Cerisaie - Les Esses

For this gentle and relaxing photowalk in my district, Lyon, France, I brought along my French TLR SEMFLEX Standard 3.5 camera (see below for details) loaded with a never-tried yet film Svema FOTO 100 made in Ukraine. The backing paper is black with white numbering and signaling symbols are easy to read across the small red window of my SEMFLEX.

 

For all the frames, my SEMFLEX was equipped with the original SEMFLEX squared shade hood a SEMFLEX yellow filter x2. The film was exposed for 50 ISO to compensate the light absorption of the yellow filter. Metering was done using a Minolta Autometer III equipped with a 10° finder for selective measures privileging the shadow areas or an opale dome for incident light integration.

 

View n° 2: 1/100s f/8 focusing @ infinite, SEMFLEX Yellow filter x2

 

Parc de la Cerisaie - Villa Gillet ***, May 10, 2025

69004 Lyon

France

 

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*** ** PARC DE LA CERISAIE, WHOSE NAME COMES FROM THE PRESENCE, OLD, OF A CHERRY ORCHARD ALREADY BELONGS TO THE CITY OF LYON: SINCE 1976.

Previously owned by the Gillet family, precursors of silk dyeing at the beginning of the 20th century, the park and the Villa built in 1911 by the architect Joseph Folléa communicated at the time directly with their factory installed on the banks of the Saône. In the 60s, their vast industrial empire merged with the Rhône-Poulenc group of which Renaud Gillet was president from 1973 to 1979.

Very quickly, the City of Lyon chose to open this park to the people of Lyon and to direct its vocation towards the Arts. Thus, during the 2nd and 3rd sculpture symposiums of 1980 and 1982 the park hosted many works. Some of them are still there.

The villa, renovated in 1986, also became a place dedicated to the Arts. Initially, it was the headquarters of the Fonds Régional d'Art Contemporain (FRAC), the organization supporting creation, before it was transferred to the Institut d'Art Contemporain de Villeurbanne.

Today, the villa houses three cultural institutions: La Villa Gillet, which defines itself as a Contemporary Research Unit and is interested in all forms of culture (literature, human, political and social sciences, history, or contemporary arts), the Agence Rhône-Alpes pour le Livre et la Documentation (ARALD) whose objective is to promote the culture of writing and activities related to books, and the Groupe Musiques Vivantes de Lyon which works for the creation and diffusion of acoustic music.

 

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After the view #12 exposed, the film was fully rolled to the taking spool and was developed in a Paterson tank with a spiral adapted to the 120-format film. 500 mL of Adox Adonal (Agfa Rodinal) developer were prepared at the dilution 1+25 and the film processed for 7 min at 20°C. The first view was shifted by about two frames leading to only 10 views on the film. This is clearly due to a quality problem. The backing paper was improperly positioned during the spooling of the film.

 

Digitizing of the remaining 10 frames, was made using a Sony A7 camera (ILCE-7, 24MP) held on a Minolta vertical macro stative device and adapted to a Minolta MD Macro lens 1:3.5 f=50mm. The light source was a LED panel (approx. 4x5') CineStill Cine-lite fitted with film holder "Lobster" to maintain flat the 70mm films.

 

The RAW files obtained were inverted within LR and edited to the final jpeg pictures without intermediate file. They are presented either as printed files with frame or the full size JPEG together with some documentary smartphone pictures..

 

About the camera and lenses :

 

My French Semflex TLR year 1959-1960 is equipped with triplet 1/3.5 f=75mm SOM Berthiot lenses as descripted bellow.

 

The SEM company ("Société des Etablissements Modernes de Mécanique") was founded in France by Paul Royet in 1946, in the small city of Aurec near Saint-Etienne (Loire). The SEM camera's was known essentially for the TLR Semflex that were a great commercial success in France until the 70's. The camera's are constructed around an injected aluminum alloy chassis, very resistant and rigid permitting precise optical alignments. The focusing mechanism is made of a cam system like the Rolleiflex giving an accurate and smooth focusing. SEM constructed their own shutters called Orec with 5 leaves capable of the 1/400s to 1s with B.

 

Semflex received in majority French optics Berthiot with 3 or 4 lenses (Tessar type). Some camera's were also mounted with Angénieux lenses.

 

Semflex were trusted TLR camera's used by amateurs and for professional purposes. From 1949 to 1976, 171.000 Semflex were produced in many different types and versions.

 

My Semflex in a middle grade version Standard 3.5 type-10 (1959-1960). It was the last version mounted with the 3-lens SOM Berthiot 1:3.5 f=75mm. I got the camera with set of accessories and several documents including the user manual of the Semflex Standard 4.5 versions. The accessories include a leather SEM ever-ready bag, a Semflex push-on shade hood, a Semflex push-on yellow filter x2 in its original box, and close-focusing lenses. The 1D one is constructed with a prism for the finder lens that compensates the parallax in the zone 1m to 0.5m.

 

The decorative ring around each lenses can also receive push-on accessories in 36mm diameter as the FOCA or Leitz 36mm filter series. I adapted two protective lens caps from Kodak film canister snapped covers.

Done