January 28, 2026
It feels like I’ve been doing more shoveling than anything else lately and there’s more snow in the forecast. Because the amount of snowfall has made travel a little more challenging, and the fact that the show has been so well received, The Winter Group Show at Exhibit B Gallery is being extended for another two weeks and will close on February 14th.
Coming up in a couple of weeks, the 30/30 Mini Art Mega Challenge at Mini Mega Electric Gallery in Doylestown, PA will have it’s opening reception on Friday, February 6 from 5-9 pm. 30 small canvases (one a day for the month of January) by each artist. I’m putting the finishing touches on the last couple of canvases just in time. Don’t miss this show if you’re in the area!
In my previous post I mentioned some of the cameras that I’ve been trying out. One of them is a 1929 Voightlander Bessa medium format camera.
Purchased at auction with a few other items, I thought it might be interesting to see if it could still take some photos that might have a cool, nostalgic look. After a little online research, I learned that it would readily accept 120 film with a 6 x 9 cm frame exposure. That translates to 7 or 8 exposures per roll. Before tossing a roll of film in, I wanted to make sure that all the working parts were still working. Closer inspection revealed a considerable amount of “lens fungus.” More online research was done to learn how to, not only remove the fungus, but properly disassemble the lenses from the shutter mechanism to soak and clean the lenses. Fungus appears as a cloudy, web-like haze on the lens created by moisture and dust particles over time. After a good hydrogen peroxide soak and cleaning, I reassembled the lenses to the shutter mechanism and installed the shutter assembly onto the bellows, oiled the hinges and straightened some of the bent parts.
I loaded up a roll of Ilford HP5 Plus 400 black and white film. Considering the camera probably qualifies as an antique, it’s still a little more than a point and shoot. There are three focus range settings, Landschaft, Gruppe, and Portrait. There are also three aperture settings, 22, 11, and 7.7 although adjustments can be made gradually in between the marked settings. Finally there are five shutter speed settings, 25, 50, and 100 (1/25th, 1/50th, and 1/100th) plus two others. One is marked “B” which keeps the shutter open until its released manually and “T” which holds the shutter open when pressed and released then closes the shutter when pressed and released a second time.
Using a light meter app on my phone to get a sense of what settings to use, I started shooting some frames. After a few frames, the take-up spool started popping loose inside the camera. The only solution was to open the camera in a completely dark room and reset the take-up spool. Luckily there are only a handful of frames on each roll. The resulting negatives proved interesting.
I learned that the cause of the light leaks was the uneven and loose film wound up on the take-up spool because it kept popping loose. The problem was the inside of the winding knob that has tabs that didn’t quite fit the newer film spools. Grinding down the ends of the tabs seems to have solved the problem.
I’ll have to try another roll after the snow melts.