Storm 2010 - The Aftermath

HC-110 1:49 for 8 minutes at about 68F.

Handball Court

This appears a bit too grainy for a 125 film. Possible reasons:

1. This is the way it is
2. Wrong exposure when taking the picture
3. Wrong developing, HC-110 working solution, develop time, agitation and temperature are off.
4. Scanning problem, sharpening added
5. All of the above

I suspect it's number 3. I mix HC-110 concentrate at 1:49 for 500ml to develop two rolls of 135 in a steel tank, for a total of 8 minutes. The temperature is more like 70F instead of 68F. So I don't know if I have developed it for too long. The Kodak 125PX seems to have this "problem." Whereas the Fuji Acros 100 seems finer even I believe I developed it in the same routine. I am pretty bad at controlling the variables.

UPDATE:
5/20/10
Looks like the comment is screwed up, and I shall totally blame it on wp2007.

Grand Central

Developed for 8 minutes using HC-110 diluted at 1:49 at 68F. I am not too anal about the numbers even supposedly I should be. The temperature is probably off and the time probably off a bit.

The Epson V500 is basically a disappointment. The software and the film mounts are just atrocious. I cut my 6x6 in 3-frame strip and it's very cumbersome to load that onto the mount, a 4-frame strip maybe a bit easier but my protective sleeve is for 3-frame film. In any event the frames on both ends of the strip would definitely be difficult to mount no matter it's a 3 or 4 frame strip. That said, I believe you can get decent scans from the machine, if you can get the negative properly mounted, and you can get rid of the dust. Good luck wrestling those.

Sometimes, I am pleasantly surprised by my Yashica. It's just a little camera that can. Many of the pictures I like are from this TLR. I can't change the lens so there is no chance I could be using the wrong lens, like my Nikon and Hasselblad. And the pictures are sharp though I don't have any empirical proof it's sharper than my Carl Zeiss but it really doesn't matter much. The shooting experience is great. With no meter, I got most of the exposures all right, of course, film latitude helps a great deal.

Grand Central

A Tree On 42nd Street

Scanning film (on the Epson V500) is an exercise in frustration. Somehow I think scanning at 2400dpi and with all adjustments off except dust removal set at medium gives me the best look for black and white.

I can never really save any settings. Even I turned off the Unsharp Mask, it would creep back in automatically. So that's weird and buggy. You can't really name your setting it's automatically named like setting 1, 2 and 3 and so on. But it doesn't work anyway. After Preview, I have to uncheck the adjustment that automatically added by itself but I have to select all before doing that, otherwise, it would only apply on the selected image instead of what I really want which is all the images. I found the software buggy and annoying.

Film Developing Misadventure

I did my black and white developing last night. Last time I was being meticulous and uber careful. Perhaps I wasn't as careful as I should have been, so I messed up this second time. The film was loaded crooked so a few frames touched each other and didn't come out right as they were under developed. I really should have double checked once I finished loading, but I didn't I thought I just did an excellent job in loading the film in one go. And the error occurred in the last mile, I mean the very last section of the film or the beginning of the roll. I am pretty disappointed with myself.

One of the discovery when taking pictures with the last roll was I can get 13 frames out of a roll of 120 film in my 6x6 Hasselblad. It probably doesn't mean much but it's fun to experiment though not so great in filing the negative in a 3 by 4 sheet. I think if I am able to advance past the 12th frame, I am able to press the shutter just by resetting the frame counter. I think I did get the 13th frame but unfortunately I lost the very first frame by loading the film crooked toward the very end.

I need to shoot another 120 soon. I just need to do that right to get the feel good feeling back.

Black And White Processing

My regression has yet reached another milestone.

 

There isn't any best time to do anything, so I just went ahead, got the juice, syrup and whatnot to do my own processing.

I was too busy measuring the chemicals so I didn't take any picture. It looks to me the two rolls of 120 negative actually came out quite all right. If anything I might have overexposed some frames when taking the pictures. Oh well, you live and learn. Making mistakes is kind of inevitable, especially for someone like me.  The challenge is to learn from them and not to keep making them again and again.  I should have written down every f-stop and shutter combination on every frame I took but I never did.  I read the Kodak official PX125 paper and seems like I might have over exposed some 1-stop even with the yellow filter attached.  I thought I might have my sunny 16 down quite good.  Anyway, I really need to see the final positive images to determine how good my exposures were and how well or bad my processing was.
The next step is how the heck do I get the images from negative to positive; either by digitizing them via a scanner or sending them out to a printer. A real darkroom with enlarger is pretty much out of the question at this point.

Stay tuned for any new development.

NOTE:
Sorry for the bowl shot.  I clean it every week, it's as clean a bowl as it can possibly can.  You can drink from it though I won't recommend it.

I am glad I did a few reloading in the dark just so to make sure that the film didn't get crinkles and received even development in the process.  As it turned out, despite some minor winkles on the edge of the roll, the negative did receive even development which was what I wanted.

The negative seems thinner than I thought, especially compared to 135 format.  It's almost too soft.  I take it it's easier to get crinkles and needs to be handled accordingly.

I didn't save the developer but was able to keep the stop bath and fixer for re-use.  The developer seems to be more critical among the three from what I understand so I wouldn't mind to mix it up when I need it again.

Given the amount of work involved, it kind of makes sense to do two rolls at the same time.  But I guess I want to have the option to do a single 120 too.

The Epson V700 is a prime candidate in my book but the price is high.

Overgrown Fig Tree From Neighbor

Breakfast At Home

This one comes out all right, (by my probably ill informed standard that is). I think ideally I should shoot a single roll of film under the same lighting condition so when I develop, the same roll would get the same effect, consistently good or bad. I mean you can't develop frame by frame from a 120 roll film. Anyway, for me, all different lightings across a roll of 120. So it's not really that great when it comes to develop. More work needs to be done after developing when it comes to print.

Bark

The scans come back OKAY, but the prints look pretty bad, The majority of the pictures I took them with a yellow filter in the front, I was hoping it would increase the contrast a bit. Still some of them came out pretty flat, just a mushy shade of gray, in part could be a result of overcast outdoor lighting; there was no black at all. It's hard to take good pictures and it's even harder to get some nice black and white prints. I am still agonizing, like I do with many things most of the time, over if I should proceed to develop my own black and white. I don't want to just buy stuff and end up not using them.

Summer 2008

This is from my humble Yashica Mat-124 G. You know, I really can't see a difference between my Hasselblad and this camera. On a bright sunny day, if I shoot f8 or f11, the results from both camera are just as good. Though it's hard to imagine the punny lens from my Yashica could be just as good as the 80mm f2.8 Planar T. But seriously, what do I know?