• empty spool. (on top)
  • 1408: Bombay Beach, Salton City, and Mecca, California. (25 Sept 2023. Agfa Copex @ EI 50 in Pentax K-1000.) (on bottom.)

I thought I was fully caught up on my film-developing backlog until I compared roll numbers across sheets of cut negatives waiting to be scanned and folders on my hard drive holding already-scanned photos, and discovered roll 1408 is unaccounted for. So I searched all of my camera bags and coat pockets, but didn’t find it. It turned out to be in the side pocket of the duffel bag I took with me to California in September.

Loaded inside daylight changing bag. Pre-wet film for ~20 minutes. During the pre-soak, mixed 5mL Rodinal in ~400mL distilled water. Poured developer in and topped off with distilled water. Agitated 40x over the first minute, then ten inversions at 30:00. Initial agitations are half-agitations, gently (i.e., gently twisting to a 90-degree inversion, then gently back).

After one hour, disposed of developer, rinsed in ~70 degree tap water. Fixed in Ilford Rapid Fixer 1+4 for 6 minutes (that’s now 45 rolls from this batch of fixer, 22 since replenishment), 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.

Now I’m fully caught up on my film-developing backlog.

Evaluation and notes

Hmmm, another high-contrast roll around the Salton Sea. I really was getting low on film in my film bag by this point in the trip.

In any case, there are some nice shots here, especially those still in the sculpture park. 02 and 03 are nicely rendered shots of the oddball installations, for instance. Outside of the sculpture garden, there’s still plenty of good stuff in Bombay Beach: contrast mostly works well in 11–14. Similarly, 18 has that great graffiti and avoids being too underexposed in shadow. And 27 has a nice shot of that mural on the side of a building, which works with the film largely because it’s structure is highlighted with dark colors, so the contrast doesn’t lose much.

Some of the subjects are much too contrasty to work: the disarticulated ship in 04&ndasp;07 is all shadow, where there should be more detail. Same deal with the structures in 10 (though 11 and 12 basically work, I think). Too much shadow in 15, again (though 16 and 17, of the same building, are recoverable. Much of the second half of the roll is blown out, though: there’s just too much highlight in too many frames (e.g., 19–26 are almost all too low-contrast to pull back the highlights even by tonemapping the digital negative scans).

The end of the roll has some really pleasant lanscapes: 30 is dreamy, with the high-contrast shadowy date palms in the middle distance, the lake in the back, and the motion-blurred scrub brush in the foreground. Ditto 31, with less prominent blurred foreground. And the up-close date palms in 32 are great, with their deep shadows and geometrically aligned bark.