Two more rolls, with standard agitation schedule.

Loaded inside daylight changing bag. Pre-wet film for ~90 minutes. During the pre-soak mixed ~15.6mL HC-110 concentrate into distilled water to ~400 mL. Emptied out pre-wetting water and poured developer in to the 500mL tank and topped off the tank with distilled water. Agitated 20x over the first thirty seconds or so, knocked on the tank several times to dislodge bubbles, and then agitated 5x every 30 seconds to a total development time of twelve minutes. All agitations are all half-agitations, gently (i.e., gently twisting to a 90-degree angle, then gently back).

After 12 minutes, disposed of developer, rinsed 5x/10x/20x in 68-degree tap water. Fixed in fixer 1+4 for 6 minutes, inverting 10x over 15 seconds at the top of every minute. (That’s now 28 rolls 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 1353

Well, it’s an interesting experiment with very low ISO film. Wolfen DP31 really does have quite a narrow dynamic range and very little exposure latitude, and it’s definitely not a great film to be using for landscapes: the “no separation between greens and browns” problem is worse here than with most other B/W films. Vegetation more or less always looks murky here. (See, especially, 10 and 11.) Photos like 13 and 15 are particularly disappointing, since it would be easier to parse the different textures of the relevant plants and rocks if the exposure latitude were just a little bigger, which means: with almost any other B/W film.

But the film does do a great job with textures, and that saves some of the geology-forward pictures (e.g., 04, 07, 09).

Tonemapping of two-pass digital negatives is basically never a good move here: the dynamic range is narrow enough that flattening it makes the pictures too close to being uniformly gray. The higher contrast of a non-tonemapped scan is, more or less without exception, better here.

It was an experiment, and I guess I have a better idea of how to shoot and develop the remaining rolls of this film. Other than that, though, it wasn’t a successful experiment.

Photos posted

Roll 1375

Another pretty good concert roll, all things considered. I’m going back and forth on whether I prefer this roll to roll 1374, which was Ilford Delta 3200 in Rodinal, and shot in the same place immediately before, under the same lighting conditions. All in all, I think that I like the response curve of TMax P3200 better; but the grain is less pleasing and more prominent.

But the Brass Messengers were a fun group to shoot, reservations about grain notwithstanding. The musicians are really into their music, and put on a good show visually. The clarinet player standing front and center, in particular, really goes all in, and his posture and the design of his shirt help to make sure that almost every shots is a good concert picture. The tuba whose bell sits right next to the clarinet player’s head is also visually appealing; there’s something about seeing a curve of metal with a hole in the middle where the general pattern of the rest of the players leads the viewer to expect someone’s head is striking and visually incongruous.

The roll is slightly overdeveloped, but tonemapping .dng files pulls the highlights back and makes shots usable.

Fun roll to shoot. I would totally see this band again.