It's fixed!

Looking a bit better now, huh? At least they do in real life, which is what counts of course!

The issue from last post, as you might recall. The lack of contrast and all that sorts of things I was dealing with in my on-board made darkroom contact prints. It was the light alright, as I actually suspected. I was using a LED flashlight (way too expensive engine room thing...) but it turned out to only give me the low contrast tones when adding it above the negative. So what I did was two things. 
First I tested a small battery powered UV light we got inside the water sample test kit thing... but it was no good. I was not able to get any results out of it at all. It stained the paper alright... but all over as opposed to only around the thinner parts of the neg. 
So that could be thrown into the box where it belongs pretty quick. 

This is Fredrik. He's one of the guys who knows how to take this big lump of steel from one place to the other in the quickest and economically best possible way, taking into account weather, current, draft, available power and probably a million other minor things as well. 

The Cadet Engineer. You may wonder if he ever do anything else but looking into his phone? Well he is, I can assure you. It's just the best way to capture him due to the speed he's walking around with. You know, shutter times versus available aperture and film speed and all that sorts. 

I was looking high and low for some sort of light I could use, but they all seemed to be of the same boring LED type I had already tested. 
Frustration finally led me to try the most obvious thing really, to turn on the light in the ceiling of the room adjacent to the bathroom and leave the door open. 
And well, that did the trick. I had blacks coming onto the paper, and now it was only a question of balancing the amount of ceiling light and LED flashlight onto the paper. 
About three and a half seconds of hard contrast and two rather half-quick flashes with the flashlight, and you are as fine as you'll ever get on board a vessel of this size and type. 

The first engineer again. You have seen it before, so I'm sorry for that. It's a nice enough snap to have a second look at though :)

The day? Well, it's been a busy one believe it or not. Busy and a strange one. 
We seemed to have plenty of time up to a point when heading ashore, but due to the world being turned upside down we suddenly learned that the harbor would close this midnight, so there was a million things to do today to get everything we need on board to be able to leave before they close down. Seems like we just made it, so I'm quite happy with that to be honest. We will get the pilot on board in one and a half hours from now, at 2300 so that's close enough to call it a real success. 
We had all the project crew leaving the ship yesterday evening when we came in and alongside, which was weird to tell the truth. 
People are usually happy when leaving the ship to get home of course, but it was different this time. Very different. 
When sailing in to Galveston, the town itself was different. Very different! 
Well, we said our goodbyes knowing that many of us will most likely never see each other again due to the next project being put on hold now. Only the future will tell if this project is ever going to happen at all. Or if anything related to this business will happen again at all in the shape and form we know of up until now for that sake. 
Nobody can really tell. 
Not today, anyway.

Stay safe, friends!!

In need of good ideas for the on-board makeshift darkroom

As you have of course noticed by now it seems I'm probably going to be stuck at sea for quite a while. That would mean we need stuff to play around with in the weeks to come when not working with all the boring things that needs to be done in the engine department. You need some time off as well, we all know that. 

One of the navigation guys working on the bridge with pinpointing where to find the tiny little nodes we dropped off at the seabed 2000 meters below about a month ago. He's a bit worried about the future of course, just like all the rest of us stuck on board are as well at the moment. I caught him in a moment deep in his thoughts yesterday afternoon on the bridge wing using the old Rolleiflex TLR. Contact printed this evening on old Ilford RC paper and otherwise very simple equipment.

That's partly why I decided to check the availability of darkroom equipment on board the vessel. There is not much to tell you the sad truth, but I actually got a box of 7"x9,5" Ilford RC paper, some D-76 type of Foma developer, and also a couple of boxes of Fomafix. I brought the chemicals over from Norway for this trip to do some film development as you know by now, but the paper was a lucky thing coming over inside the bag of the first engineer. You see there was a huge load of old paper given away close to where he lives, so I asked him to pick it up for me so I can hopefully drive down south to get them from him later. Thankfully he dropped a pack in his bag before leaving for work, which might come in handy these days. 

We got no paper developer though, but might be able to find some when we get alongside. Still I'm a bit in doubt of what you can actually get hold of these days. Nothing much seems to be like it used to be, you know. 
Anyway, this evening I felt I had to do some experimental work, so I rebuilt the bathroom in my cabin. Made it into a proper darkroom, you know. Red light and everything as I suddenly came to think of the fact that there are red tubes in the ceiling up on the bridge. Used in night time for quite obvious reasons. They turned out to be paper safe believe it or not, so now we know that much for whatever it may be worth. 
The other question would of course be if D-76, or the Foma version of it to be precise, could work as a paper developer? Well, it can. Sort of anyway. 
It's slow, and I did not get the results I hoped for but that might just as well be due to the colour temperature of the light I was using to shine over the negs to make a few contact sheets. 
To actually call them sheets is also a bit of an exaggeration, as the plastic storage boxes for spare parts for the main engines wasn't of a size that can hold a full sheet. Or we do actually have bigger ones which will, but this was just a test, and it seems I need some good ideas coming my way before there's any point making full sheets of anything at all. 

Here you go! This type of fluorescent light tube should be available for anyone who's in the lack of a darkroom safelight. It works quite well, shines with a good light, and my bad contact sheets didn't go bad due to the red light. It might come in handy to some, as it's a standard 18W tube and will fit directly into many a bathroom or other light fixings.

You see the results are not very good to tell the truth. There's just not enough contrast. Not enough Ooomph, punch or whatever. 
The "blacks" are getting brownish, and the "whites" are not exactly pure white either. The worst part is the dark parts though. 
I don't have any grade 5 filters on board, or at least none that I know of. We might have something that could work as one, but I need good ideas for where to start looking. 
Another option I thought would be UV light, and we do actually have a small hand held thing of the sorts, but that didn't give me any better results either for some reason. Personally I would think the UV lamp should do the trick, because I know from experience with all the work I did on the enlarger LED's back home a while ago that the deep blue light did a lot of impact on the contrasty bits on the Ilford paper I got there. 
So, could it be the paper being gone and done for? Could it be the D-76 not being the right stuff? 
Maybe, and maybe not... I need to check that tomorrow as I can't bother to do any more tests this evening. 

Now that one is actually a rather nice portrait should I say so myself, that middle one there. Looking at the neg it's got just the right amount of light at the right places and so forth. It went all dull here though, but we might be able to fix that. Or what do you think?

Anyway, you are looking at darkroom prints even though they are just contact copies, all shot on film way out at sea. The film was developed out here, and now also the contact prints have been done here. Nope, they are not even close to great but still they are as good as they get for now anyway.

It's the sort of things you might find around this place if you just position yourself in a spot where you think something might happen within a half an hour or so. A ladder tied to something sturdy is a better giveaway than anything else. The clue will often be to snap the scene just before the "victim" discover you are there at all. This was close enough to a failure, but I sort of made it.

Tomorrow I might do a pinhole test or something, as I should be able to find what's needed for that as well. 
We need to stay busy you know, to keep our minds a bit away from the fact that we were due to go home tomorrow but still have to stay here for weeks yet. 

So, any ideas you may have (or make up here and now for that sake...) to getting more Ooomph! into the prints are very welcome. Just throw them into the comments and I'll check if I can find anything that might help us a bit further on our way to success. 

The inner innards of the Voigtländer Vito

I was walking through a charity shop a while back, and among a few point and shoots from the 90’s I found this Voigtländer Vito and a couple of other cameras. Nothing of much interest actually, but when asked for the price the oldish lady behind the counter gave me an offer I could not resist. I think I payed 40,- or 50,- NOK for both cameras, which I thought would be worth the price if they worked OK. In fact I actually thought it would be worth it if only one of them worked.
I tested both the shutters and they seemed to work sort of well enough, so off I went with the cameras back home just to put them both on a shelf for some time. 

It's a quite handy little thing after all it is, the Voigtländer Vito. The viewfinder is a real, tiny little one though, but it's quite bright compared to it's extremely small size. 

There you go. It's got a nice little lens and stuff as well, hidden behind the rather large "barn door" in the front. It comes out with a pop and everything in the same time you push the right button. 

Before I went to work five weeks ago I slipped the Vito into my bag. It’s a very handy camera with a barn door type pop-out lens attached to a tiny, cute little bellow, and it has a very nice form factor when folded. There’s the quite common, pancakey 5cm f/3.5 Skopar lens attached to it, on my example it holds a Prontor II shutter, but I know it was delivered with a couple different types through the few years of production. It’s all quite common stuff from back in the days, in other words. From what I have been able to find out from a few sources around the web, it seems like this camera was made just after WWII, some time around 1946/-49.
The film transport seems to be a weak spot on these cameras. They were originally designed for 828 film which was made without sprockets, hence there's no gears inside the thing to transport your film forward the way we're used to. As a result, the rod and gear wheel used to measure frame length is a bit unstable, to say the least. 

See that? The upper rod there acting like a measuring tool to try keep the frames separated and things like that. Well, it fails quite a lot, but I guess that's part of what I payed for. And before you start shouting about the fact I lack the aft lens element; oh yes, I know. It was on the bench for cleaning at the moment, but is re-attached by now. 

Anyway, I loaded a film into it just a couple of days before I went to sea, shot a few holes in the wet, dark and gloomy air back home and then forgot about it for a week or three until I suddenly came to think about it again and then hauled it out to give it a good old test on board the ship. 
It actually worked quite well for about something like three minutes and tree snaps, then suddenly started to act quite weird. Some shots went all good, and some really not. The film transport thing didn’t seem to know when the shutter had been fired at times, which was quite annoying as you probably understand, which in turn resulted in the film winder didn't move a tiny bit after the shutter had been fired and it was about time to wind on to the next frame. 
I didn’t give up though, and after somehting that seemed to be a thousand or so exposures, I finally came to the end of the film and had it developed. Most of the many quadrupple exposures was of course just a mess, but there were about three or four quite nice ones in there among them as well, probably snapped when the camera actually worked, so I thought I would just open the thing up and have a go with some cleaner and grease and see if I could find out where the moose was hidden. 
When I say there was nice exposures you have to take that with a rather large pinch of salt, but I recon you already had figured that out. At least there was something that looked like pictures on the film. 

Isn't it lovely? Huh...? Soft and nothing in focus and all other sorts of great stuff. 

Due to the hickup on the Leica M6 the other day I already had a few tools laying around on top of the table inside my cabin, so I decided this was a fine day to whack open the Voigtländer to see what was going on inside it. 
Well, nothing much to tell the truth. 
A few gear wheels, mostly attached to the frame counter, and a couple of force-transfer plates or rods which seem to have been punched out of post-war tin cans to deal with the shutter and film transport mechanism, and that’s about it. 
Very different to the Leica M6, to put it that way. 

Underneath the gears and the few wheels I found this stuff. Nothing much to jump in joy over, but heck... it seems to be working well enough inside here.

Gears and wheels mounted back in place, ready for new action!

Having a quick look at the mechanism and do a couple of shutter tests with the top cover off, it didn’t take long to determine what the issue might be, and after some further cleaning and a tiny bit of extra polishing at the surface of parts of the release button itself, and of course some lubrication here and there, it seemed we were good to go. The release mechanism is quite open to the elements on this camera, so dirt, rust and old bash had built up in the joints and all over the place. 
They are simple cameras these things, which make them easy to fix as long as important parts are not broken. They are also great fun to use, but not rangefinder-fun mind you! There's the old guesswork to be done for distance you know, which is fine as long as you can se the darn numbers printed on the lens. Tiny little bits they are, the numbers. 
Now I’m looking forward to throw another film inside it one of the next days to see if I can get anything to stick to that one. 
Oh, and I also had the back element of the lens taken off for cleaning when I had it all open anyway, so hopefully I’ll get rid of some of the haze you’ll obviously see on the «on board the ship scans» done with the phone. It was a really dirty lens, I kid you not!
There will of course still be lots of unsharp pictures, luckily!

Here's what I'm talking about... only that I'm probably going to adjust the shutter times even more over to the slow side I guess. Looks like it might be a good camera for those kind of snaps.

I didn’t open the shutter this time though. The shutter times sounds good enough to still go for some time, so no urgent need to spread a hundred small parts and springs around my cabin in a one second timeframe as for yet. 

I'll keep you posted when the next roll has been developed. It might happen one of these days for all we know. 

Looks like I spent the first frame of the film on good old Scot before I left home a while ago. As we all know he don't like cameras too much, but it seems he might not fully understand the basics of the Voigtländer as for yet. That might change though... 

The internal innards of the M6

You might not know the exact feeling, but I'm sure it's possible to understand most parts of it anyway.

Not exactly the way you like to see one of your best cameras, but still it had to be done...

When you're stuck at sea due to the world changing by the hour, it is of course very nice to have your camera ready to shoot a few holes in the air every now and then. 

Eventually the moment comes when your film has reached the end, and you do the same trick you're well used to after having hundreds of rolls going through that very camera. You simply start rewinding the thing. Then, after a couple of turns on the crank, an ugly sound and everything is totally jammed. Nothing is moving either way, and it starts to sink in that even the germans seems to have managed to build something that would break some day if pushed long enough. 

Well... as mentioned above, stuck at sea and of course no service technician available unless you got confidence enough to trust the good old "put your Leica inside a bottle and throw it overboard" sort of mail system. Looking down the ships side at the direction of current I soon discarded that option.

As we got the house full of engineers down in the lower part of this vessel, I could do nothing less than bring the tiny tools out on the desk and start the demolition of the camera to try figure out what might be wrong in there. 

I know, I know... red alarm lights flashing and the "don't do this at home" and all of that sorts! It's not something I recommend, but then again what can you do when you're on board, way out at sea, and with no return ticket back home? I might be stuck here for months for all we know. Think about that! That would be a long time just looking at a jammed Leica, I'll tell you that much. 

After a few hours of just looking inside at wonderful german stuff and engineering you'll get a fair insight into what's supposed to go on anyway, but still you don't want to dig too deep into it at first, trust me! When the top cover had been removed I used a lot of time to try figure out what might have gone south, even though it was quite obvious it had something to do with the film transport and wind-on stuff. I used some time on the internet as well to hopefully get a clue, but no real help to find there. Must be a repair manual or at least a drawing available somewhere? Well, google showed me nothing much but a few posts in forums suggesting the people facing the same problem had loaded their film wrongly or had forgotten to release the film drive sprocket wheels or whatever. That was not my case, at least I know that much.

See? In there somewhere there was trouble in the gears and stuff...

Anyway, after a few hours of tweaking, jacking, pointing, talking, some swearing and a little bit of sweating I had the problem fixed. The shutter and the film transport were totally out of sync, and after tweaking a sprocket wheel and doing adjustments to that little thing to make everything aligned I once again had a working camera.

Actually I think I had the problem fixed a bit earlier, but due to a stupid second fault I probably had introduced myself I couldn't find the problem. It took a good walk out on deck and then digging into the thing again before I suddenly realized I might have got something inside the shutter button out of alignment. So when punching the little pin inside the button used for the good old wire release it suddenly worked as it should, and the way I thought it would way earlier in the day. 

Turns out that the release button on the M6 is a very precisely machined little thing, which you don't actually realize until you have put your very strong glasses on. It needs to be mounted just the right way, or it will not function at all that little rascal. 

Well, when you look back on it almost 24 hrs. later it's OK, because that's the way we learn, isn't it? I just wish I had realized a loupe would be helpful a few hours earlier...

Front end. Only some cleaning now, and we were done for the day. 

And heck! I even managed to give the old thing a little internal clean-up as well, as the innards had some light shining on them for a few hours anyway. Seems like time well spent if you ask me. It feels a lot better now, so let's hope it works well in the years to come. 

We will soon find out anyway, because a new film was put inside this afternoon. 

I'll keep you informed. 

See how well it worked only a couple of hours before the big hick-up? It's one of the heroes in the mess department getting ready to wash the floor for the third time that day...

Oh yes, that's how happy you'll get being a sailor, traveling the world and see the sun every day :))

Meanwhile up there in the thin air around the wheelhouse there is painting going on. It might not seem so, but we're talking bright yellow here. Ship yellow, you know, so it's bright believe me!

Fomapan 400 - I might have figured it out, finally

OK, I agree that the title for this post is quite an optimistic one. Still, I have been thinking about how to attack Fomapan 400 film for some time now. I feel I have never really got under the skin of it, and that my negs have been quite far from well exposed almost no matter what I have been trying to do with this film.
So, yesterday I thought what the heck and decided to just as well put it through some real funky process.
I threw a roll inside the Rolleiflex and decided to over expose it, and then (as if that wasn't enough...) also to over develop it to some extent, just to see what that would bring to the table.
Some time ago I read a few words about folks who had done something similar with a roll or two of HP5 with good results, but as usual I couldn't find the article when I needed it. I know they both over exposed and over developed their film, but I'm not sure by how much.

This is Mr. Thor-Ole, the first engineer on board. He knows a lot about stuff and anything going around and around. That's nice skills to have when being an engineer of course.

So what I basically did was to decide to expose the film to 100 ASA. That should give us two stops of over exposure, done directly in camera.
The film were shot down in the engine control room of the ship, with some rather bad lighting as we have seen before from countless snaps taken down there. I used a phone app to measure the light and ended up at 1/8 sek. wide open lens at f/2,8. 
Of course, that's the stupid part of it, as it's completely taking away the speed advantages of using a 400 film in the first place. The case is that this film seems not to be a 400 film at all, which I have been thinking for quite a while actually. Usually my Fomapan 400 shots will end up dark, muddy and extremely grainy. Not so this time though, as you might see from the examples.

Meet Jøran, the Cadet of the engine department. He's probably telling his mother or whoever all about the life on board while waiting for news about when he can possibly get home from this place.

And as if the two stops of extra exposure wasn't enough I also decided to give it about two stops extra in the developer as well.
According to the Foma data sheet the Fomapan 400 in Fomadon Excel (1:1 mix) should have 9,5 minutes in the tank, so I almost doubled that ending up at around 17,5 minutes just to see if something weird might happen.

I might give it another go some other day. Shoot it at around 200 ASA and give it more or less the same time in the developer. That might do the trick... we will see. It would be great to earn one stop if nothing else.
I might even try to shoot it at say 320 and give it another stop or so in the developer as well. There could be several ways to get more or less the same result for all I know. 
What I'm after is simply a better way to use the Fomapan 400 film, as I quite like it but not the way I usually would consume it. 

The second engineer in for a short break. He is using his phone as well, but most likely to search the internet for spare parts for one of his very many old reel to reel tape machines. He's collecting them, you see. Will need a big house some day this young man.

What I can say straight away is that my negs here looks very much printable, and that my typical shadow issues seems to have been gone with the wind. There are bad spots for sure, but nothing like they used to be. For the first time I think I might say there seems to be details in the shadows. 
They might look a bit flat or with some loss of contrast, but then again the "scanning facilities" are still not up to par as you might remember, so it might not be as bad as it looks here.

Next film up for the treatment is the Ilford PAN 400 film. There's one already loaded inside the M6 rangefinder. I have even put batteries inside to be able to use the meter! I adjusted it to 200 ASA and will decide later on how much to stretch the development. There might be a conclusion some day... so stay tuned. 

I mean you have to put your mind into something else when it seems you might be sitting around here for quite a while... 

See that? That's the electrician and the last one working in my department, and he's on his phone as well. What is it with people and phones today and the times we live in? Well... I think we might be excused to some degree. We live well over half of the time away from our dear ones, and some sort of contact is always nice to have. The electrician is the experienced sailor among our team. He's been doing this since the quite early 70's or something like that, AKA "the stone age" to the younger lads among us...

Oh yes, I have been waiting for this the last couple of days...

I'm over here, as you might know. Over the sea, in the USA. Not where the picture was taken obviously, as I'm actually about 250 nautical miles out in the Gulf of Mexico at the moment. The snap was taken on-shore, as there's nothing much to see right here but the ocean and a ship or two every now and then. 

They just closed their borders to the USA they did. Due to the damn virus spreading fast, which I got no problems of understanding of course. 
What is worse is that I'm here and have no way of getting myself back over to what I call home as I obviously can't get my back to back over from Europe and on board the vessel when the day of crew change come in less than two weeks from now. 

There is no way of telling for how long this is going to stay this way, and there is no way of telling what the folks responsible at the office and such is going to do with this tiny little issue. For them it's only a question of cost and money, of course. For me it's a bit different... 
We might be able to go somewhere else when the job is finished weeks from now, but by then I guess every border to every country will be closed, which would mean I'm here until the situation has been stabilized. How long is that, you think? A year? Less? 
I might exaggerate, I see that now. But it's hard not knowing, I tell you that much. 
I got things to do at home as well, you see... Life is more than just work. 

Thanks heaven I brought on board a lot of film and quite a bunch of developer for this trip. 
I might have a brand new series started right here and now.

To be continued!

When you couldn't care less...

This was snapped just prior to this one. Same place, same day. With a good 85mm Nikkor lens wide open on some half decent film and all.

He didn't care much about the fuzz at all, the dog called Scot. 
Not even too much about the cat he knew was somewhere close. It was a warm day on the 17th of May in 2019. 
Unlikely I know, but still I kid you not!

When you're about that age

A zillion things to wonder about, and questions to be asked.
A bunch of strange answers coming in return. 
A hard time sorting out what sounds logic, and what's definitely not. 

Nothing much else to do but prop a flower in your ear then, and ask again if required...! 

The Rolleiflex 2.8E in practical use

The legendary Rolleiflex TLR, here in version E. Still very much a capable camera today, even though well over 60 years has passed since this box of metal and glass went out of the Francke & Heidecke factory in Germany. 

I know, I know... Another way too long and tedious post. 
I am, as you very well know by now, not much of a camera tester or by any means any good when it comes to writing very wise and accurate stuff about any camera I got, but sometimes I write a few words on things like this anyway. 
And when I do, it's hopefully a more practical view of what the camera is like in daily use, rather than explaining all the bits and pieces, the bells and whistles. Not that there usually is a lot of that stuff on any of my cameras when I start thinking about it. This post is probably a bit more "into the deeps" than usual, but mostly due to the built-in light meter. There would also probably be way too many more or less "instructive" digital photos in this post as well, but you may skip them if you like. A few and maybe even more interesting snaps taken with the actual camera is mixed in between it all. 
Just a few words on the B&W pictures:
These were all shot, developed and processed to the digital version on board the ship I work just a couple of days ago, and only made for the purpose of this blog post. All were done on a roll of Ilford FP4 film within a time frame of about half an hour during a quick walk around the upper and front parts of the vessel. The film was developed in Fomadon Excel 1:1 solution just before dinner, then hang to dry for a couple of hours in the drying room (aka the switchboard room) before it was "scanned" on top of our brand new (made while the film was drying) makeshift "light box" using a simple iPhone camera and some partly fancy phone software to turn the negatives into positives. Please keep all this in mind when you really start feeling the urge to throw in comments about weird shadows and stuff on the negatives. I know they are there in plenty, because the light board patent using the phone is not good enough for commercial work yet, and will of course never be. The "scans" are no good at all, and in particular the highlights lack a lot, but I couldn't get them any better with the very limited equipment we got on board. However it is really great to be able to produce results like this and have them posted on the internet from raw film about 250 nautical miles off shore.

Another thing to keep in mind is the fact that I primarily write this post just to give my mate over there in Northern Ireland a few good reasons why he would never need to buy one of these cameras :)

Enjoy!

Here it is from the other side where they found room for the light meter and the focus adjustment.

I have owned my Rolleiflex for some years now, and quite a few films have been spooled through the thing since it came my way. It was already quite well used when I got it, but not what I would call worn. No dents or anything (believe it or not...) and the glass looked just as pristine back then as it is today. It came straight out from having been serviced and lubricated, so hopefully it will still work fine for a few years yet.
Records shows it was built around 1957, sporting a very nice Carl Zeiss 80mm f/2.8 Planar taking lens. The view lens also seems to have been given some sort of attention back in the days, as it's a f/2.8 80mm construction bearing the lovely name; Heidosmat.
A Syncro Compur shutter lives it's quiet life inside the taking lens, capable of controlling anything between 1 to 1/500 sec. shutter times in addition to the B setting.
The release button is logically placed at the front right of the camera, and it's possible to lock it if you like. I actually recommend to do just that if you're walking along with the shutter cranked.

Heading towards end of work for this day. Relaxing on the bridge wing in the heat of the sun.

As most people reading a blog like this would already know, you will get a small bunch of 6x6 cm negatives out of this camera, and you're supposed to load it with 120 size film. I know you can get a 135 kit for it as well, but I have never even been thinking about buying one to be honest. In these times when you obviously can build more or less anything if your got a 3D printer, you can of course also produce the needed bits to load your 135 roll inside the Rolleiflex should you so wish.

This machine means business, and you will probably notice the cameras presence even well before the very moment you pick it up, feeling the weight and balance of it, and not to speak of when you're having a real deep glance into it's front with the two lenses and the two wheels made for adjusting your aperture and shutter times. Still it's a pretty small, anonymous and stealthy camera even though it's a medium format device. 

When opening the viewfinder cover you find the ground glass to be nice and bright and having a good view of the surroundings in front of the camera. The mechanism for the viewfinder cover is actually worth a study of it's own (said the engineer inside me), as it's not only extremely nice and tight and snappy in all it's joints, but mostly because of the genius way they made the loupe hide so nicely, and how unbelievably easy it is to flip it up for use. And then it's of course the horizontal part of the viewfinder which opens the back and front side of the whole chimney for you to see straight through it, and not to speak of the little hole with the horizontal loupe inside to check focus when operating the camera from this position. And if that's not enough, then to actually close the horizontal viewfinder when no longer needed... Well, there's no need for me to go on about this. You should actually just try it for yourselves to understand what I'm talking about.

The Chief Officer is just off watch and will usually grab an hour or so in the sun with a good book prior to going to bed. At midnight he will be back on watch. 12 hrs. on and 12 hrs. off, every day for six weeks until it's time to get home to the family and all the other good things happening in his other life.

Oh, and then you can of course hide some film inside the dark parts of this camera as well.
To do so you obviously need to open the back, which is done from the bottom of it. While you're turning the camera upside down anyway you may at the same time notice there's the standard threaded hole to put it on top of a pole with three feet and a screw, and there's also four tiny small bumps to make sure the camera will stay sort of securely on it's shelf when putting it to rest for the evening. The four tiny feet has been carefully made on a very small german lathe at some point in time, I think. But I'm not going to hover too much around that.

The bottom part of the camera looks like this. To open it up simply turn the disc in the direction of the arrow and pull lightly on the tab to release the lock.

To have it opened to put film inside you just need to swing the bit with the arrow in the direction of the arrow itself, and then pull the tab to unlock the safety hitch before you slowly pull it open. Easy as heck! 
You can even remove the back cover by moving a little sliding tab a tiny tad, and off and away the backplate goes for easier access to the inner parts of the box.

Lift the tiny tab on the right side of the hinge to unlock the hinge itself. It will make loading of film a bit easier, but it is not much of a problem to load the film without using this trick. 

There you go... easy access to whatever you may need to get done inside the camera. 

Film loading is very simple, and can be done in two ways. The right way or the wrong way. You will of course choose the wrong way first (due to good old Murphy and all that...). A giveaway sign that the film has not been loaded correctly would be the film advancing crank will not stop at the first frame as it should, but rather go on and on until the entire film has been moved over to the take-up spool, which will of course call for the need to go inside the darkroom to re-spool it before you load the film the right way ever since.
To actually save you the hassle I'll show you right here and now how the film is to be thread. It's going under the first roller and over the others. See...? I told you it was easy, didn't I? Have a look below.

So, the trick is obviously to pass the film underneath that first roller.

When the film has been attached to the take-up spool it's just a matter of cranking a few turns until the starting point of it is aligned with the first aluminium bar, then shut the cover and crank further until it stops. Some say you can start with the arrow wherever... I don't know, because I have never tested it out. It actually suits me fine to stop right there.

Anyway, we're ready for the fun part and the real reason to have a camera like this available on your shelf. We're going to take a few snaps and see what they look like. They will look absolutely fabulous, I promise!
Before we get there I need to tell you there is a light meter built into this version of the Rolleiflex. I think it was the first model with a meter, but it's not exactly the most intuitive one out there. Just saying.
It works of course, because everything on a Rolleflex works, it just takes some effort getting used to.
There are two sensitivity settings for the light meter. One for the less and another one for the more lighter conditions. When to use the first or the latter will be given away automatically as the tiny black needle will peak out if there is too much light when the meter is in the "low light" setting. Simply whack the knob on upper left and you go to "light" conditions. 

See that little slider up there at the left? That's the one to use if you need to change sensitivity on your light meter. When you see the red tab you need to read from the red scale down at the light meter. Red point means less light mode.

Red scale for low light readings, not in use for this example...

When this is done you simply turn the outer part of the focus wheel to align the red arrow over the tiny grey one. Then you read the number showing in either the front or the back (red) window on the focusing knob (get your glasses out before you start...). Check the front one if you're in lightly conditions, or the red one if your light meter is adjusted to low light. 

Light conditions scale (reading between 13 and 14 in this example) but we can see the red and grey needle is not perfectly matched yet, meaning the outer chrome ring needs to be adjusted a bit more to have them aligned. 

 

Needles are aligned (OK, just sort of, but anyway), and we have a reading of something between 14 and 15 which should be good enough to get you in the area of a good exposure. Now the only thing you have to do is to have the numbers transfered to the shutter/aperture adjustments at the front of the camera.

When you got a good reading you need to transfer it so the tiny arrow at the front of the shutter time wheel is pointing at the number we just determined from the light meter reading. Then, if you like (and if you are not completely dizzy by now), you can interlock the shutter time wheel and the aperture wheel to be able to get perfect exposure no matter what combination of the two you like to use, but it has to be inside the limits of what's practical possible of course. You may also like not to bother doing this, as it is a bit restrictive for the next snap given the change of light and all other conditions of the area you may live.

Here we are! The arrow at the shutter time wheel is aligned with our number from the previous picture (between 14 and 15, but very hard to see in this picture) and we should have everything in place to get the exposure right. If you look over at the other side for the other thumb wheel (aperture adjustments) there's a strange symbol in the middle of the wheel. That's where the interlock between the shutter and aperture wheel is.

The light meter is a simple selenium cell thing. Mine still works absolutely fine even though as we know it's been sitting there for well over 60 years now.
You can also use a simpler light meter if you wish, or just go completely crazy and go for Sunny 16 or whatever version of the rule you prefer. You will of course get great pictures no matter method of metering you choose to use.

Inside the bridge. The Second Mate is sharing his watch with the First Mate having one hour in and the next one out of the DP (Dynamic Positioning) chair from where the vessel is controlled when we are in operation and working with the ROV's in the water. 

I think I once wrote something like "there's always at least one annoying thing with every camera", and this also goes for my Rolleiflex. Or, I'm not too sure if it's me old eyes starting to fade a bit, but the fact is the split image in the center of the ground glass (at least on my version of it...) is so tiny i can't properly focus on it without using the loupe, or at least some very good reading glasses (which will never there when you need them anyway).
I will soon have to admit I'm getting to the age where some distance is needed to focus them things placed in the front end of my face, and when my arms are fully stretched the distance to the split screen is too far to see the focusing aids inside there at all. Anyway, the loupe is there to be used, and it's not needed for all shots to be honest. After all it's a very small issue, and nothing that is keeping me away from using the camera at all.

In addition to the Engine Cadet down in the dark parts of the vessel there's also one of the same sorts up there in the light. This is what he looks like. No boiler suit or anything up there, of course. 

A number of good reasons (12 to be precise) to still use this old camera really comes to mind every time you have a roll of film from it developed.
The old Planar lens is quite punchy and contrasty for it's age, and have been producing great negatives on whatever film I have decided to put inside the camera through the years I have owned it. Starting to think about it I think I never have tried to feed a roll of any colour film through it though, but that may change quite soon as I got a few rolls of the sort on board the ship at the moment. I can just as well give it a go to check what it's like with some modern C-41 process film with colours.

And of course there have to be some company hiring the ship. This bloke is called Michael. He is a great guy by all measurable means, lives somewhere in the swamps of Louisiana and is representing the client on board. Eight seconds prior to having his portrait taken he had  finished off something like 60 push ups with his feet one meter up on the ship railing. At least he could have tried to look like his pulse was a little bit higher than when at rest, but he didn't...

I don't know if a conclusion is needed or even wanted, but I'll go for it anyway. 
The old machine has it's quirks and moments where you think that this is just old fashion and too bothersome to play around with in 2020. If you are in need of a coupled light meter and automatic exposure, or in fact a decent on-board light meter at all, maybe the Rolleiflex is a bit too far out and a bit too cumbersome to actually be of any great value to you. 
On the other hand if you are a little bit experienced and usually will have no big issues in normal light conditions guessing exposure, or if you got a handy light meter to bring along for those situations when it's actually needed, then this type of camera might be just the right thing for you if you're looking for a handy medium format camera shooting squares.  
The negatives coming out in the other end of this box is really great, and the size and form factor of the camera is truly a joy to play around with. 
Another brilliant thing with the Rolleiflex is that the lens is securely attached to the camera, hence no money at all going down that extremely huge drain we all know too well.

I really recommend the Rolleiflex, I do. At least for anyone living a fair bit away from Northern Ireland and thereabouts not having a Hassy or something from before, as the resulting negs probably would be more or less similar.