• (empty): empty space, no spool. (on top.)
  • 1297: Failure @ Turf Club, St Paul. (2 July 2022. Arista EDU [Fomapan 400] @ EI 1600 in K-1000.)
  • 1350: US Hwy 54, NM / Glenrio, NM/TX. (27 March 2023. Kono! Monolit 100 @ EI 100 in new Minolta XE-7.)
  • 1352: Petroglyph National Monument / southern Colorado. (29–31 March 2023. PanF+ @ EI 50 in K-1000.)
  • 1338: Home / Owatonna State School for Orphans. (29 Oct–2 Nov 2022. FP4+ @ EI 125 in Pentax K-1000.) (on bottom)

Still catching up on my film backlog! Still have plenty to do. First roll shot with my new Minolta XE-7, which I quite like; and first time using HC-110 to develop. Lots of firsts here! FIlm was essentially picked to be four rolls of film of different types to see how well that works in HC-110 stand development. There’s two more totally separate batches going through tonight, too.

Loaded inside daylight changing bag. Pre-wet film for ~30 minutes. During the pre-soak mixed 10 mL Rodinal into 1L tap water. Poured developer in to the five-roll tank and topped off the tank with tap water. Agitated 20x over the first thirty seconds or so, knocked on the tank several times to dislodge bubbles, and let it sit for one hour. Gave five additional gitations at 30:00. All agitations are all half-agitations, gently (i.e., gently twisting to a 90-degree angle, then gently back).

Mixed up a new batch of Ilford Rapid Fixer 1+4; this will be four rolls fixed with that batch.

After 60 minutes, disposed of developer, rinsed in 70 degree water. Fixed in Ilford Rapid Fixer 1+4 for 6 minutes, inverting 10x over 15 seconds at the top of every minute. Reclaimed 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 1297

Not much of a success. Of course, this roll was shot in the same dismal circumstances as rolls 1296 and 1298. But insofar as the question this roll was trying to answer was “Can I just stand-develop a roll underexposed by two stops in HC-110 without pushing and expect anything usable out?,” the answer is “No.”

Roll 1338

Looks good, mineral- and water-spotting notwithstanding. I think this is my first roll of FP4+ stand-developed in HC-110? It’s fine-grained and stately; it has a kind of gravitas that’s neutral and pleasant. It turns out to be a good choice for photos of food (5–13).

It also turns out to be a good choice for the architectural photos in the second half of the roll. The film/dev combo grants the brick institution (15–20) a solidity appropriate to its grim history. It’s a cool look, an institutional look. Similarly, the photos of the institutional bathroom (21–22), hallways (24), and graveyard (25) have the appearance of objective journalistic documentation.

I should shoot more FP4+.

Roll 1350

Contrasty, relatively low-grain film here, classic-looking “cinematic” feel. Textures are really beautiful here, especially of painted brick (01, 03), wood (05), and grass (10, 14, 17). This is a great film for shooting deserts and ghot towns.

Serious annoyance: the film cassette is not quite the standard size for 35mm film cassettes—the spindle on which the film is wound inside the cassette is not quite long enough. This means it doesn’t sit quite right inside the camera and several shots were lost to inadvertent double exposures for this reason: only about half the roll was usable. This is a real downside to the film.

Roll 1352

PanF+ has been a temperamental film stock for me, and it’s nice to see a roll come out clean and attractive for a change. All in all, the pictures from Petroglyph National Monument look good: clean, neutral response curve, and the petroglyphs really stand out on rock (e.g., 05).

The standard problem for landscapes on black-and-white film applies: vegetation looks dull and uninteresting, and isn’t adequately separated, visually, from geology. This is a real downside at Petroglyph National Monument, which has plenty of both, alongside sand. There are pictures that work decently well despite this problem, though. especially those where there’s a visual separation between plants and rocks that’s spatially apparent (14), or where lighting manages to give the two visibly different tones (arguably, 10 and 11), or where the textures are strongly contrasting (e.g., 12, 14).

The photos from southern Colorado are the real payoff here, though: in particular, that abandoned homestead (26–34) is quite lovely. There being little of either geology or vegetation, there’s no real problem differentiating them, and the dead late-winter grass is easy to process visually. The sky has a nice, even middle-gray tone in these shots (e.g., 27, 28), too. There’s some visible halation (e.g., 1352-28), and maybe a little more agitation is called for here, as 20x/5x is really not all that much. The brick and stonework look especially good on PanF+; so does the graffiti (e.g., 31).

photos posted