• 1452: Minnesota Landscape Arboretum / Greenway Trailhead, Lone Oak Road / Highway 13, Eagan / Dickson Trail, South St Paul. (26? May–3 June 2024. Rollei Infrared @ EI 200 in Minolta XE-7.) (on top.)
  • 1447: Pomme de Terre, Minnesota. (2 May 2024. Film Washi S @ EI 50 in Minolta XE-7.) (on bottom.)

Two more rolls.

Loaded inside daylight changing bag. Pre-wet film for ~30 minutes. During the pre-soak mixed ~31mL HC-110 concentrate into distilled water to ~400 mL. Emptied out pre-wetting water and poured developer in to a 500mL tank and topped off the tank with distilled water. Agitated 15x 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 11 minutes. All agitations are half-agitations, gently (i.e., gently twisting to a 90-degree angle, then gently back).

After 11 minutes, disposed of developer, rinsed 5x/10x/20x in 72-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 8 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 1447

This is dark, all in all, and I still don’t feel like I have a handle on shooting and developing Washi S yet. But some of the shots came out quite well, especially those of the old schoolhouse in Pomme de Terre (13, 15, 17) and the graveyard and farmland around it (12): the results that work are dark and broody. With the subject matter, it’s like seeing Night of the Living Dead filmed by Julia Margaret Cameron.

Lots of the shots were just too underexposed to work, but all in all, this is an interesting roll that makes me want to shoot more Washi S.

Roll 1452

This infrared film is nice and crisp, even with just a standard red filter instead of a pure infrared filter blocking all visible light. There’s quite a bit of grain and focusing was apparently challenging, though. There’s almost nothing worth looking at in the photos from the Arb, in the first third of the roll; 09 is a notable exception, where the texture of the bark on the tree is gorgeous, and 05 is a nicely balanced composition showing a well-manicured bush.

Photos at the Eagan trailhead (12–22) are punchy—there’s a lot of bright foliage against a medium-gray background, in a way that rarely happens with non-infrared film—but there’s not much intersting in terms of composition … a few trailside treelines (17A) notwithstanding. Much of this is overexposed but not past the point where good scanning and postprocessing can repair the exposure.

Shots in South St. Paul are the real winners on this roll; there’s a real summery set of rural landscapes with minimal to medium evidence of human presence. 23A in particular is kind of a dreamy country roadside composition; 24A is a slightly improved version of almost the same shot. There’s a whole short sequence of similar shots from almost the same vantage point, but I think 24A is the winner overall. The comparative without/with red filter shots—e.g., 30A (without) and 31A (with)—really hightly just how much of an effect the red filter has as a whole on Rollei infrared, even if visible light is still getting through.

All in all, a mixed bag. Mostly a technical experiment, but some usable shots came out of it, and I like some of the results a lot.