Ancient ORWO film, ancient Agfa Rodinal, ancient camera, lens and… photographer?

Back in London after a long break and adventuring to the rear of the densely packed fridge revealed 9 rolls or ORWO NP15 (25asa) and one NP27 (400asa). I’ve no idea how old they are, maybe 20 years. Searching for developer I came across a nearly empty 500mm container of Agfa Rodinal – shaking it indicated large crystalline lumps at the bottom and some liquid. Based on film negatives I found, the last time I used it was October 2013, the first maybe 15 years ago. The leaflet with the developer said “keeps for 6 months”!! The obvious match was my 65 year-old Leica iiig (recently overhauled by PPP cameras) and the 90 year-old Summar lens.

I ventured out to take test shots using the NP15 on London Wall and Bunhill Fields graveyard, both within a short walk of my flat, and the NP27 on a wet night. Daytime was often dull so most exposures were at f2 between 1/250th to 1/8th second, and at night f2 and 1/60th to 1/15th, all hand-held and exposed using sunny 16.

The two films were developed together in black-as-sin Rodinal 100:1 60m stand development using London tap water throughout, dried in a corridor, so no great expectations for clean images, and no real expectations for images at all in fact.

The NP27 was slightly fogged grey while the NP15 was a beautiful dense red colour but nevertheless had images visible. Both films were badly curved, not lengthwise as I would have expected but between edge perforations. This made scanning on my old Epson 4990 scanner unlikely to achieve fine focus or sharp images. Despite the age and the fact that the scanner had not been used for five years, after a few crunching and squeaking noises at the start it worked smoothly and well.

Surprisingly, despite the very dense fogging, the NP15 performed better than the NP27 although daytime versus night-time images is not a completely fair comparison. Images shown have been contrast adjusted unless otherwise stated, dirt remains.

Bunhill Fields is an ancient graveyard in the centre of London on the edge of the City district and is home to the tombs of and monuments to many famous people including Daniel Defoe, William Bayes (mathematician) and William Blake.

Two of the best night shots on NP27

I can say that the camera performed very well. The lens, well let’s say it has a strong character. It also does not have click stops on the aperture setting which led to accidental change of aperture and under-exposure on a few occasions. Aperture settings after f2 are not current standard so to get f4 you have to interpolate between f3.2 and f4.5. Too much light coming into the lens off axis causes a strong veiling – cleaning internal haze and a lens hood would both help but the uncoated nature of the lens means it will always have lower contrast compared to modern lenses. Stopped down and with the sun behind the lens actually performs well (Barbican image). Film and developer – fresh would have helped a lot! But the colour of the NP15 negative is gorgeous! I’ll probably frame the negatives and hang them back illuminated.

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