Can we talk about film?

[bunnspecial]

well my monobath solution came today. ? this whole thing is a giant experiment anyway and if it doesn’t work then can retake all the photos. ?

And that's half the fun of it.

I may have a strong take on them, but you may well love it, and if it gets you results you like I think you've found a great solution.

Still, though, one of these days I'd encourage getting some traditional B&W chemistry. I know color is your main interest, but if nothing else and you want to get into at-home color, it's mostly just adding a few steps to the traditional two-bath(or 3 bath if you prefer) B&W process.

Enjoy!

Also, as a bit of a side note, if you do find that you take to B&W film, just know that developer choice(and dilution) has a BIG impact on the final look of an image. There's a lot of really fun chemistry(okay, I'm a chemist, so I like the chemistry) behind why different developers have certain properties, why some increase or decrease apparent grain, why both dilution and developer chemistry affect contrast, and all that stuff that I kind of geek out on. Of course film stock plays a big part in it too, but at the same time Tri-x shot at EI 200 and developed in D76 1:1 is going to look very different from Tri-X at EI 1600 developed in Rodinal. Again, all the fun in experimenting.

 

[mollyc]

And that's half the fun of it.

I may have a strong take on them, but you may well love it, and if it gets you results you like I think you've found a great solution.

Still, though, one of these days I'd encourage getting some traditional B&W chemistry. I know color is your main interest, but if nothing else and you want to get into at-home color, it's mostly just adding a few steps to the traditional two-bath(or 3 bath if you prefer) B&W process.

Enjoy!

i appreciate your advice! and my daughter does the traditional approach at school. but i prefer small steps to start so think the monobath is a good first step for me. but my kit also came with a patterson tank and reels so i’m still a step ahead now if i don’t like the monobath.

still interested in color also. maybe this summer. ?

 

[squawk7000]

@mollyc you mention the Patterson tank.

If I may offer a tip. Make sure the spiral is absolutely dry when you load it. Any moisture will cause the film to stick as you 'wiggle' it in.

indeed, if you have a gash length of film have a practice run at loading.

 

[mollyc]

@mollyc you mention the Patterson tank.

If I may offer a tip. Make sure the spiral is absolutely dry when you load it. Any moisture will cause the film to stick as you 'wiggle' it in.

indeed, if you have a gash length of film have a practice run at loading.

yes my daughter knows how to load the reel and she insisted i get plastic spools vs metal. and we do have developed film to practice with. ?

 

[Danfango]

Interesting thread which will no doubt end up costing me real money.

I used to shoot with an old Praktica MTL5B back in the 80s and 90s. This was followed by an Olympus IS2000 which sucked and I got dragged into the APS cameras then. I really missed working under the constraints of film and snapping any old crap with my phone became normal for me around 2006 onwards.

Recently, as the other thread I started went into, I bought a Nikon Z50 and decided that I wasn't going to go absolutely bananas with shooting and set myself some constraints on what I was going to shoot and how I was going to shoot with it up front. Some of this is to force me to learn how to use it properly and start thinking again and some of it is to avoid the problem my father has which is 4TB of RAWs to sort through.

These were the constraints I came up with which approximate the days when I was shooting on film.

1. Take only 36 exposures per "event"
2. No cropping allowed
3. Must shoot on full manual, including focus (although I am cheating a little there with the Z50's focus markers)
4. Need to make a decision up front if I want to shoot everything in B&W or colour and immediately run the whole import through B&W process if required.

Been running like that for a couple of weeks now and it's working out nicely.

This did prompt me to start lurking on eBay again and I have a watch list about 2 miles long now full of old wide open Zeiss prime lenses and Praktica bodies now which may be combined with a roll of slightly too fast Ilford to get that nice grainy finish, not the digitally faked one ... watch this space...

 

[mollyc]

I definitely do think more when I'm shooting film, but I like the freedom that digital gives me also and don't think I could give up digital. I like having two different mindsets when shooting.

 

[OldMacs4Me]

I love the plastic Patterson reels, and hopefully Patterson has long since ditched the low grade stainless steel ball bearings that they used in about half of my reels. As suggested earlier give them a good blast with a hairdryer to be sure they are completely dry.

FWIW I never got the hang of the stainless steel reels. Abandoned them entirely after about the third botched attempt.

 

[mollyc]

the pac

I love the plastic Patterson reels, and hopefully Patterson has long since ditched the low grade stainless steel ball bearings that they used in about half of my reels. As suggested earlier give them a good blast with a hairdryer to be sure they are completely dry.

FWIW I never got the hang of the stainless steel reels. Abandoned them entirely after about the third botched attempt.

the packaging looks like it’s from about 1987 so who knows. ?

 

[bunnspecial]

FWIW, I went to stainless and didn't look back.

Stainless is a mixed bag, though. There is a learning curve to loading them, and you will burn some film doing it. I never used Patterson reels-I used the awful Yankee Clipper tank, although that one still has a use for me since it can adjust to uncommon sizes and is super easy to modify for other sizes.

In any case, though, my first SS stuff were a couple of no-name 35mm reels and some 120 Nikkors. The 120 loaded beautifully, but I'd fight on and off with the 35mm ones.

Finally, somehow or another I bought some darkroom stuff at the camera store(don't remember what I was buying, but Chuck would almost never sell me a single item out of boxes of darkrooms stuff) and ended up with 4 Hewes 35mm reels. They were PHENOMENAL and just about loaded themselves. I've since stocked up on those.

The good reels-Hewes and Nikkor in particular-are a joy to use.

No name ones may be okay at first, or they may not be.

The real danger with SS, though, is that they must be absolutely perfectly straight with the sides perfectly parallel. A cheap real that's straight will load nicer than a Hewes that's bent. 120 is a bit less fussy, but it's critical in 35mm and 220. A bend can be virtually impossible to see, but basically I test load new to me reels and if they don't load then I just toss them if they're no names-they're not worth trying to fix.

The nice reels, though, tend to be made of heavier wire and won't bend as easily. I've seen no-names bend just from being agitated in a stainless tank.

SS can be loaded wet, although I've never had a reason to do so since I have enough. I do like, though, that it takes less chemistry. It's not a big deal in a 1 or 2 roll tank, but I have a 6 roll tank and I'd hate to think how much bigger and how much more chemistry a plastic tank would take.

 

[mollyc]

I did it! Can't scan till tomorrow because film is hanging to dry, but it worked! 🥳

 

[MBAir2010]

I did it! Can't scan till tomorrow because film is hanging to dry, but it worked! ?

Great!
you take wonderful photos, Molly!
(now i need to investigate what you did)
i saw this photo on the forum and thought that was a snake at first.

 

[MBAir2010]

I definitely do think more when I'm shooting film, but I like the freedom that digital gives me also and don't think I could give up digital. I like having two different mindsets when shooting.

Yes, i photographed for a newspaper in film. then digital
using Film was more intent and important to take that shot.

 

[mollyc]

Great!
you take wonderful photos, Molly!
(now i need to investigate what you did)
i saw this photo on the forum and thought that was a snake at first.

oh, i developed the roll at home! ? with a monobath solution which scares @bunnspecial, but chemistry was never my favorite subject, so all in one is right up my alley! ?

 

[mollyc]

Here are two of my images. I'll be sharing more over time in the POTD thread (my photo today was from this roll). These two are actually two of the worst images because the focus was off a bit, but I'm saving my good ones for POTD. ?

These were shot on an all manual Fujica STX-1 and Kodak TMax 3200. I know there are scratches, but I was pretty happy with this as a first roll experiment.

 

[Apple fanboy]

I did it! Can't scan till tomorrow because film is hanging to dry, but it worked! ?


View attachment 1991094

I’m fairly sure your dog believes you are holding a string of sausages!
I’ve only developed film once. Hope it all works out.

 

[Clix Pix]

I did it! Can't scan till tomorrow because film is hanging to dry, but it worked! ?


View attachment 1991094

It's really nice to see you smile! Love how the dog is looking up at you curiously, wondering what the heck all the excitement is about!

 

[SpittingImage]

In the 70's I lusted after a Hasselblad 2 1/4" square format. They were the cameras that the professionals used for landscape and studio work. They were way too expensive for me at the time but now you can pick them up quite cheaply and they still take great pictures.

 

[dwig]

@mollyc you mention the Patterson tank.

If I may offer a tip. Make sure the spiral is absolutely dry when you load it. Any moisture will cause the film to stick as you 'wiggle' it in.

indeed, if you have a gash length of film have a practice run at loading.

The other big issue with plastic reels that you load by sliding or "wiggling" the film in from the outside is scale (read: mineral deposits). If you find that the reels get harder to load you should descale much as you would a coffee pot.

Usually, soaking the reels in a solution of weak citric acid (sold in grocery stores as a powder used in canning food) or acetic acid (AKA stop batch or vinegar) will cure the problem. A light brushing with an old (retired) toothbrush can help.

 

[mollyc]

I have a really dumb question. I shot a roll of Ektar last week and had it developed and scanned at my local lab. I took the same photo twice because I thought my settings were off for the first image but apparently it was okay. I do think that one had a darker exposure than the other. Exposure wise they seem fairly similar from the scans, but the white balance on them is vastly different. Is this a scanner issue? I think the yellower one was the "underexposed" one but I wouldn't have thought it would make the bricks yellow.

 

[kenoh]

I have a really dumb question. I shot a roll of Ektar last week and had it developed and scanned at my local lab. I took the same photo twice because I thought my settings were off for the first image but apparently it was okay. I do think that one had a darker exposure than the other. Exposure wise they seem fairly similar from the scans, but the white balance on them is vastly different. Is this a scanner issue? I think the yellower one was the "underexposed" one but I wouldn't have thought it would make the bricks yellow.


View attachment 2018518

I know dropping luminosity slightly CAN help make colours more vivid. Also, it looks sunny with light from above. Was the light changing because of clouds etc? Second image is definitely cooler in appearance. Weird one. 2 scanners at the lab? or your scanner getting hot and affecting the colour readings maybe? How are the negatives? are the captured images different?

 

[dwig]

I have a really dumb question. I shot a roll of Ektar last week and had it developed and scanned at my local lab. I took the same photo twice because I thought my settings were off for the first image but apparently it was okay. I do think that one had a darker exposure than the other. Exposure wise they seem fairly similar from the scans, but the white balance on them is vastly different. Is this a scanner issue? I think the yellower one was the "underexposed" one but I wouldn't have thought it would make the bricks yellow.

Two things come into play here:

• Film is not linear, color film even more so. The individual color layers will not respond to varying exposure perfectly uniformly. This can result in slightly different color rendition is shadows and highlights and will result is slightly different color in overexposed and underexposed images. In fact, a whole family of Kodak color films were intentionally designed to shift color balance toward the blue when they were underexposed. Kodak had found that the vast majority of underexposed images taken with their more amateur orientated films were shot available light, either intentionally or when a flash failed. This shift made adjusting the printer to get decent color out of these images much more successful.
• The scanner's reaction to the differing densities of the two images may result in its auto-color balancing producing slightly differing color rendition.

These, plus the fact that color negative scanning is a difficult thing to get right, mean that you should expect to do final color balancing after scanning.

 

[mollyc]

I know dropping luminosity slightly CAN help make colours more vivid. Also, it looks sunny with light from above. Was the light changing because of clouds etc? Second image is definitely cooler in appearance. Weird one. 2 scanners at the lab? or your scanner getting hot and affecting the colour readings maybe? How are the negatives? are the captured images different?

No, I think all one scanner. I haven't looked at the negatives, although I know logically that's the right answer. I just don't see color reversal very well....

Light might have been slightly variable, but not that much. The two images were taken maybe a minute apart.

Two things come into play here:

• Film is not linear, color film even more so. The individual color layers will not respond to varying exposure perfectly uniformly. This can result in slightly different color rendition is shadows and highlights and will result is slightly different color in overexposed and underexposed images. In fact, a whole family of Kodak color films were intentionally designed to shift color balance toward the blue when they were underexposed. Kodak had found that the vast majority of underexposed images taken with their more amateur orientated films were shot available light, either intentionally or when a flash failed. This shift made adjusting the printer to get decent color out of these images much more successful.
• The scanner's reaction to the differing densities of the two images may result in its auto-color balancing producing slightly differing color rendition.

These, plus the fact that color negative scanning is a difficult thing to get right, mean that you should expect to do final color balancing after scanning.

Yes, I don't mind color balancing in post, and I am finding that tweaking contrast on all the scans is giving me much better results for final images. I feel weird doing it, because I grew up using point and shoot cameras with film, and you just got back what you got back, but I know that if I were doing this all on my own in a darkroom I'd have all the latitude that I want. And I can rescan these at home, but I shot two new to me film stocks, so wanted lab scanning for the first roll of each to know what sort of end results I should have going forward. And I have done scans at home with a camera and negative lab pro and there are allllll sorts of tweaks that can happen in the conversion process from negative to positive, and then more after converting, so I am coming to grips with the notion that post processing film is the way to go. 🙂

Thanks for your inputs. I'll look at the negatives later.

 

[Lord Blackadder]

Really interesting post. I haven't had that kind of color variation between shots before.

 

[mollyc]

Really interesting post. I haven't had that kind of color variation between shots before.

i’m guessing it is some attempt at equalizing images in the scanner settings. i’ll look at the negatives this week.

 

[kenoh]

What I will say is that mentally I have to keep stopping myself asking what WB setting was in the camera - I know, duh film… lol….