• 1254: Forestville State Park, MN / Fireworks from Quarry Park, Eagan, MN (4 July 2021. Eastman Double-X 5222 as Cinestill BW XX @ EI 200.) (On top.)
  • 1252: Guckeen, MN / Imogen, MN / New Ulm, MN. (12 June 2021. Adox CMS 20 II Pro @ EI 20.)
  • 1251: Michigan. (3?–5 June 2021. Ilford Ortho Plus @ EI 80.)
  • 1244: second vaxx trip to Detroit Lakes / Chicago. (19—30 May 2021. Film Photography Project Low ISO film = Eastman 2366 @ EI 6.)
  • 1243: Como Park Observatory / BlackStack Brewing / second vaxx trip to Detroit Lakes. (15–19 May 2021. Rollei Retro 80S.) (On bottom.)

Five different rolls, all shot at box speed; several are film I’ve never before shot and developed. Developed on 35mm rolls in the five-roll tank. This is just a standard sixty-minute semi-stand development with one agitation interval after the first minute.

Loaded inside daylight changing bag. Pre-wet film for about half an hour. During the pre-soak, mixed 12 mL Rodinal in 1L distilled water. Poured developer in and topped off with distilled water. Agitated 40x over the first minute then 10x at 30:00. These are half-agitations, gently (i.e., gently twisting to a 90-degree inversion, then gently back). Kept orientation the same throughout development: this larger tank leaks a bit.

After 60 minutes, disposed of developer, rinsed in 68 degree water. Fixed in Ilford Rapid Fixer 1+4 for 6 minutes (that’s now 29 rolls from this batch of fixer), inverting 10x over 15 seconds at the top of every minute. Dumped fixer and rinsed for ten minutes, then emptied tank, added a few drops of Photo-Flo, filled tank with distilled water and agitated 20x, and hung negatives vertically to dry.

Evaluation and notes

Roll 1243

I really like the way this looks in Rodinal. Really soft response curve that shows off the textures of what’s being photographed. I’m starting to think that my red filter interferes with the camera’s ability to correctly meter the shot for exposure – a lot of shots taken with it seem to be overexposed – although on this roll that may have more to do with the infrared sensitivity of the film.

Been experimenting with scanning the BW negatives in color, which has the effect of producing sepia-toned negatives in Rodinal, but more substantially seems to bring out more detail in certain circumstances, especially in bright areas that are blown out in B/W scans. Sometimes this even brings out more detail than scanning to .dng and postprocessing with my HDR workflow. Too, in some cases, the sepia- and purple-toned images have more real depth than in B/W scans, and the colors work beautifully on some of the shots (13 and 14 are especially noticeable here). (Often, though, B/W HDR-processed .dngs show more cloud detail.)

There’s some really beautiful shots here, though, especially the landscape and plant shots – also a few good shots of people (esp. 12). Really glad I ordered a full hundred-foot roll of this film.

photos posted

Roll 1244

Again, really pretty film stock here. Grain is fine, even with Rodinal. The textures are gorgeous, especially on bark (00B), and brick(14), and especially when scanning the negatives in color (01.tif). Scanning to color produces really pretty results here: there’s once again the sense of adding breath, and the yellowish underlying negatives move into the purple-to-brown range when inverted. There are some (01, 05) where the contrast between the foreground and the background is ethereal and really sets off the foreground. (06 and 08 are more examples, where the bright trees stand out from the background of darker forest, which looks a little bit like some of Ansel Adams’s work, I flatter myself.) Many of the forest shots (9, 10) appear sepia in color when scanned in color and inverted, which is quite pleasing in some places.

A fair number of photos are overexposed, some badly so (16); I think this is largely because the film is blue-sensitive and it’s hard to meter accurately with the light meter.

photos posted

Roll 1251

WOW, this is not a successful roll. Stand development at box speed just doesn’t work here. There’s virtually no usable images on this roll.

The Massive Dev Chart suggests rating at 40 and doing a standard agitation schedule. Either alone might have made more images salvageable, but doing neither just didn’t work.

Some of the industrial pictures have a dark, broody tone that almost works, except that it’s really overapplied. Trying this again with more exposure might pay off, though.

Roll 1252

High contrast mostly works well here: there’s some stark industrial imagery in Guckeen that really looks good on CMS 20 II in Rodinal. Often the contrast is too high, though (09, 17) and/or the negatives are just insufficiently exposed for there to be any meaningful contrast (19-23). But the abandoned buildings are great, and the occasional color-scan-turns-out-to-be-purple effect is gorgeous (37, 41).

Shots in New Ulm are a mixed bag. Roland or Olaf or whatever his name is on top of the dome was of course impossible to get an angle on; he faces a steeply sloping downhill slope that means a very long lens and tripod would have to be used from another hill to make it work, and I don’t have such a lens. There’s a lot of water spotting visible on these shots, too; partly this is because working to bring details out in the scan also brings out these spots. But the glockenspiel photos (69 and later) work pretty well, all in all; the contrast is nice and crisp and gives a lot of detail to the shots.

photos posted

Roll 1254

Really love the way this film looks; I’m glad I’ve got three more rolls of this. I can see it being good for portraits: it’s soft and has an even tone response curve, but it almost glows in the brighter areas. Grain is quite fine for a 200-speed film. Rondinal doesn’t seem to harm the grain, either. And it’s quite sharp, showing off the texture of the bark and leaves on trees (03, 05). The exposure seems tricky, though: some shots (11, 19, e.g.) are under- or overexposed despite the light meter giving no indication of trouble and the scene not being unusual in any way related to exposure.

There are some good results from the fireworks (53, 67, 73) in the second half of the roll, but really the film speed is too slow to get much. I shot the end of the roll that was already in the camera when the fireworks started, but the next roll, of Ilford Delta 3200, gave much better results.

photos posted