• 1488: May Day Parade (Minneapolis, MN). (4 May 2025. Kono! Monolit @ EI 100 in Minolta XE-7.) (on top.)
  • 1487: May Day Parade (Minneapolis, MN). (4 May 2025. Wolfen NP100 @ EI 100 in Minolta XE-7.)
  • 1485: Art in Bloom at MiA. (24 April 2025. Bergger Pancro @ EI 400 in Nikon FE-2.)
  • 1484: Kondō Takahiro sculptures from his Reduction series, plus other sculptures, at MiA. (24 April 2025. TMax P3200 @ EI 3200 in Nikon FE-2) (on bottom.)

Pre-soaked film. During the pre-soak, mixed 1L Caffenol CL in ~800mL water. 16g waterfree washing soda, 12g Vitamin C, 12g iodized salt, and 40g Essential Everyday instant coffee, distilled water. Waited for microbubbling to stop after each addition. Poured into tank, then topped off with distilled water. Agitated 40x over first minute, then 5x over 15 seconds at 20:00 and 40:00. These are half-agitations, gently (i.e., gently twisting to a 90-degree inversion, then gently back).

After 62 minutes, disposed of developer, rinsed in tap water. Fixed in Ilford Rapid Fixer 1+4 for 6 minutes (that’s now 41 rolls from this batch of fixer), inverting 10x over 15 seconds at the top of every minute. Recaptured fixer and rinsed for ten minutes, then emptied tank, added a few drops of Photo-Flo, filled tank again and agitated 20x, and hung negatives vertically to dry.

Evaluation and notes

Roll 1484

Under-fixed, I think; might benefit from re-fixing. There have been a fair number of rolls fixed in this batch of fixer, and I hadn’t yet received my batch of fixer tester, so I just winged it; it’s also the case that TMax takes extra fixing, which I forgot. So re-fixing might pay off here. That said, odd blue cast on these photos notwithstanding, this batch looks good—and sometimes the blue cast on the photos is kind of an eerie serendipitous accident that works well: 04, for instance. It feels appropriate for a memorial of a nuclear disaster in a way that’s hard to articulate. This makes even some (not all!) of the other accidents in this sequence fortuitous—the focus error in 16, e.g., when the oblivious Boomer couple behind me blundered into me as I pushed the shutter button because they weren’t looking where they were going.

It works less well, I think, for the other sculptures at the end of the roll, but there are some keepers here too: Elie Nadelman’s Acrobat in 33A and 34A and her Draped Standing Female Figure in 35A, and the stairway in 31A, mostly.

Roll 1485

Bergger Pancro, like TMax films, requires additional fixing, and this roll is also likely under-fixed and might benefit from re-fixing. I like these less than the TMax from roll 1484 in similar conditions in the same museum on the same day; well, it’s a less sensitive film, in a dark environment. Somehow it also manages to have more grain than TMax P3200, which is wild.

18 and 19 are perhaps usable, with substantial effort in postprocessing; maybe also 23, 24, 26, and 29. Other than that, this roll is basically a loss, and I’m reminded again of my resolution to stop trying to make it work for me.

Roll 1487

Pleasant shots, and the parade was fun, but I’m less unequivocally enthusiastic about this roll; the development seems a bit uneven on some shots (especially 01–03, 23–25). There is also, on some shots (05, 06), less contrast than I would like and less than I expect. But the parade is fun and whimsical, and the relatively low contrast isn’t anything that can’t be fixed with postprocessing. I wonder whether this too might benefit from re-fixing?

Plenty of the floats and vehicles and costumes captured on this roll are fun, but the real treasure is the traditional Aztec dancers (23–35), who make the roll worthwhile on their own. The NP100 does an excellent job of capturing the texture on the feathers in the dress and the details of skin texture, as well as the facial expressions on those in the group.

photos posted

Roll 1488

Kono! Monolit is a fun film stock, and worked well for the parade. It’s just sufficiently high-contrast in Caffenol CL to ensure people stand out from the background (e.g., 03, 06). The oddball postapocalyptic metal sculptures on the float from Southside Battletrain (07–24) work well when exposure was right, but this was tricky with the angle of the sun right near noon and the fact that, well, it’s a parade, and everything is constantly moving around. Makeup and tattoos on people look great on this film/dev combo, too (e.g., 25, 28).

There are some nice photos on this roll, especially of people, when I either got lucky or had the time to meter and focus and think about composition. This roll too might benefit somewhat from re-fixing.