Polaroid DS-34 GelCam

This is the latest weird and wonderful addition to my camera collection - a Polaroid/Fotodyne DS-34 GelCam, apparently used to record Gel Electrophoresis.

It's a pretty interesting camera. It takes regular Polaroid/Fuji packfilm (FP-100, FP-3000 etc.). The rollers and stuff were pretty disgusting when I opened it up, but it was nothing a quick wash down couldn't sort out. It has a Tominon 105mm f/4.5 lens on the front with a Copal shutter. Shutter speeds range from 1/125 to 1sec and bulb, and apertures from f/4.5 to f/32. The shutter is actuated by a cable release - the pistol-grip handle on the bottom of the camera has its own cable release built in, but the handle can be removed for mounting the camera to a tripod, and the cable release replaced with a regular bog-standard model. There's also a PC flash terminal with x-sync, which works.

Because it's a rigid body with a large format style leaf shutter, it's basically a fixed macro camera. Focus distance is somewhere in the region of about 30cm. Because it was designed to be mounted to scientific equipment using a fixed lens hood type thing, there's no way of telling whether or not you're in focus. I work out the correct camera-to-subject distance by using a shoelace that I calibrated to the correct distance and marked with a pen.

There's no viewfinder either. You may notice the three bits of gaffer tape on the top - I stuck them on to roughly indicate the angle of view. Not ideal, but it'll do for now I suppose!

The best part of it all? It only cost me about £12 :-)

I'll write a more full and detailed post on the camera once I've got to know my way around it a bit better.

DIY SOS!

As much of a fan of Nick Knowles and his team of merry workmen as I am, I'm focusing more on the photographic rather than home improvement side of DIY! Recently, I've been growing ever discontent with the service from photo processing labs - having to spend the best part of £10 every time I finish a roll, just for the lab to give me the wrong prints, not scan all of the pictures, and in the worst case, even completely ruin a set of negatives.

• (Name and shame corner: Jessops on Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow managed to put a deep scratch through an entire roll of film that effectively rendered it unusable after the first set of prints.)

I decided I'd be a lot better off taking matters into my own hands. Seeing how I love shooting on XP2 monochrome film most of the time anyway, I decided it'd be quite cool fun just to shoot on proper black and white film, and develop it myself.

The grand plan as it stands runs in two stages: firstly, learn to process the black and white film, then scan it into my PC for the full joy of digital working. So far, I'm in the process of working with the film, and hopefully by next pay day, I'll be able to afford a decent scanner. My reasoning for thinking like this was that when I get a film processed, I usually flick through the prints a few times then stash them in a box under my bed, and use the negative scans on supplied CD on my PC for any future printing/publishing to Flickr etc. Rather than get bogged down in the extra hassle involved in making my own prints, I decided a decent film scanner would be the easiest way to go for creating a "finished product" so to speak.

So I took the plunge and invested in a developing tank and some basic chemistry to get me started. I'm currently using the following:

• Paterson 600ml Developer Tank (2x35mm or 1x120 film)
• Ilfosol Developer
• Ilfostop Stop Bath
• Ilford Rapid Fixer
• Jessops thermometer

I've been a big fan of stuff shot on Ilford HP5 film, so that's been my main material for practicing with. My choosing Ilford stuff through and through isn't due to some big brand loyalty by the way - it's just a simple case of it being the most commonly available b/w stuff in shops in Glasgow. I'm just sticking with HP5 at the moment, as it's a reasonably decent all-round performer, and sticking with one type of film makes it a lot easier for practicing my developing skills.

My setup at the moment is somewhat primitive - my chemicals are all mixed/stored/poured from 750ml Irn Bru glass bottles, and my darkroom is the bathroom with the light off! My biggest challenge has been trying to keep everything at the required 20degrees C.

The first attempt at processing film was a bit of a disaster - with passable, but not great results. I think I was in too much of a rush and got too shaken up by the whole experience, not to mention shaking my tank up a bit too much in the process! After taking my results and going back on the web, I managed to find some sites telling me exactly what I'd done wrong.

Since this roll, I've processed another three rolls, the following all having been done using 120 film rather than 35mm due to both of my 35mm cameras dying on me. They've all turned out pretty well as far as I can tell. Sadly one of them is mostly ruined due to a shutter failure on my Seagull. The last one I did, I'm not entirely sure what went wrong with it, whether it was overdeveloped or whether it was overexposed - I thought it had all been shot at 1/125 sec, but the motion blur on a lot of the pictures would suggest it had been much slower than this, and my Seagull had been having shutter difficulties that day.

Anyways, that's it so far. Hopefully the other OM-10 I bought from ebay should arrive soon and allow me to keep shooting 35mm stuff, and hopefully next month I'll have a shiny new scanner to allow me to put proper big pictures on Flickr for the world to look at!