Voigtländer Brillant

20 May 2021 ∞

A photo print of the back stock room of a grocery store with sunlight filtering in. There’s light leak in the corner and the film emulsion was horribly scratched

A while ago I picked up a Voigtländer Brillant from Seawood Photo. It sat in my collection for ages before I finally decided to put some film through it last month. The ground glass is, as the name implies, brilliant, and even despite having only three shutter speeds, three aperture stops, and is zone focussed the camera itself is a joy to shoot with. It's very much the point & shoot of its era.

While shooting with it is fun, the imagery it made had some issues. The first roll I shot I didn't load correctly (in a painfully obvious way) and the whole roll was scratched, full of light leaks, and nearly every frame overlapped another. As for the other two: one was entirely blank and the other mostly motion blur.

The roll that did survive, though, is quite fun. The photos are extra analogue with all of the imperfections. With my website refresh I've been trying to share more photos here, rather than just on Instagram, and with these ones I wanted to make prints instead of leaving them as just digital files. The whole series is over in the gallery.