Antique Atomica

So I bought another Weird Little Camera on eBay, only this one takes 127 film, a format that is no longer widely manufactured. The best and cheapest way to test it (which would also provide me with the backing paper and spindle I would need to cut down 120 film to fit if the camera worked) was to buy some expired film, and I happened upon a couple rolls of Kodak Tri-X on eBay that expired in 1959. I was very excited to try these out and see if I could get any images from them, and happily I got several that were quite nice!

There was a bit of a learning curve advancing the film, so I got a few overlapping frames. (Though that first double exposure there was done on purpose, for the whimsy of it.) I stand developed the film in Flic Film Black/White & Green at 1:100 dilution for an hour, as is my habit, agitating once halfway through. (This also helpfully allowed me to avoid guessing at what the developing time might be like.) It took me several minutes to get the film onto the developing reel because it was so tightly curled, and I ended up spooling it on with the emulsion facing outwards, which gave me some trouble with one frame where the end of the film contacted it during development:

I'm really pleased with the results overall though! They have a moody feel to them that I really enjoy. I've got one more roll in my film fridge and I have yet to figure out what to do with it. (I also have my eye on the last two rolls that seller has up on eBay.)

As a bonus, here's a phone photo of my weird little camera, plus the film! It's a Yashica 44LM, originally purchased by its first owner in 1961. The light meter, alas, doesn't work, but I have a shoe-mount meter now that I quite like. I'm also having a devil of a time figuring out how to attach a strap to the proprietary lugs. My current plan is to 3D print a mockup connector to test my measurements and then send the .STL file to my engineer friend who's offered to use the machine shop in his garage to fabricate something in metal.