Ikoflex II 1936/7 Open Flash

[Kalimetric]

Hi, I've just bought an Ikoflex II 1936/7, and I believe it has no flash socket. So I will need to use open bulb, and manually fire my strobes (600w and 1200w) I think.

My history is a primarily digital shooter who has dipped his toes into large format for a few outdoor shots and one studio project. Loved the output, but not the difficulty of lugging round extremely heavy equipment, so want something medium format for taking with me day to day. Hence Ikoflex II. But I'm also interested in attempting studio work with it, as I can get 120 film developed locally, so no need for chemicals, and changing film holder every shot (large format) is tough for the model.

Just wondering if anyone has any tips? I have a maybe broken Minolta IV- ha! Any way to test this? (I'm in Switzerland). Also, would need normal lights on for the shoot (shooting my toddler who I don't think would stay still if I turned off the lights). With the large format shoot I shot on about 45 aperture (had a closeup, with the person standing a bit behind), with strobes about 1.5 metres away (1200w) and 60 cm away(600w). Best exposure I had was shooting at about half power on both.

So I guess, if I was to replicate this shoot (for arguments sake) on 120 film, what kind of adjustments would I be making? And is it possible with open bulb of about two seconds with lights on?

 

[qqphot]

With a mix of flood and flash plus open shutter, I feel like a modern flash meter would make exposure pretty easy but trying to calculate it by hand would be a pain. You could also do test exposures with a digital camera to get it right, just like they used to do with polaroids.

 

[Kalimetric]

With a mix of flood and flash plus open shutter, I feel like a modern flash meter would make exposure pretty easy but trying to calculate it by hand would be a pain. You could also do test exposures with a digital camera to get it right, just like they used to do with polaroids.

Ah, I forgot about using a digital - thanks!

Also, was just wondering if my flashes might be too powerful for medium format, leaving less room for fine-graining the result, especially if i'm needing to leave the shutter open for two secs. Ideally, I would prefer to leave the aperture open for portraits (whereas with my large format shoot, I needed.to be down on 45 aperture due to positioning of subjects)

 

[reddesert]

Exposure for electronic flash just depends on the aperture, not on the format of the camera. If you were getting correct exposure with f/45 on large format, you'll also need f/45 on the Ikoflex - which I believe it doesn't have, so you'll need to dial the power down further on the flashes. If the flashes were at half power at f/45, then at f/16 (3 stops more open) you need about 1/8 * 1/2 = 1/16 power.

You also then need to consider the ambient light. For example if the ambient light meters at about f/2.8 and 1/30 (sort of average-dim room lighting), that corresponds to f/16 and 1 sec. So a 2 sec open exposure would overexpose the ambient light by a factor of 2. Thus you have 2 units of ambient exposure and 1 unit of flash exposure, so total overexposure of about 3x. Plus you have lost the freezing-motion aspect of the electronic flash, which may be an issue for a child subject.

You can always keep dialing down the flash power or add modifiers (umbrellas, softboxes etc) that soak up light, but the ambient is a problem. Personally, I think doing studio photography with flashes will be much easier if you get a camera with flash sync (there are many TLRs with PC sync ideally suited for this), and save the Ikoflex for ambient light photography. Or use really slow film.

 

[qqphot]

a strong neutral density filter is an easy way to cheat, too. i've been resorting to that lately when playing with the Minox because you *can't* stop them down, they're fixed at f/3.5.