One of the downsides of playing about with old film cameras, is that sometimes they get unreliable. A friend gave me a Pentax Auto 110 camera years ago, the bundled system that includes 3 lenses and a faux-leather bag that is much too bulky for the small camera and lenses stored inside it.
A few years ago I was taking some snaps at a weekend camping trip – I remember distinctly that I’d seen some mushrooms growing in the undergrowth, and was trying to capture them – when the shutter got stuck. I tried winding on, tried giving it some gentle percussive maintenance – nothing seemed to work. I pressed the shutter button but it had no effect – no click, no shutter fire.
With a half-exposed roll inside, I put it into a drawer and planned to “get to it later”. As with all things in my life, that meant I forgot about it for over a year, until I happened to read about someone encountering (and fixing!) a similar issue with their Pentax 110.
Emboldened by the possibility of having my little camera working again, I took a tiny screwdriver and removed the bottom plate. Some very technical poking of springs, levers and bits of metal later – the shutter was freed! I can only imagine that the grease originally used in the construction of the camera must have got gummed up somewhere it shouldn’t have been, and my experimental prodding helped things get moving again.
After finishing off the film cartridge inside, I popped in a brand new (!) roll of Lomochrome Purple, one of my favourite experimental film stocks.
According to Analogue Wonderland, Lomochrome Purple was first launched in 2013, inspired by the discontinued classic Kodak Aerochrome film stock. The recipe was revised in 2017, and then again in 2019 with a wider ISO range and finer grain.
I remember being excited by the idea of a psychedelic film stock when it was first released, and shot a roll in 2017 that turned out with strong purple and turquoise colours.
Compared to that 2017 roll, these shots are quite crunchy, but that is possibly due to the tiny negative size of 110 compared to 35mm. The dynamic range doesn’t seem quite as broad either, but it’s hard to say whether that is down to the film stock itself or any number of other variables (different negative size, different camera, lens, more control over the 2017 images as they were taken on a fully manual camera). No-one would ever confuse this for a scientific experiment!
The unique characteristics of this film mean that natural scenes are rendered mostly purple – so I headed out to my local park one sunny afternoon. The last few months have seen alternating rain and sunshine, meaning the park was green and lush, with fields mostly left to grow wild.
The building heat also meant that the park was pretty deserted, which left me free to roam about mostly unbothered.
I returned home with a few shots left, and as is customary, used them up taking shots of the garden and the cat – both of which turned out to be my favourites of this roll.
My usual developer FilmDev doesn’t process 110 film, so I took a chance on a new lab, DS Colour Labs. Luckily, they seem to have managed to nail the holy trinity of cheap/fast/good – my scans were sent back to me in under a week, and they were one of the cheapest in my search. I’ll keep them in mind for future rolls that FilmDev don’t take!
Fun though the little Pentax Auto 110 is, it’s very easy to miss focus due to the small viewfinder (the split prism does help), so I did end up with a few blurry shots. Despite this, it’s an easily portable and fun little SLR, so as long as you don’t expect high-quality, perfect images you won’t be disappointed.
I was certainly glad I took a chance on repairing it, and I hope it’ll keep going for a while to come yet!