter leaf which was probably the cause of the shutter not working. The shutter issue was soon resolved by using sewing machine oil applied gently with a cotton bud to clean the shutter leaves and opening up the front of the lens housing to expose the shutter mechanism. A quick light brushing and a little more sewing machine oil and the shutter was firing fine!

Features

The camera is a simplistic point and shoot, however in this modern age it did cause me some issues! Remembering to focus was the main one, after all we have autofocus these days!

The Ilford Sporti has one shutter speed which I believe to be around 1/125th and two two aperture settings {Cloudy f9 and sunny f11). The manual focus covers 5 ft to infinity which is also split into three focusing guide points of close ups, groups and views. There is also a cold shoe if you wish to mount a flash and a threaded hole in the shutter button for a remote release cable.

The film stock

I had a roll of Ilford XP2 Super ISO400 Black and white which I presumed would be a good film to try through the camera for the time of year (April/May). Eager to get shooting I took a couple of shots of the family (indoors), a couple walking along the towpath on my way to work, a shot of one of our dogs basking in the sunlight and finished off the roll at a local classic car show that I visited. On getting the film back from processing, the indoor shots did not turn out (not enough light), the dog in the sun would have been great had I remembered to focus, but the remaining eight were of reasonable quality.

Processing my scans

I have retouched the scans in Lightroom but only with minimal adjustments. I do not see the point of shooting film and removing the analogue feel of the emulsion, as that all seems counter intuitive to me!

Conclusion

On the whole I am happy with the results that I managed to get from this camera and film combination and I am looking forward to the next roll through (colour next time I think). I had a little bit of a cost saving when sending off the film for processing as the XP2 can be developed in colour chemistry. The shots of the classic cars was an ideal subject for this camera that was produced in the early 1950’s. One thing that I have to try next time is to crop in a little tighter on my subject, I seem to recall filling the viewfinder with the subject yet the images seem to have a wider view than I anticipated.

Thank you for reading.

You can find more of my photographic work on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/trevor.gcc/# and Ipernity https://www.ipernity.com/home/2378978

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