Written by Peter Weilnböck
Published on: 2025-07-13
Going deeper into the rabbit hole of analog adventures, once again with a great model.
For my 33rd birthday my wife gifted me a old camera. Probably around twice my age. A lovely old twin lens reflex camera from Zeiss Ikon: The Ikoflex iia.
I took it to a short trip to Osaka, and shot a single roll of 120 film, and the results were… alright, I guess.
For a while I really wanted to use the camera, try it out more, but somehow I did not find the time. After a few months I asked my wonderful wife, if she would know a model that would be willing to put up with me testing out the camera.
And since it was a old camera, I also thought about trying out some older type of film at the same time. I wondered how orthochromatic film would look and feel compared to the more “modern” panchromatic black and white film.
And so the idea for a vintage photo shoot took form.
Katharina took care of the whole organisation, and planned to shoot herself as well. She also quickly had a model in mind that she had worked with before and who would match her vision of vintage vibes quite well.
She also got various props, such as 2 nice vintage chairs (2 because one was a bit smaller than we had expected…)
The model herself (the talented Cailee Oliver also seemed quite on board with the whole idea, she even got 2 different outfits that would match the idea. When the time for the shoot came on April 21st 2025, she also brought an additional third outfit (in a more modern, completely different style), in case we had enough time.
As usual, the more impressive pictures were taken by my wife, with a few being displayed on her website kdw.photo).
But I am quite satisfied with the selection I got as well.
I also used my trusty Pentax MEs as well, and I did get more shots in focus with that. But somehow the images from the Ikoflex do have their own distinct flair, that I quite like.
Over all this meant that I got a rather large selection of images, and a lot of different combinations of camera and film to compare.
Over all, I have to say, that it was a great shoot. Not only was I able to test the camera and film, I also got quite a few shots that I genuinely like. And the soot itself was a lot of fun. Cailee Oliver was great to work with. Not only did she know how to pose, but she brought a lot of fun ideas as well and was very willing to try out goofy poses/ideas as well.
I have to admit, that I was not only surprised by her third outfit, it also did take me a moment to get comfortable with it, since it was the first time for me to shoot someone in lingerie. It somehow still ended up to be the part of the shoot with the highest keeper rate.
And as a small bonus, here is one picture that illustrates the possible pitfalls of using such a camera. Since the lighting was a bit low, I had missed the “1” indicator in the little red window, and wound up a bit too far. And so the last image on one if the FP4 rolls did not fully fit on the film and was therefore cut in half.
However, this rather obvious imperfection meant that Cailee Oliver and quite a few of her followers found this image especially intriguing.
