First shot in the Hongmei HM-1

Ting-ting kindly brought for me, from China, a perfect Hongmei HM-1, a

folding 6x6 or 6x4.5cm camera. I immediately loaded it with some old

XP-2 film I had (expired March 2004!) and I estimated the light for a

rating of 200. It could have stood a couple more stops but it wasn't

bad. Here is the first shot I took with it, the giftor, Dr Ting-ting

herself.



The camera has two red windows, one for 6x4.5 and the other for 6x6.

As long as you remember which negative frame you chose (with

"barndoors" at the film plane) it is easy to move from one picture to

another. The Hongmei HM-1 is a solid camera, with a nice 35mm-style

winding lever, too. I'm looking forward to giving it lots of use.



Ilford 120 film, however, is notorious for having frame numbers that

are nearly illegible through red windows, and I wound the film right

to frame six before I noticed the numbers passing. So the first half

of the film was blank. Then I poorly estimated the light in the room,

so this is the best of the shots, though not bad for a first attempt

with the camera.



I have a roll of somewhat fresher Portra 400 in it now and look

forward to its results.