• 1406: Drive down I-5 toward Rancha Ladera / The Salton Sea (24–25 Sept 2023. Ilford PanF+ @ EI 50 in Minolta XE-7.) (on top.)
  • 1405: New Mission, San Juan Capistrano / Drive up US 1 / Drive down I-5. (23–24 Sept 2023. Film Ferrania P30 @ EI 80 in Pentax K1000.)
  • 1390: Hannibal (MO) Riverview Park / St. Louis breweries and restaurants / St Louis art museums. (13–14 July 2023. Film Ferrania P30 @ EI 80 in Minolta XE-7 in Minolta XE-7.)
  • 1357: Cherokee Regional Park / Battle Creek Regional Park / Newport, MN (21–26 Apr 2023. CatLABS X Film @ EI 320 in Minolta XE-7.) (on bottom.)

Last batch for tonight is another mixed batch for stand-developing.

Loaded inside daylight changing bag. Pre-wet film for ~30 minutes. During the pre-soak, mixed 9.5 mL HC-110 into ~800mL distilled water. Poured developer in to the four-roll (one-liter) tank and topped off the tank with distilled water (to ~1.15L). 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 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, filling the tank three times and agitating 10x, 10x, and 20x respectively, before pouring out water. Fixed in fixer 1+4 for 6 minutes, inverting 10x over 15 seconds at the top of every minute. (That’s now 10 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 distilled water and agitated 20x, and hung negatives vertically to dry.

Evaluation and notes

Roll 1357

My first roll of CatLABS X Film. For some reason, I decided to shoot most of the roll with a red filter on; I vaguely recall reading somewhere that this would enhance the IR-range visual characteristics of the film. I don’t know where; it’s certainly not on the vendor info page. Anyway, it didn’t work, either because I just made that up or because I used the wrong type of red filter. The only visile difference was that much of the roll is underexposed. There seems to be a problem with light piping, too: the first few shots on the roll show light-exposure streaks.

The few cityscapes on the roll look good, though: I think 03A was shot before I attached the red filter (and I should have taken better notes), and the film gives really nice contrast to the visible parts of St Paul from across the Smith Avenue bridge. But the vegetation shots in Cherokee Regional Park are basically a loss: some of them have rather interesting geometric forms in terms of composition, but the filter drives underexposure and increased grain, especially under the canopy of overhanging tree leaves and branches right along the bluff (05A–11A and most of the rest of the shots to 17A).

The problem is a bit less pronounced in the shots from Battle Creek, but still prevalent, and it still renders the photos too muddy and grainy for me to think that many of them are potentially usable. Similarly, the industrial shots from Newport are basically a loss.

Not the best experiment I’ve tried with a new film. Luckily, I have several more rolls of it to use as a better test.

Roll 1390

Another roll of Film Ferrania P30, and I feel like I’m starting to get a handle on how the film reacts. Notably, it doesn’t have much exposure latitude in the shadows, even compared to other relatively high-contrast films. See, e.g., 03, where the statue really has very little visible separation from the background foliage, even though it looked much brighter, and not just differently colored, live. Similarly, the landscape shots at the beginning of the roll let the darker shades slip into shadow and the sky go almost white; this is a film that really does prioritize the midtones, which seems to be (at least a good chunk of) what makes it “look cinematic.” (There are also times where this works fairly well, as in 07, where the people drinking on the patio at Shared Brewing are all in shadow and the gauzy cityscape is correctly exposed behind them. The same strategy doesn’t work nearly as well on the very next frame: the people at Fork and Stix are too underexposed for the composition to work.)

Much of the rest of the roll doesn’t work well for the same reason: too much contrast to effectively render its subjects. This really isn’t a great film for landscapes, for instance; and many of the photos of statuary at the St Louis art museum would have needed more exposure to be plausible, or more contrast: gray stone against gray skies in 16–19, which were meant to be a panorama, makes it not worth stitching. But 24 looks great! The statue against the columned background of the museum exterior really pops. Some of the other sculpture in the last third of the roll works well too (25 stands out nicely against the grass; and the Henry Moore shots in 28 and later are mostly successful, again largely because the background is visually distinguishable without cognitive effort.

All in all, mediocre results, but I learned a lot about what the film is good for.

Roll 1405

Some of the Californiaest photos I’ve ever taken are on this roll. Palm trees and missions and the highway next to the Pacific Ocean, all shot on B/W film that’s intended to look like 1950s stock? Damn.

Anyway. Film is definitely too slow to do a great job on the interior of the mission while the camera is being hand-held, but still, the results are really surprisingly good, if quite dark. But it’s a pleasant, rich darkness, and there’s detail in it, and there are usable shots of the Mission’s interior (03, 05, 06, 07).

Outside, the roll really comes into its own: the texture on stone sculpture (08) is fine-grained and beautiful, and the shots of the mission itself are well-executed; I’m looking forward to stitching that panorama (10–15) of the mission’s bell tower. The shots along US 1 and Interstate 5 have some very pleasant moments, notably 20, 28, 36, and arguably 19, which is not quite in focus but which might work despite that.

All in all, there’s plenty to complain about here, but also a lot of nicely executed photos. I’m happy in with this roll.

photos posted

Roll 1406

Another meh roll of PanF+. Too bad, it’s a rather interesting roll, subject-wise, and I wish it would pop more. Another “maybe I should abandon stand development for PanF+. Or just stop shooting PanF+” moment, here.

But some of the photos here work well, actually. The sign in 03 looks nice and sharp, for instance. So does the graffiti in 23.

Some photos do not work quite well. The dynamic range in 05 and 06, for instance, doesn’t really capture any shadow detail; many other shots of palm trees on this roll have similar problems. (It is often the case that the tonemapped digital negatives look worse in this regard than the straight scans, even though compressing the dynamic range by tonemapping seems like it should pay off. 12 is a case in point here.)

The standard problems with shooting from the passenger seat of a moving car also apply here: it’s hard to keep the horizon straight; it’s easy to accidentally capture part of the car’s frame, especially on a relatively bumpy road; composition is difficult when elements are constantly changing position relative to each other; film gets used up faster because taking one shot and then another is a more likely course of events when you can’t really back up to optimize the position of the camera for composition. And desert shooting is always difficult: high contrast between bright sand and deep shadows is a problem here.

But all in all, some nice shots on this roll.

photos posted