Sweeney’s Bench – Scranton, PA – March 2020

Sweeney’s Bench – Scranton, PA – March 2020

This being my very first “serious” medium format film exposure using the Ansco Speedex 6.3 – a camera from the 1930s that is fully manual.

I’m extremely happy with this image. Even though I was using Kodak Tri-X 400 film that expired in the early 1980s, the exposure is decent. The number of grays are vast. And the exposure I was looking for is right on.

The interesting thing about the Ansco Speedex is that I have to pace out my subject’s distance from the film’s surface. In other words, I had to walk over to that bench and walk back to the camera and take a guess at how far away it was for focus. For this entire roll, save 1 frame, I got the focus just right.

I’ve now purchased some brand-new Ilford HP5+ for this camera. I couldn’t be more excited to see the results of new black and white film for the first time.