Kodak Vollenda

Nice day again yesterday - still a bit chillier than normal but a good day for being outside. I picked up my veggies from the CSA, stopped at the Ford dealership to set up an appointment for service, ran the truck through the car wash, picked up a couple of things from the grocery store, and then stopped at the blacktopping place to see about them delivering a load of stone. 

I made a pot of soup with some of the new veggies and while that was simmering I pulled up the tomato stakes and the old plants, checked all the fluids in the old Allis and put it on the battery charger. I ran into a snag when I went to top off the oil, however. I had a full gallon in my locker and somehow or another, it got a hole poked in it. I didn't notice any leakage around the bottom of the locker but it went somewhere. So I need to get some oil and I should stock up on anti-freeze and hydraulic oil as well.

I dug out the old Vollenda folding camera to see about shooting a roll through it to do some portrait work, both candid and "formal". That being the case, I need a roll of film and a tripod.

The camera was designed for 620 film which is no longer available. I made this arbor years ago to modify 120 film rolls so they'll work in 620 cameras. The ends of the spool the film is wound on needs to be thinned and reduced in diameter. The old spools were metal, the new ones are plastic, so they machine easily.

The camera has two tripod mounts - one on the fold-out front, the other on the side, depending on which way you want to orient the camera. The negative size is 2-1/4 x 2-3/4, so it's like printing something portrait or landscape. The tripod mounts are 3/8-16 thread and most modern mounts use 1/4-20 threads. After I finished my outside chores and it started cooling off, I modified the roll of film and then made an adaptor to mount the camera on a tripod. 

The camera has a plug to fill the tripod hole when not in use - that's it with the screwdriver slot. The adaptor is the hex nut that I welded to a piece of reddi-rod, drilled and tapped it in the lathe and then parted it off to length. Didn't take long and looks OK. A little industrial in appearance, perhaps, but it'll get the job done. The veggie soup turned out well also. Pretty good day.