5-ish Frames with a Kodak Tourist II

Like many photographers who have been shooting for years I have a cabinet of old cameras. Some were given to me as gifts and quite a few are cameras I used in my work over the years. Lately I’ve been pulling one or two out and seeing what still works and what doesn’t. Some are very old like the 1917 Voigtlander. Others are from the 70’s and 80’s, cameras from my professional lifetime like my original Olympus OM-1 or the Nikon F3, top center in the group below.

Since this ‘testing of gear’ requires it I’ve been  shooting film for the first time in a long time and becoming friends with some very talented local film shooters. One in particular Nathan Watson has for months invited me to one of his monthly photo walks. I’ve never done a photo walk. As a working pro I spend enough time on client work that when I’m not working I am dedicated to my home and family. But Nathan’s invitations intrigued me so I recently joined him and others on a… well not exactly a walk, but a gathering. An old industrial warehouse near downtown is now a place where new businesses incubate and creatives gather including a local pro photographer.  The ‘walk’ was really a chance to photograph in her studio, a  wide open space with a very old industrial feel.

I decided to take two cameras to test. One was my late 1950’s 6X6  Mamiya C3 with a 180mm 4.5 and the other was a Kodak Tourist II, the last folding camera Kodak made. The Tourist, as its name would imply is a very simple camera. The Mamiya pretty much the opposite. I bought a roll of 100 ISO 620 film for the Kodak and put a roll of Delta 400 in the Mamiya. While checking out the cameras before going I noticed the tiny plastic viewfinder on the Tourist was dirty to the point of worthless. Thanks to YouTube I found a quick tutorial on how to disassemble and clean it. Worked like a charm.

At the walk there were a few racks of costumes and clothes and  handful of models. There were some 25 people there with film cameras of every imaginable year and size, make and model. I started out using the beautiful light coming in those high windows and shooting some of the models with the Mamiya. The studio photographer had purposely left them grimy and the light was amazing. The 180 on that camera was perfect for tight faces. By the time I was down to my last frame a good friend of mine, another long time professional arrived. I asked him to pose for the last frame. Because of his knowledge and awareness he ask as I tripped the shutter “did you know the lens isn’t opening”? I looked and sure enough that roll of faces would be blank. I wasn’t crushed but it sure was a let down. Somehow I had missed that the shutter didn’t open though it sure sounded right.

I switched to the Tourist II and began shooting some random things. It was much harder to be precise with and with a lens wider than the 180 it took in a lot more background. It was hard at first to know if I was winding it correctly to the next frame and to remember to wind on after I shot a frame. It worked pretty well overall but I ended up with a few blank frames and one double exposure. And it turned out the accidental double exposure ended up being a favorite.

I look forward to joining the group on a walk soon and hope to be better prepared next time.

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