Blog: Roads

A bike ride with the Brownie

My Kodak Brownie camera was feeling neglected, so I took it with me on a bike ride around Tunnel mountain. But before that, I stopped at the Cascade power plant and snapped a couple of pictures, then took a couple of double exposures mirroring the road. The trail was icy and fast, and the ride was fun as always. I got to the place where the powerlines crossed the highway from the power plant and composed and shot the power poles with the surge tower in the distance. The camera itself is unassuming, has a soft "click" when taking photos, and has no exposure controls, relying instead on the latitude of the film to make up for any errors in exposure.

Using the Brownie has its challenges. The 120 film roll has to be modified to fit into 220 format, or rolled onto a 220 roll to fit into the Brownie. Then, the wide film is difficult to roll onto developing reels without kinking. It took around 10 minutes to feed this roll onto the reel. Developing takes twice the amount of developer, and the negatives need to be scanned individually because the variation in the exposures.

I'm not sure what I was expecting, because this is a Brownie camera after all, with a single plastic lens, which has distortion, flare, and only the center of the photo is somewhat sharp. I learned a new commandment after seeing the photos: "Thou shalt not take pictures of vertical lines near the edges with a Brownie." And I remembered an old one: "Thou shalt only view these pictures in Brownie format," which is on photo paper, 3" square, with a 1/4" white border. Anything more and the imperfections of the camera are magnified, and subject to scrutiny. So I'm not sure what I'll do with these photos. I'll print them on paper for sure, 3" square. And they may end up on this site.