A Day at Wrest Park with a Kodak Pocket Camera
The rear of the House with its avenue of trees leading to and from the gardens. 3s 111mm F45 - Focus set at 8m.
The last I used my Kodak Pocket camera was on my trip to Berlin in September of last year. Whilst I was happy with some of the results, I was also very frustrated with poor framing and consistent light leaks when shooting my rolls of Kodak Gold. Having taken what I learned from that experience I wanted to put it right by shooting somewhere impressive a little closer to home – Wrest Park. A location that holds a bit of family history with my uncle having studied with the National Institute of Agricultural Engineering when it was based here and going back even further a female relative worked here as a servant in the Victorian era.
The front of the House. However if you’ve driven down this far you’ve missed the visitor carpark! 1s 111mm F45 - Focus set at 8m.
The Long Water leading to the Pavilion lives up to its name. 1/2s 111mm F45 - Focus set at 8m.
The estate itself dates back about six hundred years, but most of what you see today comes from the last three centuries. The current house was built in the 1830s and is unique and unusual as it blends 19th century English architecture with 18th French styling and the formal gardens from this period are also one of the few remaining across the whole the country. Beyond the splendid house is a sprawling set of gardens, large amounts of woodland and other impressive pieces of architecture that really impress upon you that this is a stately home. The Long Water (one of the estate’s oldest features going back to the 17th century) leading to the Pavilion being the most iconic view of Wrest Park and one everyone thinks of when you mention the name. The whole site is still in a twenty-year period of renovation following English Heritage’s acquisition in 2006.
Unable to fit the entirety of the beautiful Orangery into a single frame, I chose to show off the side that was the least obscured by vegetation. 1s 111mm F45 - Focus set at 8m.
The iconic Pavilion which is the symbol of Wrest Park. 3s 111mm F45 - Focus set at 8m.
But enough about the estate itself, what about the photography? Having had a re-think after seeing my photos from Berlin and Sanssouci I did alter the way I framed my images to ensure everything I wanted was in shot. I also came to the (correct) conclusion that the light leaks were due to bright sunlight hitting the back of the film through orange framing window (hence why the light leaks were orange). When this camera was first released in the 1920s this probably wasn’t an issue as everyone would have been shooting very slow black and white film with low sensitivity to light. I quickly fixed this by covering it with black electrical tape that was easy to peel back when I need to advance frames (though not in direct sunlight!). I have seen some pocket cameras in the past that actually have a sliding cover to perform this job.
Though the fountain wasn’t in operation when I visited, the marble statues of the Round Pond are impressive in their own right. 2s 111mm F22 - Focus set at 4m.
So too are the other freestanding statues close by. 1/4s 111mm F22 - Focus set at 4m.
The Hawking Party - once upon a time a hawk sat on the woman’s outstretched arm, however it went missing about fifty years ago. Perhaps it’ll turn up in someone’s attic one day. 1s 111mm F22 - Focus set at 8m.
This time around I was much happier with the results. The images were correctly framed and there were no light leaks. Though I was using a slower and more detailed film, being my first time using CineStill 50D. As I had found Ilford Pan F Plus 50 being the best fit for this camera in black and white, I figured an ISO 50 colour negative film would also work best. Sure enough, just like with Pan F, I was very impressed with the detail this camera was able to render with such a small and primitive lens. The interior shot I took inside the house at F22 really does stand out, as it doesn’t have the loss of detail to diffraction that the images at F45 do. Though this camera’s number one problem remains that the plane of focus is not quite straight when the bellows is extended which means big F numbers are required to keep everything sharp. Better to have a bit of diffraction than the whole thing be out of focus.
The Chinese Temple is one of my favourite features at Wrest Park, with lovely colours and design. 6s 111mm F45 - Focus set at 8m.
Nearby is also the attractive looking Chinese Bridge. 1s 111mm F32 - Focus set at 8m.
Only shooting two rolls (sixteen images total) certainly made life easier than the four I shot in a day at Sanssouci, but it was still surprisingly challenging to come up with compositions I was (mostly) happy with. Some digital cameras can breeze through sixteen frames in well under a second and yet with film, especially in larger formats, I often find myself struggling to finish all my rolls on an outing.
At three hundred years old, the Bowling Green House predates the main House by a century. 3s 111mm F32 - Focus set at 15m.
But it’s inside that will impress you the most with this ornate chimneypiece that was restored in 2004. 250s 111mm F22 - Focus set at 6m.
I am not sure when I will use this camera again. It can be a real joy to look at the results when it goes well, but of all the cameras I own it’s the one I find the most difficult to use and sometimes I just want to enjoy the day rather than worry about wasting increasingly expensive film in an experiment with an antique. However, I find my shooting often goes in cycles. I’ll shoot one format and camera for a while and then rotate to mix things up and keep things interesting. It all depends on where I draw my inspiration. I’m sure it won’t be the last time you see the pocket camera on this blog.
Like something straight out of a fantasy novel, the derelict Bath House definitely stands out as you approach it. It’s dilapidated state further enhances it I feel. 2s 111mm F32 - Focus set at 8m.
The only interior shot of the main House I managed to get before it closed. I know next time to go earlier. I was very impressed by the level of detail this lens and film combination was able to resolve, and I had little difficult in adjusting for reciprocity failure, even if the exposure time clocked in at six minutes! 360s 111mm F22 - Focus set at 2m.
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