• (empty): empty space, no spool. (on top.)
  • 1318: River Bluffs Center, Lilydale, MN / Hwy 55 and Environs, Minneapolis. (30 Aug 2022. Fomanpan 100 @ EI 100.)
  • 1317: Wisconsin roadside / River Bluffs center, Lilydale, MN. (24–30 Aug 2022. Hand-rolled Rollei Retro 80S @ EI 80.)
  • 1287: Swan Park, Monticello / Munsinger Park, St Cloud. (20 Feb 2022. Astrum FN-64 @ EI 64.)
  • 1289: Saint Paul. (3–15 May 2022. Ilford PanF+ @ EI 50.) (On bottom.)

More catch-up from my film backlog! Yeesh, I still have plenty to do. Only four rolls in the tank this time: putting a fifth spool in keeps the rubber top from gripping the tank as well as I’d like. All development here took place at 72 degrees, which was as low as I could get the cold water to come out of the ground. It’s close enough for stand development, anyway.

Loaded inside daylight changing bag. Pre-wet film for about an hour, then rinsed several times just before development — the FN-64 continues to turn water water an interesting muddy blue. During the pre-soak, mixed 11.5 mL Rodinal in 1L tap water. Poured developer in and topped off with tap water. Agitated 20x over the first minute, then 5x times at 22:00. Initial agitations and halfway-point agitations are all half-agitations, gently (i.e., gently twisting to a 90-degree angle, then gently back).

After 50 minutes, disposed of developer, rinsed in 72 degree water. Fixed in Ilford Rapid Fixer 1+4 for 6 minutes (that’s now 22 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 tap water and agitated 20x, and hung negatives vertically to dry.

Evaluation and notes

Roll 1287

Really pretty roll of film. Nice and crisp, snappy. Lots of midtone details, and still showing some details in the bright snow. All in all, a success, and nice to see after so many of the last few rols have been flawed or uninspired.

As always, FN-64 has good separation between objects and a nice crips contrast. Shadows and midtones have good detail (e.g., 12) without giving up too much detail in the highlights.

The real winners here, I think, are the photos of the fountains. Some of these (e.g, 16–19, 22) look fantastic.

photos posted

Roll 1289

More or less a loss. Too bad, some of these pictures, especially the first few, are promising, if only they weren’t so faded and scratched. The photos of the lunar eclipse have the same problem as with roll 1290, which was sent off for E-6 development: they needed a cable release to avoid camera shake with the long lens and the long exposure times. In fact, rolls 1289 and 1290 are the reason why I now own a cable release for my film SLRs.

Yeesh. PanF+ needs to be developed sooner, and I need to handle negatives more carefully. Or perhaps the changing bag needs to be shaken out more often, or something.

Disappointing.

Roll 1317

Some really beautiful results here: reminds me of why I like Retro 80S so much. The first few shots, of the scenery along the side of the highway in Wisconsin, are gorgeous. It’s a nice look for the abandoned shopping center, too, showing both detail in the sunlit sections and in the sky. The shdows are dark but detail can be recovered by compressing the dynamic range of the DNG files with via-HDR processing.

Something about the falling-apart faades works well with the crisp, bright gray here. The multicolored brick patterns look good on this film, too.

Composition is mostly something I’m happy with on these pictures: there’s nice use of lines in many shots (10/26, 12/28, 13/29, 17/33).

But the wide-angle lens that was used for most of these really exaggerates any deviation from true horizontal that the camera may have had. This was a relatively windy day and there are some shots (6/22, 9/25) where leaning into, or against, the wind meant that I wasn’t paying as much attention to the horizontal orientation of the camera as I should have.

Roll 1318

Clean roll: I am once again struck by just how good Fomapan 100 looks in Rodinal. The response curve is shallower than with Rollei Retro 80S, and having the beginning of this roll be of the same set of buildings as most, including the end, of the previous roll really makes that clear. It’s a different approach to the setting for sure.

Highlights are somewhat blown out in places: e.g., 6, 7. In direct scans, the sky is often blown out, too, but tonemapping the digital negatives restores it.

Beyond that, there are some really nice textures here. Fomapan really pays off with vegetation (22) and back-lit translucent things (25). It’s also really great with textures from wood (9, 11) and brick (14, 21, 27), too.