• 1359: Art in Bloom @ MiA. (28 Apr 2023. JCH Street Pan @ EI 400 in Pentax K-1000.) (on top.)
  • 1358: Newport, MN / plants at home in St Paul. (29 Mar–7 Apr 2023. Wolfen PF2 @ EI 3 in XE-7.)
  • 1351: New Mexico. (28 March 2023. Fomapan? 100? @ EI 100 in new Minolta XE-7.)
  • 1344: Plague of Stars @ The Hook and Ladder for Merry Krampus 2022 / Minneapolis. (3 Dec 2022–23 Jan 2023. Ilford FP4+ @ EI 125 in Pentax K-1000.) (on bottom)

Still catching up on my film backlog! Still have plenty to do. 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 four-roll tank and topped off the tank with tap water. Agitated 40x over the first thirty seconds or so, knocked on the tank several times to dislodge bubbles, and let it sit for one hour. Gave ten additional agitations at 30:00. All agitations are all half-agitations, gently (i.e., gently twisting to a 90-degree angle, then gently back).

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. (That’s now 25 rolls of film fixed in this batch of fixer.) 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 1344

I had forgotten that I’d shot a roll of FP4+ at this concert, largely because I’d accidentally brought a roll with me and decided to use it on the opening band instead of the main act. But I wound up needing to bow out early, so there was no need to save the other films for later in the concert; still, I’m surprised and impressed by how well this performed in the given lighting situation. Once again, I’m thinking I should be shooting way more FP4+. (And stand-developing it in HC-110.)

Again, as with roll 1343, this band is fun to photograph. I had less luck with this roll, but that’s not because of the film type. There was just less luck, as with 09, where the lighting changed between when I started to push the button and when the shutter finished exposing the film. It’s just that shooting pictures, especially film, at a concert is always a crapshoot.But there are some nice shots here that I’m proud of: 06, 17, 19, and 21 are particularly great.

There’s also some “too bad that people were standing in front of the camera” shots here: 01, for instance.

All in all, using the slower film here meant that there were more blurry shots: 10, 12, 13, etc. No surprise; the surprising outcome is that so many other shots, not all with faster shutter speeds, came out so well. If I find myself having to shoot FP4+ again, I think I’ll worry less about shutter speed and trust the HC-110 stand to bring out detail more than I expected it to with this roll.

photos posted

Roll 1351

An interesting … uh, let’s call it an experiment. I had a bulk-rolled cassette in my film bag, on which I had put a small piece of masking tape on which I had written down the type of film, but by the time I loaded it, the markings I had scratched on the masking tape had bled and become illegible: and that was how I learned not to write on masking tape with a felt-tipped pen if I wanted the writing to remain legible. I guessed it to be Fomapan 100, which was one plausible interpretation of the markings, and stand-developed it, which led to acceptable results. There are no edge markings on the film. There also seems to have been some light bleeding into the cassette, which is especially visible at the beginning of the roll. This may be due to a loose cap for the cassette, or perhaps the cassette itself was cracked? (I have since thrown out a cracked bulk-loading cassette; let’s hope that it was the one holding this film, if the cassette itslef was cracked, as by the time I’d got the film in the scanner, the defective cassette had been cycled back into the store of unused cassettes.) All in all, I’m glad I got anything usable off of this roll at all: some of it is quite nice.

Anyway, whatever film it is, it resulted in low to moderate grain with a smooth, even response curve, and certainly looks good in HC-110. Much of the early to middle part of the roll is just shot along I-40 on the way to Albuquerque, and there’s some interesting signs (11, 12, 14), shops (06), and abandoned buildings (13) along that route—some interesting opportunities for landscapes (07–09, 16, 18–20), too, even if just shot from a moving car. Lots of the roll does in fact seem overexposed and/or overdeveloped, but not unsalvageably so: and perhaps that’s just to be expected when shooting and developing unknown film.

The middle to end of the roll is Albuquerque, and I’m quite happy with many of the pictures of signs downtown, especially 23, 24, 27, 31. Albuquerque is sufficiently unconstrained by geographical limits that there are good opportunities for interesting rural-looking landscapes inside the city limits, as in 29, 30, which are simply farms in the outskirts of residential areas, showing that late winter look quite nicely on this mystery film.

All in all, not bad for a roll of badly labelled mystery film.

photos posted

Roll 1358

First roll of Wolfen PF2 I’ve shot. It’s an interesting film stock: very fine grain, genuinely orthochromatic, really really smooth. And, of course, as ISO 3, there’s very little exposure latitude, as the middle of the roll shows. There’s also apparently a problem with sprocket hole surge (03, 05, 13, 27–30, 33–34), and I think future rolls might need more agitation, possibly without stand development.

Textures of brick and stone look really good (e.g., 06, 07), though the low exposure latitude really shows off lens vignetting sometimes (06, 14). All in all, it’s a good stock for architecture and landscapes … provided that there’s enough light, or a sufficiently long shutter speed can be used.

Photos of the indoor vegetation are interesting but are largely badly underexposed. One exception is 15, where the rose stem stands out clearly against the background and is genuinely beautiful, a rich dark gray with clearly defined thorns and a weirdly dreamy look. Pretty much all the other shots in the 15–24 range are too underexposed to be salvageable, though. (Though 29 and 30 might have been salvageable if this emulsion weren’t so easily damaged. Jeez.) 31 and 32 are reasonably interesting rose-stem photos again: since they’re outside, they almost got enough light, and the dark-green rose stem became a rather interesting silhouette. The greenery in the last two shots from the roll also has an interesting, weirdly Victorian-looking texture.

All in all, a good special-purpose film that I’m looking forward to shooting more of. Stand developing in HC-110 is a surprisingly good move for this film, considereing how poorly it’s played out for some of the other oddball Wolfen stocks.

photos posted

Roll 1359

Multiple problems here:

  • Almost every frame is scratched. Either this came from JCH scratched, or the emulsion is very, very sensitive. (There’s also some weird problem where only frame ten looks very lightstruck in a particular evenly distributed pattern?)
  • The shooting situation was too dark to get good results. This should have been pushed. (HP5+ or Kentmere probably would have been OK in this lighting situation, though. And, by way of comparison, the first three-quarters of roll 1360 were shot at the same event, and it is Fomapan 400 at EI 400, and looks much, much better.)

Too bad, this is the second roll of Street Pan that I’ve shot. Disappointing.