First Film 'Mystery Balda'

I now have the first film back from the processers that has been put through the Mystery Balda that Dawn brought back from a flea market in Bavaria.

Firstly the film ! 127 film is pretty difficult to get hold of at present, which is a pity as there are lots of 127 cameras out there just dying to be used.

I tried a Shanghai GP3 ISO 100 black and white negative film. The cost £12.83 plus postage from China and e-bays slush fund charge £14.02. Developing and scanning to a disc cost £14, so not cheap this 127 film lark, the results need to be good, and they were in fact dire!

The film arrived from China very quickly, about 10 days was well packed and the film had a long date, it was packed in a neat black plastic tube.

The camera used, the 'Mystery Balda' is photographed below, just in case you have forgot, or are new to the blog!

The results, were in some way, very disappointing, none of the negs were sharp, the exposure of each neg was patchy! But I suppose it was pushing it a bit to expect a camera made in the mid 1930's bought off a flea market stall in Bavaria, to perform faultlessly in 2025! So in someway I was please that I actually got a full film of images! But the quality of those images were very very poor. Take a look, see what you think.

Wycoller Hall East Lancashire England

Wycoller Hall East Lancashire England

Oh don't worry, they get even worse!

Wycoller Hall East Lancashire England

Wycoller Hall East Lancashire England

I went back to Wycoller, as last time I visited with my Exa 11a I had film spacing issues and ran out of film due to the large gaps between each frame !

The fire place, Wycoller Hall.

Nothing is sharp here, not a blade of grass in the foreground, a stone in the walls or a tree in the distance!

No better on this shot either!

Now we have light getting in by the looks of it, it's blured, the end wall is curved, the foreground is burnt out, but the little bit of the Hall behind the high wall is nearly sharp and correctly exposed!

A small patch of grass bottom right looks exposed okay, the fireplace through the gap nearly sharp and correctly exposed, the rest of it a mess!

Maybe a tad better, but not by much.

The packhorse bridge, Wycoller.

I actually quite like this shot, but nothing is sharp!

The cobbled Ford and the Packhorse Bridge Wycoller

This one is a bit more like, but still not really sharp.

Bentley, at Wycoller

Terrible ! The white patch in front of the cobbles is a dark tarmac road!

Main Hall, Wycoller

Again foreground burnt out ! Background okay!

A pattern is starting to emerge now. On this shot the Balda was turned the other way, so the foreground position on the last shot is now the right hand side of this landscape image.

So, what wert wrong? Firstly maybe I was expecting too much from the Mystery Balda, expecting it to perform eighty odd years after it was built?

The body door mounted shutter release.

This is a real problem, you have to put quite a bit of pressure on the shutter release before you can trigger the shutter, then you get a bit of kick back once it has released, so there is always a small degree of camera movement. Enough it seems to blur the pictures. I'm working on how to get the shutter release smoother, but I suppose the short term fix is to use a cable release.

The earlier Baldas had a much simpler shutter release, with a smoother action.

The earlier Balda shutter releases were on the shutter as seen above. You just pressed the round silver ring seen here just below B. It is attached to a boomerang shaped black lever and you can trigger the shutter with no camera movement what so ever!

As for the overall poor image quality, is it the shutter that is exposing the frame unevenly? Or dirt or haze in the lens? Some light leakage from somewhere? The lens standard not being parallel to the camera body I don't know. The film not sitting flat. Poor processing? What is it ?

The overall lack of sharpness might be that the lens is out of adjustment?

Or it could be that my guesstimate distance's are way out, but I don't think that is the case, some I paced out before taking and if it was this then one area of the image sure would be sharp even if it was not the intended focal point.

Anyway, that is it all 16 results! I suppose that is a plus point I did get 16 exposures out of 16 even if they were all poor!

So what do I do with this little fellow? The Schheidar - Kreuznach 2.9 Radionar, whilst not the best lens in the world is not a bad lens and is capable of producing far better results than this.

Does anyone know of a good repairer that would service the shutter, clean the lens and reset the distance?

Its far too nice to be just sat on the shelf doing nothing! Please let me know your thoughts theories and contact details of your trusted camera repairer!

Take care,

Phil