• 1234: Hot Sam’s Antiques, Lakeville, MN. (17 April 2021. Lomography Berlin Kino 400 = Orwo N74 @ EI 400. On top.)
  • 1233: West St. Paul and environs. (15 April 2021. Rollei Retro 80S @ EI 80.)
  • 1232: Banning State Park / Twin Cities / Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge / Blackstack brewing. (4-14 April 2021. Kodak Ektachrome E100 @ EI 100.)
  • 1228: St. Paul (1 April 2021. Film Photography Project Low ISO film = Eastman 2366 @ EI 6.)
  • 1227: NE Minneapolis arts district. (29 Mar 2021. Film Photography Project Dracula 35 = Svema FN-64 @ EI 64. On bottom.)

Pre-wet film in tap water for half an hour. Changed water several times: something is bleeding a dark blue guck into the water. Changed water several times until the it came out nearly clear. Mixed 15.4mL Rodinal in 1L of water, poured that into the tank, then topped off the tank with water to ~1.15L. Agitated 20x over first 30 seconds, then 5x at 30:00. Developed for 60:00.

After development, disposed of developer, rinsed in 68 degree tap water, filling the tank and emptying, then doing the same again, but agitating 5x, 10x, then 20x. Fixed in Ilford Rapid Fixer 1+4 for 10 minutes (that’s now 29 rolls from this batch of fixer), inverting 10x over 15 seconds at the top of the every minute. Recaptured fixer and rinsed for ten minutes, then emptied tank. Used Photo-Flo with distilled water, agitated 20x, emptied tank, shook rolls, and hung negatives vertically to dry.

Evaluation and notes

Roll 1227

Gorgeous, contrasty negatives here. The early ones are the same building as the end of 1226, intentionally shot for a comparison, and these show up well vs. PanF+ in Caffenol. Scanning .dng and then processing via standard raw-to-HDR postprocessing path lowers the resulting contrast and brings out medium grays from nearly-bright-whites in some frames (2) but, again, often shows increased haloing. In some cases (11-15), the “natural” contrast is high enough that via-HDR processing is needed to get an acceptable result; in many cases (16) these are still relatively contrasty images with a nice snappy look.

Once again, there’s cat hair getting in the way here.

photos posted

Roll 1228

Really amazing results: this is the first time I’ve scanned at the 35mm film scanner’s maximum possible resolution without thinking that it’s an obvious waste of time and storage. The grain here is amazingly fine, even though Rodinal tends to enhance grain.

Being blue-sensitive and very-low-ISO didn’t prevent getting good results while hand-holding the camera, but it was slightly underdeveloped in places. There are also points where the blue-sensitive film didn’t capture light as I expected because, well, it’s only sensitive to the blue end of the spectrum. (So, for instance, the red brick building at the end of the roll sure did come out dark.)

photos posted

Roll 1232

Still nicely fine-grained, as is often the case with slide film stand-developed in Rodinal, but this particular roll lacks punch. As usual, scanning was a pain, and via-HDR scanning was needed to get good results in many cases.

All in all, for a lot of this, I wish I’d just used standard black-and-white film. There’s one more roll of Ektachrome in the closet, and I’ll use it when I’m short on lower-speed film, but Fuji film seems to work better in Rodinal.

photos posted

Roll 1233

Gorgeous film here. Heightened contrast makes out-of-focus dark and light patches look really good in a lot of shots here, and narrow depth of field is really paying off on these. Using a red or orange filter (alas, the shooting notes were lost when my old phone died) really pays off on the leaves, too. There’s some haloing in places, but it’s subtle and tends to enhance backlighting, so it works out and provides a nice subject emphasis in several shots.

Rodinal’s grain is kind of prominent here for such a low-speed film, but it’s only really noticable in the out-of-focus dark and light patches, so it (again) works out nicely. It’s good for texture, too, though the dark textures of bark are muddy in the shots where they appear. Lights are luminous; darks are chunky.

It’s a sad thing that several frames were lost due to being wound incorrectly onto the spool.

photos posted

Roll 1234

Grain is heavy again, but it often works just fine anyway. This is German movie film again, and it’s got a strong filmic look. Shooting at an antique store was a good move in terms of finding good subject material; it gave a lot to work with the filmic look on.

Middle grays are kind of mushy in some places; I think underexposing by a half-stop or full stop in well-lit scenes might pay off on a future roll. (But then, this roll was developed in Rodinal 1+75, and better results might come from 1+100.) Dark grays are great, though: thick and looming. via-HDR processing puts a lot of details into the sky, too. (Or recovers them, rather, of course.)

photos posted