Real Broke Photo

Lacking Everything but the Tools

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New/Old and Old/New: Store Brand Camera and Retropan

I own a Sears KS2 35mm SLR. It’s a little strange to think back to a time when there were store brand cameras. Beneath the branding this one is a repurposed Ricoh SLR and takes Pentax K mount lenses. 

Cameras and photography used to advance by inches at a terribly slow pace. Every now and again someone would introduce a new film or an advance in lens technology. But the seismic shifts we’ve become accustomed to on a twice yearly basis in the digital age were unheard of. It left room for retailers to get in and put their name on products like the KS2 because the manufacturers weren’t all that precious about technology that hadn’t substantially changed in decades, and was not likely to for a few decades more. 

Who can imagine Panasonic or Pentax allowing Amazon or Wal-Mart to sell a re-branded version of their latest camera now? It would never happen because the cameras themselves are the stuff of innovation and reputation, they ARE the brand.

But back in the 80s a camera was a camera  and a middle tier manufacturer like Ricoh might well pad out their sales by letting retailers who might not stock their product otherwise slap their own name on the back. 

The KS2 is simple and a joy to use for any film shooter. A bit plasticky if you’re used to sturdier items like the K1000 or Nikon F series. But it is more than capable.

I recently loaded a roll of Fomapan’s Retro 320 film into my still spry KS2. I had a surprisingly well rounded 105mm f/2.8 lens mounted on it, sharp and fast enough for real versatility. I developed the film at home in the recommended Fomapan Retro Special Developer.

Retropan is an interesting mixture of blessing and curse. Blessing because it was a new film stock recently introduced in a time of limited choices. Curse because it is temperamental and strange. It behaves almost like a mistake in research and development that Fomapan decided to market anyway, lemons from lemonade. Its grain is obtrusive, its contrast is extremely low and the emulsion nearly explodes under strong light. 

All that being said the company’s promotional material is not wrong in that the film, when handled correctly, gives a pleasingly soft and evocative image. For evocations of time and gauzy imagination it is a very effective tool.

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Photographing Home: Find the Interesting Where You Are

What does home look like?

We all recognize our home turf, we can navigate it almost without thinking. But what makes it unique, what makes it beautiful? What makes it mundane? What makes it “home?”

It’s easy to get frustrated if you’ve got the photography itch but can’t really travel. But there still are images around you. Stop ignoring the places you think you know and get to really know the place you already are.

I live in Indiana, near the center of the state. Things are flat, life is slow, the interesting really has to be searched for. But there is history and the opportunity to see things in new ways.

Interurban Track: Fuji Acros 100 with Bronica ETRS in Kodak D76 stock solution

Central Indiana used to be the sight of a rural intercity electric rail system (1890s to 1940s roughly). In my area it was run by the Union Traction Company. Remnants can be seen if you know what to look for. Raised ground along old track lines, a specific kind of derelict electric post. But one of the most startlingly obvious remnants is one I’ve passed almost daily my entire life, hardly noticing it. A length of track running parallel with Broadway near downtown Anderson. I am mildly obsessed with the interurban as a lost transportation option and I find its remnants utterly haunting. 

The Great Mound: Wardflex TLR on Kodak TMAX 100, in D76 stock solution

Every School child in Anderson has taken a field trip to Mounds Park. It features one of the largest native American earthworks east of the Mississippi, The Great Mound, pictured above. 

It’s also the smallest state park in Indiana. It sits beside the White River and on winter days when the foliage is off the trees you can glimpse a junk yard just across the river. Still it offers pleasant hikes and layers of historical interest. This photo was taken on my Wardflex TLR, a fun, inexpensive camera. It has some quirks not least in the lens which produces significant edge blur throughout its aperture range. While it’s not professional caliber I find the effect somewhat haunting. It takes scenes from my everyday life and throws them back in time. The images I develop feel old and slightly strange.

Bronnenberg House: Wardflex TLR, cropped to minimize lens distortion. Shot on Kodak TMAX 100, in Kodak D76 stock solution.

There is a restored historical farm house on the Mounds Park property. It was built in about 1840 by the Bronnenberg family. In 1905 part of the family’s land was leased to the Union Traction rail company who built an amusement park there to attract riders to their electric rail line (see 1st photo). The amusement park closed in 1929 and its land became part of Mounds State Park. It leaves me to wonder, were family members still living in this house when the amusement park was built? Anderson grew immensely in the 1870s and 1880s when natural gas was discovered and factories moved in. This family’s world must have already changed unrecognizably. What would it have been like for people brought up on a wilderness homestead to suddenly be on the attraction end of an amusement park rail line? I get grouchy when I can hear the local racetrack five miles away on clear nights.

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The Pleasure of Catalogs

I go through stretches of time periodically when I don’t have home internet. And in those periods I am profoundly thankful for my photo catalogs. Even the out-of-date ones. Going back and tracing the flow of product and pricing over the recent past feels informative and satisfying. It’s a way to interact with a market I cannot afford to participate in.

Catalogs are kind of like film, a reminder of where things were when I first wanted to make pictures. They’re a target that hasn’t moved. 

I am just old enough to remember when photo magazines were half content and half product listings from stores like B&H, Adorama, and Cambridge World. Printed catalogs are a reminder of that time. They engage my mind in a different way than websites. Somehow I can comprehend and organize the information more readily from a catalog. Reading from websites it all ends up a jumble, link-to-link, impulse-to-impulse, endlessly until I just fry my self on images and numbers.

The most recent B&H catalog even had a cover feature on the resurgence of film. I know not to read too much into it. The store is neutral, just following where the money goes. But in as much as I have spent some of that money I felt a small twinge of pride in seeing the trend acknowledged.

It’s easy to reminisce and romanticize the past, and it’s tempting to make blanket statements about the superiority of then vs. now. But the underlying truth is that the past is not completely invalid just as the present is not entirely malevolent. The past and present can work together and deliver a balance of tools, each tool to its optimal purpose. 

Websites can provide instant continuos access and update, but print material establishes continuity. 

Digital photos provide a world of image gluttons with constant immediate feed, but film provides a process of richer interaction. 

None can excel the others at their main application. And none should have to fear being replaced. So long as continuity and process are recognized as valuable, even in a world of endless feed and constant update.

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I’ll Do it When I Have the Money

That’s never. I’m broke now and probably will be later. But the pictures worth taking won't wait. So with the little bits of money I can scare up between the arrival and immediate disappearance of every pay check I’m trying to make photography happen.

I have inexpensive cameras that have been given to me over the years. You know those iconic gorgeous photographic tools everyone lusts after? These are not those. You know the step-down versions that people settle for because, who can afford the real thing? These are not those either. One more set down. Those are the ones I have. Not a Rollieflex, not a Yashica, a Wardflex.

Not a Hassleblad, not a Mamiya, a Bronica.

Not a Leica nor even a Nikon F, but a Canon Ae1 Program and a Pentax K1000.

All effective and functional tools, leaving no excuses. 

I gather spare change and buy film. Also Bing gives you points for internet searches which eventually you can cash out for  $5 Amazon gift cards and that’ll just about buy a roll.

I get developing chemicals and equipment for christmas and birthday.

I can’t afford travel so I take pictures where I am. 

All my cameras have their standard lens.

This is the opposite of fantasy fulfillment. This is potential fulfillment. Because looking at Instagram and wishing I was somewhere beautiful with top-of-the-line equipment will get me nowhere. So I’m in Indiana with a stable of slightly limited equipment. The lenses you see are the lenses I have. I shoot black and white film and develop it myself. On occasion I’ll shoot color film which at this point is 100% lab developed. Digital might even show up but I find there’s generally less to say about that as a subject, at least that I’m interested in.

Film photography is a neutral platform, it accepts my thought and my work and returns results I can build upon and learn from. I just don’t have the money with which to grow it any faster than what you will observe.

(Seriously, no kidding, I make garbage for pay and my student loan servicer takes ALLLLL of it)