110 cameras

[Godfrey DiGiorgi]

On Oct 2, 2006, at 8:25 AM, John Celio wrote:

> As for the backing paper, couldn't I just put some thick black tape  
> over the
> window and count frames if I really needed to?

Not really. The paper thickness is calculated into the position of  
the focal plane and determines where the emulsion sits ... for best  
results, you need the paper in place.

> Looking inside my Auto110, I don't see anything that would need to  
> touch the
> film itself for the camera to function.  There's a little gear in  
> the left
> film chamber, which I'm assuming is turned by the spool inside the 110
> cassette.  I'll have to open a 110 cassette to make sure this'll  
> work, and
> I'm really hoping it does.  The tiny size of the negative combined  
> with the
> utter graininess of the crappy Kodak films most often available  
> these days
> make for really lousy images.

I'll have to show some scans from my Minolta 110 Zoom SLR of many  
years ago, and maybe from the Rollei A110. They made superb  
negatives, and even Kodak 200 print film today can make some  
beautiful negatives if focus and exposure and processing are right.

That's the real problem with most 110 ... crap exposure and poor  
focus, widely variant processing destroys subminiature work. These  
were made from Minox EC negatives, only 8x11 mm in size (about half  
the area of 110 negs) and print much better than they appear here to  
a 6x8 inch size:

   http://homepage.mac.com/ramarren/photo/minox-00-01/

The Minox EC is a fixed focus, simple, plastic camera with a good  
lens. One of these days I'm going to re-scan these with my current  
setup (DS + A50 Macro + extension tubes and 2x converter) so that I  
can work with them as 5Mpixel images rather than 1Mpixel images. :-)

Godfrey