Loaded inside daylight changing bag. Pre-wet film for ~10 minutes. During the pre-soak mixed 9.6mL Rodinal into distilled water to ~250mL. Emptied out pre-wetting water and poured developer in to the 300mL tank. Agitated 15x over the 30 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 seven minutes (the standard time would be twelve minutes, but I have no way to control temperature today and development is taking place at 78℉, so that’s the time conversion). All agitations are all half-agitations, gently (i.e., gently twisting to a 90-degree angle, then gently back).

After 7:00, disposed of developer, then rinsed 5x/10x/20x in 80-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 10 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 mixed distilled and tap water and agitated 20x, and hung negatives vertically to dry.

Evaluation and notes

Roll 1494

This worked well! There’s a nice tonal range, clean edges, and quite fine grain. I like the looks of the flowers at the beginning of the roll: rich, chunky textures, fine lines, nice separation between tones, and the extremely low speed makes forces aperture wide open and gives many of these photos (e.g., 7) a dreamy look, almost Victorian in ways that I can’t quite articulate—some of the non-floral shots at the Albuquerque Botanical Garden (e.g., 11). The photos of the tree bark that I had the relatively high hopes for (9, 12), though, didn’t wind up being anything special.

I really like the photos of the Albuquerque business signs: again, nice clean lines, nice separation between tones, nice wide dynamic range. 15, 19, and 24 are the obvious favorites what with their modernist lettering and shapes, and I do quite like them; but there’s something moving about the semi-improvised signs and the less-polished, less-self-conscious signs from the less-affluent small businesses later in the roll.

I’m also quite pleased with the weird colonization hagiography in the sculpture garden outside the museum. I thought the sun’s low angle would be problem due to the high contrast, but it works well here, in part because the film’s dynamic range helps to tame the contrast (31 is a prime example here—and 33 is an example of where the contrast is too great for the film to help). Again, the forced wide-aperture/low-depth-of-field situation forces some effects I didn’t anticipate (e.g., 27, where most of the frame is slightly out of focus).

All in all, I’m quite pleased with this roll.