pentax 110

I have had just had my first 110 film developed and am not very happy with reults.

Two Questions may help me sort out if it is my use of the camera or the processing:

1. What is the best size for 110 prints?
2. What quality of scan of the negatives would be best for my computer files and possible future printing.

Dave

What exactly is wrong?

G

110 film might be quite old now so perhaps it has been badly stored; it is hard to find fresh stock nowadays. As George says, what exactly is wrong?

John K

Sorry George and John In my rush to get the answers I did not give you all the information.

This is new film from Lomography.

The prints are very dark with little contrast. Some are grainy. They are appear in focus. In some ways they look like early Victorian prints.

The negs have been printed as 6"x4". The scans were low resolution and they seem worse.

Dave

IIRC (or can find any in the loft) I think the contemporary size for 110 prints was about 5"x3.5". Film speed setting on the cameras was very rudimentary too - but you should get 'reasonable' prints if everything works as it should.

John.

I've actually got an Auto 110 kit purchased on fleabay in mint condition, but I've never used it so can offer no images of my own to compare. There's some images on flickr at http://www.flickr.com/groups/pentax110/ if you haven't already seen them. Maybe compare your results with theirs?

What I have done though is to try the 110 lenses on the Q and the dedicated zoom proved to be poor compared to any of the primes, so it might help to add which lens you were using.

John K

I was using the 24mm lens.

I will look at the photos later.

Dave

The biggest problem with the 110 film format is the lack of a pressure plate in the cameras. Instead, we rely on the plastic cartridge to keep the film flat and in the right plane. Small formats mean very small depth of focus, so just when we need more accuracy we have less accuracy.

So it depends how well made the 110 cartridges are. It also depends on impeccable technique handling the tiny negatives.

Having said that, it's possible to get sharp 7" x 5" prints and it might be stretched a little further. Minox sub-miniature cameras have pressure plates, so smaller formats than 110 can sometimes deliver nice 10" x 8" prints.

'back in the day' - I used a Minolta 110 ZOOM SLR.

Performance used to vary massively from one roll of film to another - so John's comments re cartridges make perfect sense to me - although I did not think of that at the time - I just ditched the camera and went back to 35mm.

Carl

IIRC the Lomo film is ISO100, that should give a fine grain on 110 prints, and the camera should be able to handle it OK.

It could be a developing problem Dave, I'd suggest raiding the wallet, making sure the aperture is working OK and that the camera is set to the correct speed, then try another film.

Failing good results then, I'd go back to the Super A...

With the Auto 110 the camera sets the film speed according to the presence or not of a ridge on the cartridge. With the ridge the ISO is set to 320, without it is set to 80.

John K

...and it's little things like that that can cause all sorts of problems.

Looks like it may be the answer, but where is the ridge?

Thanks for all the help so far.

John the speeds are the other way around according to this site. link

Which is why I left the tab on.

Dave

How does that compare to : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/110_film and this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentax_Auto_110 ?

The latter says to keep the tab on with that film as you say.

John K

Re the tab - it does all get confusing with the different advice available!

Here are a couple of the scanned images that were done when the film was processed by the lab.











Dave