• [empty spool] (on top.)
  • 1267: Como Park Conservatory (19–28 Sept. 2021. Eastman Double-X @ EI 200.)
  • 1266: Minneapolis Institute of Arts / Como Park Conservatory (17–19 Sept. 2021. Kentmere Pan 400 @ EI 400.)
  • 1260: Photo drive, St. Paul. (5 August 2021. Fomapan 100 as Arista .EDU @ EI 100.)
  • Guest roll A. (unknown dates, ??Sept. 2021. Kodak Technical Pan @ EI 25.) (On bottom.)

Four different rolls, all shot at box speed, leaving the top spool empty because that makes rinsing easier. One is a roll sent to me, exposed, by an acquaintance online, so I’m trying to develop Kodak Technical pan with stand development in Rodinal for the first time. 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. I’m reducing the agitation in the middle of the stand interval to a single inversion followed by balancing the tank on its head; I think I’ve been overdeveloping in the past and I want to see if this helps.

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. After the pre-soak, poured developer in and topped off with distilled water. Agitated 40x over the first minute, then inverted tank once without further agitating at 30:00, letting tank stand on its lid for the remainder of the development period. Initial agitations are half-agitations, gently (i.e., gently twisting to a 90-degree inversion, then gently back). After the half-time inversion, let tank sit upside-down, monitoring for leaks. There are none, so it looks like the lids are correctly matched to the tanks again.

After 60 minutes, disposed of developer, rinsed thoroughly in 68 degree tap water. Fixed in Ilford Rapid Fixer 1+4 for 6 minutes (that’s now 16 rolls from this batch of fixer), inverting 10x over 15 seconds at the top of every minute. Dumped fixer and rinsed for ten minutes in tap water, 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 1260

Overdeveloped, but via-HDR scanning restores detail in lighter areas on most shots. Detail in darker areas is a little harder to recover but there’s plenty of places where that works fine, too.

Composition on the Lumen shots (3 through 11) is often questionable but it was hard to get a reasonable viewpoint from the street, and I’m not sure that the 28mm lens worked as well as I’d hoped. Works better for the shots near the highway 52 overpass (13 through 29), though. I really like the the sinuous lines and unbalanced dynamism of the urban structures in a lot fo these shots.

There’s less to like overall in the Union Yard shots, I think, though they have their moments too, especially 31, 41.

57 is nice; again, dynamically unbalanced composition that works well, and the texture on the bricks is beautiful. 59, 61, 63, 71, 73 also have nice bricks.

Roll 1266

Reminding me again that I really like Kentmere. Nice, even response curve, lots of visual separation between colors, grain is relatively fine for the speed. The shots in MiA are less grainy than the Fomapan. Texture on the statues is nicer, too.

Outdoor shots at the conservatory are often overexposed. But the plants look gorgeous, especially 20, 22, 26; and the shots of the woman in the puffy dress really have excellent textures. Water is nice and black when it appears, showing off the whites and grays of the plants.

photos posted

Roll 1267

Rather overdeveloped, but again, via-HDR scanning and tonemapping saves a lot. Double-X is, I notice again, hard to meter for, since it’s not panchromatic: some shots are much more overexposed than others, though all were metered in the same way.

There really is a nice response curve here, especially noticeable on shots of plants. The photos from the arboretum are gorgeous; the few street-type photos are less successful here, and not just due to compositional and timing infelicities: the film is less suitable to human skin tones.

Largely a successful roll, overall, even if overdeveloped. Think this needs to be exposed differently next time, though.