• 1398: John Michael Kohler Arts Center / Zumbrota (MN) covered bridge / Maplewood, MN / White Bear Lake, MN (13 Aug. 2023–18 Oct 2023. Kono Monolit 100 @ EI 100 in Minolta XE-7.) (on top.)
  • 1385: Munsinger Clemens Gardens / Hannibal, MO, and environs (1–13 July 2023. Adox CHS 100 II @ EI 100 in Minolta XE-7.)
  • 1384: Munsinger Clemens Gardens (St Cloud, MN). (1 July 2023. Rollei RPX 100 @ EI 100 in Minolta XE-7.)
  • 1381: Eels at First Avenue. (20 June 2023. CatLABS X Film @ EI 320 in Konica Z-Up.) (on bottom.)

Finally starting to get this film backlog down. Twelve rolls tonight leaves me with only 19 more rolls to develop!

Loaded inside daylight changing bag. Pre-wet film for ~20 minutes. During the pre-soak, mixed 8.4 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 sixty 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 68-degree tap water, filling the tank three times and agitating 5x, 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 14 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 1381

My intent on getting this little point-and-shoot was that it would be easier to get a non-SLR into concerts. This turns out to be true, but this little Konica, general photo quality notwithstanding (see roll 1355), just doesn’t do well in concert lighting. Not having manual control over shutter speed is a deal-breaker here.

Nothing usable on this roll.

Roll 1384

First roll I’ve shot of Rollei RPX 100, and damn, I really like the way this looks. Very fine-grained, and moderately high contrast, and it really shows off the stonework on the fountain at the beginning of the roll (especially 05, 07) and the stone flowerpots after the midpoint (22, 23, 27). Meanwhile, the contrast helps the backlit fountain shots (08–13) lets the back-illuminated water take center stage, while the silhouettes of the stonework, buildings, and people fade pleasantly into the background.

Shots of roses (15–21) are largely disappointing; no surprise, I guess: the loss of color didn’t leave enough interesting material to make the shots more than mediocre experiments in desaturation. The blooms don’t fill enough of the frame to make them the real subjects of the compositions in their own right. Some of the later shots of other kinds of flowers (29–34), though, are excellent; 32 in particular is gorgeous, and I wish I could reliably produce floral compositions with that much dynamism on demand.

All in all, gorgeous roll of film. I’m looking forward to shooting more of this.

Roll 1385

Another very impressive first (for me) roll: CHS 100 II looks great stand-developed in HC-110. Clean, moderately high-contrast, handles vegetation better than most B/W films. Very pleasant, all in all. I’m going to want to shoot more of this.

The contrast and grain do a fairly good job of capturing the details on the stone work, though not quite as good as in the shots of the same subjects on the previous roll—which is RPX 100 on the same day. Still, 03, for instance, is quite a nice photo of the stone flowerpot; 14 and 15 similar. Similarly, 07 is a good shot of the back of the park bench that shows off the contours of engraved metal.

It’s got relatively high exposure latitude, but it (mostly) didn’t work great for the photos in the living room—still too dark there. Similarly, many of the photos from Hannibal at the end of the roll are rather underexposed. I think this was right before I wound up changing the battery for the light meter?

In any case, beautiful roll.

photos posted

Roll 1398

Well, doubling the film speed relative to roll 1397 made the interior of the Kohler Arts Center easier to photograph, although it was still rather difficult to get good shots in there. That was because I only had slow and medium-speed film in my bag, so ISO 100 was the best I could do by that point in the trip.

All in all, I’m not sure I like the performance of the Monolit 100 inside. The contrast means that details get lost in and near highlights (like the lettering on the sign in 06 and 07 and the details of the brickwork near the lights in 08 and 09), and the sculpture is, overall, not well represented by steep contrast gradients. Similarly, the external architecture shots taken outside (most of 09–13) doesn’t do well, overall, with the film, which forces the midtones to the upper or lower parts of the range. (Though the shots of flowers outside the museum in frame 11 look fantastic.) The same problems are true for the shots of the Zumbrota covered bridge (15–18), which are rather uninteresting-looking. (In all fairness, the bridge’s significance is historical, not architectural, but still, the film isn’t helping.)

The second half of the roll is mostly photos of fall vegetation—I’d hoped that the contrast would pay off, but mostly it didn’t; the general rule that vegetation doesn’t typically separate well or look interesting on B/W film still trumped the effects I was hoping to get from the contrast. There are exceptions (25–27) and the brickwork on 20–24 is really the only interesting architecture on the roll—but all in all, this roll is mostly a learning experience.