First Frames with my 1925 Icarette 0

Whew! I was finally able to get out and shoot a roll with the new 1925 Ica Icarette 0 (model 488). It's been a super busy week for me, getting in the grades from last semester and getting ready to start my new job teaching animation as well as trying to get essential work on our old (1950) house's roof before it gets too hot. I couldn't quite budget the time to go for a photo walk with the Ica yet, but I was able to shoot a roll on my way to getting my covid booster.

I have to say that this camera and roll of film offered a lot of surprises. None of them unpleasant.

If you read my first post about this new to me Icarette, I was a little surprised that it had no prism viewfinder (although that was clearly visible in the ebay photos), so I was forced to rely on the Iconometer, the wire frame fold down viewfinder. Viewing through the Iconometer was quite an experience for me! I'm so used to looking through glass of some kind to frame my images, that looking through just the wire frame was almost jarring. I quite enjoyed it even as I realized after developing the frames that either I'm using the Iconometer incorrectly or that it's not very accurate. I suspect the former scenario. My images had much more in the frame to either side of center than was visible during the initial framing. This makes sense though as this camera utilizes a 6x4.5 format.

Silly me, I'm used to getting 12 exposures from a roll of 127 film so I was also surprised when the roll ran out sooner than expected. I lost a frame while fumbling when loading the Icarette and another through setting the exposure incorrectly. When used correctly, this camera will yield 8 frames to the roll.

My other Icarette has it's focus scale in meters. I guess using feet is much more ingrained in me now than I realized. I found focusing using the scale marked in feet on this Icarette much more intuitive than the one in meters. Who woulda thunk?

Another surprise was how contrasty Rerapan 100 (Silberra Pan 100) is when developed in Xtol. The Silberra literature said so, but I didn't really believe it until I saw the results. The photos below had the contrast dialed down in Lightroom as far as I could take it. I wanted these photos to be somewhat high fidelity if possible, but on my next roll of Rerapan I'll leave the contrast intact.

And the last surprise really shouldn't be a surprise, but until I saw how clear and contrasty the photos with this Ica's f/4.5 Zeiss Tessar are, I wouldn't have expected it, again, a pleasant surprise!

Overall, the little Ica was full of pleasant surprises and I look forward eagerly to my next chance to shoot it.

This roll was developed for 12 minutes at 70° F in expended Xtol (Bellini Eco-Film).