Film Developing
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Been a While
.. Since my last post.
Nothing exciting to report really. Been having trouble finding time for photography lately. Well, I shoot stuff, but at an extremely slow rate. I’ll bring the camera out and may only shoot one frame all day. I dont know what it is, but i’m having trouble finding anything visually interesting lately.
For some reason I also have 5 rolls of film sitting in various cameras half finished and another 3 or 4 rolls already shot and waiting to be developed. I’m just not in a hurry to see whats on them.
Saying that though, the other day I got an urge to develop some Neopan 1600 (not so interested in the photos themselves) as i’d never done it before ,so went out to buy some Microphen. At the last minute I changed my mind as i felt like bit of a challenge and decided to use my normal developer – Rodinal. Probably the worst developer you can choose for high iso stuff, but i figured i’d be able to minimise the grain by altering a few developing techniques. I think it worked, i was relatively pleased with the results. Sure they’re grainy, but I dont think any more than what i’d get from another developer, plus the grain is pretty sharp which is nice too.
The roll was an old one I had sitting around, and most were of photos I took on NYE, so things got a little “messy” near the end of the roll/night. I’ll just post one up for now as I haven’t gone through them all yet.
It’s now my mission to develop another roll this week. I need to get back into the routine.
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“Instant” 35mm Film
Well, not quite “instant”, but pretty damn close.
I didn’t know this (maybe you did), but Polaroid used to make 35mm film that you could process at home without messy chemicals, in a matter of minutes. The system seems to of had some popularity at one stage, but like other Polaroid products, the profit margin must of been pretty small and the product was phased out. Several types of film instant film were made (all slide film) in both colour and black & white.The system is based around a hand operated “Autoprocessor”. Into this you place your film and its matching processing unit (single use-comes with each roll of film). You then complete a series of winding actions and hey presto, you’re film is developed in about 2 minutes.
I saw a processing unit and 6 rolls of film going for less than $5 the other day, so thought I’d give it a go. The only thing is, the film had expired in 1984! I was more curious to see if anything would come out at all, and have a bit of fun.I did get results, but as you’ll see, its pretty rough and insanely contrasty, but surprisingly ok for film that could be over 25 years old! I have a few rolls left, so might shoot them deliberately to bring the most out of the unique aesthetic. I’m kind of thinking of the movie “Metropolis”
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Stainless Steel Tanks and Reels
Got these the other day for a massive price of $1.35. Two tanks (a double and a single reel tank), and two reels, with one that is brand new. At least some photography gear is still cheap…
I bought these for when I start my colour developing. Developing C41 of slide film is much more temperature dependant than B&W film, so the conductivity of steel tanks should help me maintain a more accurate temperature. All I need to do now is figure out how to load them, might have to sacrifice a roll to practice =/
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Uncharted Territory
Well, that’s a bit dramatic actually..
The other week I got some Fuji Neopan SS (100iso) as it was super cheap, and I’d never heard too much about it. Felt like trying something different. I decided to shoot a test roll this wee as I couldn’t really wait to use it on something special, i just wanted to see what it’d look like. I was half way through the roll when i noticed something wrong. My camera was set at 400 ISO =/
I initially got annoyed with myself, but then thought it’d be a good opportunity to try and push process the film a little (I’d never tried it before). So I shot the rest of the roll and started looking for some recommended development times. To my astonishment there were hardly any… Well, there were dev times for 100ISO, but nothing for 400.. I started looking at times for other developers but found hardly any info at all.. Thinks weren’t looking good.
After hours of searching I thought I’d just give it a go making an “educated guess”… Actually, it was more of a plain old “guess”.
Somehow, it worked. As you’d imagine I was pretty happy about it all. Actually, it produced some of the nicer results I’d got.
Here they are. Fuji Neopan SS developed in Rodinal at 1+50 @ 21C for 18 minutes, pushed to 400 ISO.
I don’t know what happened with this shot, but thought it looked kind of interesting anyway..
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Scanned some more shots
Scanned some more shots today, nothing profound, more just fodder to try out some new developing times. APX400 in Rodinal at 1:50 for 28 minutes. Its all a learning experience for me so I’m quite pleased with how they turned out. Also, I couldn’t find any suggested times suitable, so I kind of had to make my own up.
The thing I’ve noticed lately with film is that shallow depth of field shots looks wonderful. Especially with some nice grain, it has such a unique aesthetic that I really love. In the future I’m going to try and take advantage of that more.
