The Box Brownie

The box brownie was first introduced in 1900 and was widely recognised as bringing photography to the masses. Because of its relatively low cost and ease of use, it was the first camera that took photography out of the hands of the trained photographer and into the hands of everyone else. The result of this was the idea of snapshot photography, anyone could now take a photo of anything! The 1900 brownie is the first incarnation of the camera phone (just without the phone bit)


This is my Box Brownie


As can be seen in this photo it is a No.2 Brownie, model f. Although I have no idea about the exact date this particular one was made, from the patent information it's easy enough to guess that this camera is approximately 80 years old.


This image shows just how simple these things are! The metal lever toward the bottom left is the shutter. For instant shooting the lever in the top right stays in the lowered position. When the shutter is flicked either up or down it pushes on the spring which in turn rotates the round disk. The jelly bean shaped cut out in the disk allows light to travel through it, then through the lens behind, and for what I am guessing to be a 50th of a second, exposes the 120 film within the camera. If the lever in the top right is pulled upward the shutter will stay open once the lever is flicked until it is flicked a second time. The lever top center when pulled up, changes the camera between its 3 apertures which I understand to be f.16 f.22 and f.32. The top left hand corner is the two view finders for portrait and landscape.



My particular camera isn't in the best condition, but for its age I'm very happy with it considering I paid £1 for it off of ebay! The little mirror in the portrait vf had come away and was rattling around in the front of the camera. Unfortunatly half of it had smashed into little bits but there was one large bit thatIi managed to glue back in place. Its fair to say its not the clearest of views through either vf, infact you can barely make out anything, just fuzzy shapes, but that just adds to the fun!

This is the first film I have put through it and without really thinking I put an ilford HP5 400 iso roll in, not perhaps the most sensible choice considering that in the days of this camera most film was either 25 or 50 iso. I also perhaps rather stupidly hadn't noticed when I shot the film that I could change the aperture, so shot all day with the largest one. After realising my mistake I decided it best to develop the film for less time than required for 400 iso hp5. The results were fairly over exposed and low in contrast. I then couldnt find the 120 film loader for my scanner so just had to place them on the flat bed and hope for the best. They weren't held flat in the scanner which has, i think, added to the bluryness of the images. It has though also meant that I have been able to scan the whole image right to the edge of the neg and this has framed the images nicely! Also lets face it, if you are going to use a camera from the 20's you aren't likely on the road to perfection!
These photos have been run through lightroom to bring back a bit of contrast, but are otherwise as the scanner scanned them.

This first shot is what you get if you leave the shutter open when you put the film in. Using any new (or very old) camera is a learning curve, I wont make that mistake again! (although i do think it is quite a nice image, and it does make you wonder in the 109 years since the "snap shot" camera first came about how many photos like this have been taken!!)


My house.


Some of the works they are doing down toward diglis.


Slightly wonky shot of the old keepers cottage(?) down at diglis. One of the only truly pretty buildings left down there in the mass of souless architecture that is there these days.


Old dear with stick walking down by the river.


This one I like as I think it's pretty difficult to date.


Older folks getting up off a bench as I pointed my camera at them.


And finally my good buddy Mr. Deacon on his ice cream bike. Damn good bit of mint choc chip available at remarkably good price!!


£1 for the camera £4.99 for the film a few pence on chemicals and a bloody lovely ice cream (Deaks you can buy me a pint or a free icecream for this advertising) a damn good way to spend a friday afternoon!

Also a quick thank you to James and Hannah for providing me with the impetus to get this camera out and run a film through it!

Sun Set / Sun Rise Kenya

Sun Set (ish) over the Maasai Mara. The bird in the tree is an eagle. Please Scroll down for my images of the people and animals of kenya

Sun Rise over the Maasai Mara

Photo of the Locals in Kenya

These first four images were taken at the The Akambaa Handicrafts Cooperative Society in Mombasa. A factory of sorts where all of the workers (aparently) belong to a single tribe. They are all tecnically self empolyed, carving work to be sold through the on site shop as well as being sold to other shops all over the country and even exported internationally. Some of the workers carve and some finish the carving with polish and animal bone.




As i was taking this photo, the people in the next hut starting calling out "Obama, Obama, Obama". Locally to the factory there is a road that has beeen named obama road.


The following three photos were taken whilst walking around Mombasa city.

Photos of the Wildlife in Kenya

Here are some of the shots from my recent trip to Kenya
There are many more to follow, they are just taking a little time to get through!!

Lake Nakuru


Maasai Mara


Maasai Mara


Maasai Mara


Maasai Mara


Masai Mara

Masai Mara


Lake Nakuru


Lake Nakuru


Lake Nakuru


Lake Nakuru


Lake Nukuru


Lake Nakuru


David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust

Photos of Dismantled Olympus Trip

Photos with Industar-69 on R-D1

Getting a Pre-AI Nikkor 2.8 45mm gn Auto to work on a D300/D3

This is a Nikkor 2.8 45mm GN lens:

This particular one has the Nippon Kogaku branding on it. It was designed to work with Nikon cameras like the 'F' and 'F2'. It has an aperture coupling prong adjacent to 5.6 on the aperture scale - i believe some people call it "bunny ears". Whatever you call it, its that little silver thing sticking out the side of the lens.
Older pre-ai cameras had a little pin that this engaged with, this allowed the meter to give you a read out that differed when changing the aperture without having to actually stop down the lens.

Below you can see my Nikon f2, and if you look closely at the bottom of the head you can see the little pin.

And here you can see that the prong engaged with the pin.

So this is how my 45mm lens works with the cameras of its generation, unfortunately this is not how a d3 works!

Modern lenses and d3s talk to each other with a lot of electronics that I don't fully understand, all I know is that with my camera in aperture priority or manual mode, I twizzle the dial under my forefinger and it changes the aperture that the camera will stop down to when i press the shutter button. Clever stuff! Not quite as satisfying as the older mechanical way of doing it but clever non the less.

This all said, all is not lost in attaching older manual lenses to a d3, as those clever folks at Nikon have, on their higher spec models at least, provided a little lever that ai/ais lenses can engage with. This means that as long as you provide the camera with the aperture of the lens you wish to attach, the camera can meter the exposure at whatever aperture you choose to set the lens too.

Apart from the fact that you don't have to tell the camera the max aperture of the lens, this is the same system that, as far as i know, was used on all ai/ais cameras and as such here is a picture of an ais lens attached to a Nikon FA. You can see the part of the lens that juts out adjacent to f16. This pushes the spring loaded lever on the camera and tells it how to meter depending on what aperture you set the lens to .

Its basically a neater and less clunky version of what came before .
My problem is that my pre-ai lens (obviously) pre dates this system and so I need to modify my lens in some way so that it can push this little lever...

...and this is how i did it

First remove the coupling prongs as they, on a 45mm pancake lens, interfere with with the little lever.

Keep these bits safe as you will be able to reattach them should you wish to use the lens on a camera where they are required.

Now it is nessasary to file a slot in the rim of the lens for it to engage to the lever
By looking at whereabouts the part of the lens that engages with the lever on another 2.8 lens is, I can determine where I need to file. In this case it is adjacent to f11.

Please be aware that this is not the case on all lenses, if you are trying to adapt a 1.2 lens for example, you would need to file a slot between 5.6 and 8 but I would seriously recommend looking at an ai/ais equivalent to find the exact spot.

Here is the slot I filed.

And here it is engaged to the lever on a d300.

When mounting a lens moified in this way you will need to stop the lens down to its minimum aperture to mount the lens on the camera!

I now have a fully functional 45mm mf lens for my d3 and d300.

And here are some (fairly dull) photos I took with it on my d3. I will put some better ones up when I get a chance. You can at least see that it works!

As I said on my modification of the industar 69, I'm no expert at this sort of thing so it is fairly easily done. That said, I take no responsibility if you follow my instructions and balls it up. You do this at your own risk

And for anyone who may quible with my desision to hack apart a nippon kogaku branded lens, its a damn slight cheaper than the 45mm 'p' lens and at least this way I get to appreciate a old bit of glass with the ease of use of putting it on my digital cameras. And if i want to use it on my f or f2 i can still reattach the coupling prong!

Please let me know if any of this info is wrong!