• 1442: Bourbon Street / total solar eclipse in Clinton, AR. (6/8 Apr 2024. Film Washi Z @ EI 400 in Minolta XE-7.) (On top.)
  • 1435: New Orleans City Park Botanical Garden. (4 Apr 2024. Short roll because it jammed in the camera. Hand-rolled Rollei RPX 100 @ EI 100 in Pentax K-1000.)
  • 1433: Grand Isle State Park / NOLA Botanical Garden / Besthoff Sculpture Garden, New Orleans. (3–4 Apr 2024. hand-rolled Rollei RPX 100 @ EI 100 in Olympus XA-1.) (on bottom.)

More photos from our recent trip to and from New Orleans.

Loaded into a 1L tank inside daylight changing bag. Pre-wet film for ~25 minutes. During the pre-soak mixed 8.3mL HC-110 concentrate into distilled water to ~800 mL. Emptied out pre-wetting water and poured developer into the tank and topped off the tank with distilled water. Agitated 40x over the first sixty seconds or so, knocked on the tank several times to dislodge bubbles, and then agitated 10x 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 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 12 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 1433

All in all, this is a more successful roll than 1432; part of that is just that RPX looks great stand-developed in HC-110, and part is that the short focal length on the Minolta is really fun to use with landscapes. There are some nice sharp beach shots (notably 4/37, 9/42, and 10/43).

I think that, all in all, it worked less well at the botanical and sculpture gardens, in part because there’s no real control over exposure in this camera and it was a really sunny day. But there are some pleasant results (15/05, 16/06, 20/10, especially). It’s also the case that the wide-angle lens did interesting stuff with some of the framing (e.g., 21/11 through 23/13 and 30/20) in more or less the ways I was hoping it would work, so I”m pleased that that paid off. The film really looks nice on some of the stonework in the sculpture garden, too (especially 31/21).

Roll 1435

Seems lightly overdeveloped. Aside from that, fun little roll, too bad it jammed early. This film in this developer does a nice job with the texture of the stone in some of the subjects (e.g. 5/38, 6/39).

Roll 1442

Yowza, Washi Z in HC-110 really does a fantastic job in the French Quarter. Again, some nicely chosen moments (02, 11). It works less well, but serviceably enough, in the Arkansas parking lot.

I am extremely happy, though, with how it did with the eclipse itself (17–25), and I want to spend some time trying to pick additional data out of the raw scans.