TRIBULATIONS OF A NEW MINOX USER

D. Arvid Weflen


Dad, are those Minox pictures you just printed? They look like real pictures!" "Gosh, kid, you sure know how to hurt someone," I answered, but quickly added that even I had noticed that my Minox pictures were improving.

Way back when I was a kid I had wanted a Minox but for one reason or other, had never gotten one. My wife and son bought me one for Christmas two years ago, and I've had a lot of fun since then, to say nothing about how much I’ve learned about photography. I thought I was pretty good at black and white photography, and that using the small film would be a "piece of cake." As time would tell, I had a lot to learn...

First roll of film - Agfa 400 - what good is a Minox if you can’t use it for sneaky indoor pictures without a flash? Oops, forgot about how much more the tiny negative has to be enlarged as compared to a 35 mm negative. Gee, there was a lot of grain on those pictures!

Second roll of film - Agfa 100 - now that should be fine enough grain, shouldn't it? It had enough speed that I could still take a forbidden picture of the theater production (no logical reason, just because photography is not allowed, I suppose) but I still couldn't blow the pictures up to 8 x 10 with any decent quality. Smaller 4 x 5 prints weren't bad, but I could still easily see the grain.

Hmmmm, a comment in one source said that 2 x 3 prints were often common for Minox prints. I see why. So, I made some smaller prints. Yup, they looked okay, but I still like slightly bigger prints. Better do some more experiments.

Third roll of film - Agfa 25 - much better. Now that my eye isn't instantly drawn to the dinner plate sized grain on the pictures, I started noticing the crisp images of dust on the negatives and occasional fine scratches. A guy can get away with somewhat sloppy darkroom technique if you are dealing with large negatives that don't take much enlargement, but those tiny Minox negatives sure take a lot of enlarging to get to the size of print I like. That means that while pretty much unnoticeable dust on a normal sized negative is not always a serious problem, it sure is when dealing with Minox photography. Well, that problem wasn't too hard to solve. Just stop being so lazy and keep everything spotlessly clean.


Continued in The Minox Memo, Winter 2003, Volume 2, Number 1, Series 2.

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