Loaded into 1.15L tank inside daylight changing bag. Pre-wet film for ~10 min. During the pre-soak mixed 20mL HC-110 concentrate into distilled water to ~800 mL. Emptied out pre-wetting water and poured developer into the tank, topping off with distilled water. Agitated 40x over the first sixty seconds or so, knocked on the tank several times to dislodge bubbles, and then agitated 5x at 20:00 and 40:00. 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 29 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 1470

This roll was fun to shoot and the results look good: low-grain, nice separation of shades, clean lines. I think that I could have downrated it: again, stand-development seems to boost the effective film sensitivity. It’s not too overexposed to recover with some postprocessing, though (mostly; but see, e.g. 22, 24). The contrast on the harvest scarecrows is striking, especially when there are strong dark/light contrasts in the designs (e.g., 08–12, 30, 34). Texture on wood grain (e.g., 18) is great, too.

Not so great a choice for street compositions in bright sunlight, though: 28, for instance, is too washed out

Roll 1479

Interesting choice for brickwork: I was thinking back on roll 1391, the roll of Copex I shot in St. Louis in 2023, when I shot this, and there’s some of what I was hoping for; there’s brightly lit geometries in fine grain and high contraast. But using this on run-drown brickwork instead of the elegant architecture of upscale St. Louis has a series of interesting effects highlighting the decay in the brickwork and the crumbling of the mortar: the crumbling bricks in the upper-middle of 05 are highlighted, for instance, by emphasizing the deviations from the regular geometric pattern of the brickwork. Similarly, the cracks in the foundation on 06 are thrown into relief by the high contrast and deep shadows, and the irregularities are highlighted by the regularity of the underlying pattern. And the patterned texture in the wooden doors in the brickwork (21–23, an dmuch of the late part of the roll showing the Hmong Lutheran church) are very pleasingly rendered. And when the brickwork is in good condition, the lines visible are quite striking: fine-grained and contrasty.

The distinction between brightly lit areas and deep shadow (e.g., 04, 09, 10) is even more stark than I thought; this seems to be one difference between stand-developing Copex in HC-110 and in Rodinal. All in all, I think I like the look of Copex in Rodinal better; but this still looks good.

Roll 1480

The early shots, from the Ektar camera, are interesting: the two half exposures on the single frame have a compositional potential that I haven’t explored in the few rolls I’ve shot on this camera. It’s disappointing that the roll jammed so quickly, but all in all, only a few shots were lost by moving it to another camera in a daylight changing bag.

Pancro looks better here than it does in a lot of other rolls I’ve shot of it; the grain is less aggressive, though still visible. I think agitating less at the midpoint helped; I wonder if reducing it to just one or two agitations in the middle would help more. With the more restrained grain, this looks more like a stately, retro look (and, yes, still with a lot of grain). Surfaces that are already busy (e.g., the bricks and ivy around 35A) show the grain less prominently.

Roll 1482

Noticing again that I really like Wolfen NP100, which probably means I should be shooting Orwo UN54 more often. It’s got an even response tone, rich darks, and pretty fine grain; it really shows off textures well (see especially 02–04, 20). It’s also fantastic for showing off text painted on pavement: 16–19 really show off the quality of the lettering here.

Overall, I’m surprised how well this did inside at MiA, which is typically a rather dark environment to shoot in. Some of the sculpture here really shines on this film: 23, 25, 26 are amazingly textured. So is 36. Shots of other museumgoers are less interesting here, but then, they aren’t standing still like the sculpture is.

Really good results here, overall.