So ... Continuing my path of acquiring interesting (to me) old cameras, in November of last year I bought what looked like a good Plaubel Makina 67 from a Japanese seller on Ebay. I'd always looked at this camera, since it was first announced in the late '70s, and thought, "Hmm, that would work well for me..." But they were always too pricey. And in one of my hunts for interesting old cameras, this one came up at a decent price and was described as being fully functional.
Oh yes: For my Pentax photo buddies, there's no Pentax content at all. Sorry, but I hope you're entertained if you read through this. ;) Well, the camera had some issues I discovered on arrival ... and one thing led to another ... and finally a fully restored and completely functional Makina 67 returned home to me a week or so ago. The seller was great: he refunded about a quarter of what I'd paid for the camera against the repair attempts by two shops, the last of which did the job beautifully, so it ended up costing me only a little bit more than the original purchase price—which is reasonable for a Makina 67 even today. In a hurry to test the camera, and realizing that I'm almost out of 120 film, I grabbed a roll of XP2 Super to use as a test roll. Well, that was a wash ... The film was outdated from right around 1990 and when I tried to load it in my daylight loading tank, it couldn't take the bending and cracked right down the middle for most of the way up the roll. Ugh. Trash bin... So I grabbed another roll out of the junk box (Kodak Portra 160, exp 1993) and tossed it into the camera. I exposed it at ISO 125, and it loaded in the daylight tank with no problems. I processed it as B&W in HC-110 and it came out of the tank looking almost black with age-fog. BUT it cleared a bit as it dried and scanned nicely.. There Is A Lamp :: https://flic.kr/p/2r3VxsS Wall Cover :: https://flic.kr/p/2r3R7Mr SLOW - Cat Crossing :: https://flic.kr/p/2r3ELj1 For Lease :: https://flic.kr/p/2r43eVZ No great art, I fear, but some decent test shots that proved the camera was working well. :) I have a couple more rolls of old outdated junk 120, but then I realized I still had a few rolls of Film Washi "Washi-120" in the box, relatively recent too (2021-ish). So I threw one of those into the Makina and did a quick walk to see if I remember how to expose and process it ... Cadillac :: https://flic.kr/p/2r4waq2 Palms and Parked Cars ::https://flic.kr/p/2r4x7im Planter by Fence :: https://flic.kr/p/2r4wapL Peterbilt :: https://flic.kr/p/2r4xXJm Washi-120 Japanese Rice Paper film ISO 25, Ilford Multigrade Paper Developer 1:20, 15min @ 70°F (All photos taken in Santa Clara 2025, of course, and scanned with the Leica M10 Monochrom using a copy neg methodology.) I looked through old postings I made about this film on various forae in 2017-2021 time frame and realized I'd made the same initial error with the Washi-120 as I made then: This film only achieves the EI rating of 25 if you use one of the two specialist developers that Film Washi recommends, neither of which are available easily in the USA. I use Ilford Multigrade paper developer, but it works best if you expose at ISO 6-10, dilute the developer at 1:9, and develop for 6-7 minutes. As a result, most of the 10 exposures were simply too thin to get anything useful out of. But that's okay, its the nature of experimentation. I'm happy I had a couple of usable negatives anyway. I've loaded another roll of Washi-120 and will give it another stop and half exposure. The Makina 67 is indeed a delightful and quirky camera. In use it feels much like my beloved little Rollei 35S, but on steroids (...about 4.5x the film area!). Both have stunningly good lenses with similar FoV (given the different formats). Both fold up to become pretty compact for carrying. Both have somewhat oddly organized controls and are not exactly quick to operate. They're a giggle to use. Yes, 10 rolls of fresh 120 film are on the way to me now. But why stop? I have yet a few more rolls of outdated junk film in the meanwhile... ;) Enjoy! onwards, G — Godfrey DiGiorgi - [email protected] Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?" Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night." – Charlie Brown -- %(real_name)s Pentax-Discuss Mail List To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
