I developed my second roll of film a couple of days ago and digitised the negatives yesterday. As with the first roll, I thought I'd share my experiences, as they may be of interest to others like me in the earlier stages of their film journey.
On this occasion, I was shooting B&W 35mm Fomapan 400 at box speed in an Olympus Trip 35 with working (but accuracy unverified) selenium metering and automatic exposure - my first experience with both this camera and film. I developed in a spiral tank using Fomadon R09 (Rodinal) @ 1+50 dilution, used an intermediate water wash instead of stop bath, fixed in Ilford Ilfosol and used their reduced-water washing method plus a final rinse with a few drops of Adox Adoflo II wetting agent. Room-temperature soft tap water was used. Times + agitation were as per the Massive Dev Chart, using gentle inversions. I hung the film to dry with a weighted clip at the base for ~17 hours.
The end-to-end process presented some interesting and useful observations, a few problems and lessons learned, and left me with some unanswered questions and things to try going forward...
Shooting with the Olympus Trip 35 was a blast. It's a beautiful little camera... compact and solid, feels great in the hand and has an outstanding tunnel viewfinder with bright, clear framing lines. The metering prevents shooting outside the limits of the automatic exposure system, and since the selenium cell is mounted around the front element of the lens and within its housing, the camera won't fire if you forget to take the lens cap off! With ISO selected at the front of the lens, you simply set the distance using zone focusing symbols on the top of the lens barrel, or more accurate distances marked on the underside, and you're ready to go. It's a real point-and-shoot camera - almost idiot proof (which is handy for me
) and a great deal of fun.
The day after finishing the roll, I decided to load the film into my developing tank ready for processing the next day. Inside the changing bag I used a bottle opener to take the top off the film canister - something I'd practiced doing with old rolls of film without much problem. However, while prising the lid off
this canister, I nicked my thumb on the sharp metal rim. I wondered if I'd cut myself, but didn't think I had - and in any case, I was committed by this point, so I proceeded to load the film onto the spiral reel and placed it in the tank. When I removed my arms from the bag, I found that I
had indeed cut myself, and there was blood not just on that thumb but the other one too... which led me to believe I must have got some on the film and reel.
The following day, I set everything up for development. With thoughts of smeared, coagulated "A RhD positive" on the film, I filled the tank with water and agitated it several times a minute for five minutes, in the hope that it might dissolve the blood. I then went ahead with developing, fixing, washing and hanging the film to dry.
As mentioned earlier, I left it hanging for around 17 hours. With the previous roll of 120 Fomapan 200, I took the film down after just three or four hours and though it was dry, it was quite strongly curled along its length and very springy - so I wanted to see if a longer hanging time would improve matters. It certainly seemed to, as this Fomapan 400 dried beautifully flat, with just the
tiniest hint of a bend along the entire length and no warping across the width. Perfect
When cutting the film into strips, I noticed the gap between each frame was surprisingly narrow (maybe 2mm?). I got 39 shots from a 36 roll film (though the first shot was taken before counter reached the "1" mark... I didn't want to waste it
). I wonder if this is typical for all 35mm cameras, a characteristic of the Olympus Trip 35, or a quirk of my specific copy. It's not a problem, but I was surprised by the small gap between frames. It requires some care while cutting each strip!
With the strips prepared, I examined them in natural light - and though I couldn't see any signs of blood, I discovered the glossy, non-emulsion side was affected by numerous dried water spots and long runs, even though I'd used wetting agent in the final rinse (the emulsion side, thankfully, seemed to be fine). This wasn't a problem with the 120 Fomapan 200, where I'd used my fingers as a squeegee (but in doing so, transferred fibres from my jumper onto the film
). Next time, I'll revert to the "finger squeegee" method, but only after washing and drying my hands first! Back to the current film, I looked online for advice on removing water spots and found many suggestions, from using cotton buds and isopropyl alcohol to completely re-washing and drying the film. Since this was another test roll with no important photos on it, I decided to experiment. Taking one of the affected strips, I used a rocket blower to get rid of any dust, lay it emulsion-side down on synthetic cutting board, then used a moist Zeiss optical wipe to gently dab and wipe away the water spots and runs. After a couple of passes it was clean, and with no obvious scratching - so I repeated the process for the remaining strips. This proved to be a highly effective method of removing water spots (and any remaining haemoglobin
).
Next, I examined the negatives on my light panel to analyse the quality, using Justin Wonnacott's examples at
http://www.aregeebee.net/negs/eneg.htm for reference. They looked to be well-exposed and developed, with a nice tonal range. Great news, as it confirmed the camera's metering was working as expected
I digitised the negatives with my copy-stand rig, using the K-5 and D FA100/2.8 Macro in manual exposure mode and shooting DNG-format raw. The exposure settings required were fairly consistent for each frame.
After digitising, I reviewed the negatives in Lightroom. Thankfully, the water spots I'd previously dealt with were nowhere to be seen, and there were no obvious scratches from my cleaning efforts. I did, however, discover two problems...
Firstly, I noticed a scratch running between the sprocket holes on the same side of every frame. Examination of the camera showed nothing untoward, so I checked the only other piece of equipment to come into contact with the sprocket holes: the spiral reel - and found the problem. One of the ball-bearings in the feed mechanism was stuck, and must have dragged against the film rather than rolling over it. I assume the bearing dried in that position after I'd washed it following my last developing session. I was able to release it with a wooden cocktail stick. In future, I'll check both ball-bearings before loading any film!
The second problem I noticed was mild bromide drag from the sprocket holes, evident on negatives with large areas of very dark tones (such as cloudless sky). I'm confused as to why this happened, since I adhered to Massive Dev Chart timings and agitation - repeatedly inverting the tank for a full minute at the start of the developing cycle, then for ten seconds every minute thereafter. I'm not sure how to address this... perhaps I should try fewer but more-frequent inversions after the initial agitation - say, just one every 30 seconds. I need to research this further.
[You can see examples of the bromide drag on a couple of the photos below... It's particularly noticeable on the "sheep in a field" image]
Converting the negatives to positives was an interesting experience...
Previously I used Negative Lab Pro on both colour and B&W negatives with excellent results. I'm a big fan of this plug-in for Lightroom, especially with colour negatives where it produces highly-believable results with no colour-casts to remove with curve adjustments etc. It did a grand job with my B&W 120 Fomapan 200 roll, too... but with this Fomapan 400, it wasn't so easy to get a consistent frame-to-frame look without making a lot of adjustments, and the end results just didn't feel right with heavy shadows that I couldn't recover smoothly. In some cases, I ended up having to create TIFF positives and carry out further editing outside of NLP.
So, I thought I'd try a more manual approach. I converted the DNGs of the negatives to 16-bit TIFFs, then used GIMP to invert them, desaturate (just in case), set the black point, then optimise the exposure and tone curve. Although not as convenient or automated as NLP, I actually found it much easier to get exactly the results I wanted, with more logical and predictable control over tones. It took me a little while to figure out how some of GIMP's functions and sliders work, but once I understood them it was very easy to get good results. Much as I like NLP for colour negatives, I may well be using GIMP for B&W in future. We'll see.
Looking at my finished positives, I see quite pronounced grain... rather too much for my liking, frankly. Whether this is due to the film, the developing chemistry and method, or a combination of both, I can't say at this point. I think, perhaps, I was spoiled by my first session, developing a slower film with big 6x6 negatives! Still, I hadn't expected the results on this occasion to be quite so grainy. The photos look fine at web dimensions... In fact, they look pretty good at somewhat larger dimensions so long as I don't examine them too closely, but I can't imagine they'd make attractive larger prints. I wonder if results would be less grainy using a different developer or development method. Another PF member shared with me some of his Fomapan 400 shots developed in D76, and they were very grainy too... so I'm unsure. I also found that in the darker shadows of my photos, there wasn't nearly as much detail recorded as I'd have liked. Since they were apparently well-exposed and I used a well-established developing method, I suspect this may be a characteristic of the film. For my next roll, I'll try it at ISO 200 instead of box speed. For the roll after that, I'd like to try a different developer to see if it produces more pleasing grain (I'll need to research some other developers first). Lastly, I'd like to try some different ISO 400 35mm emulsions, to see how they compare... but for now, I still have four more rolls of Fomapan 400 to get through!
Overall, this was a very interesting session... more enjoyable than the last, since I was a bit more confident in my approach, and just as valuable as a learning experience. I got to grips with a wonderful little camera that I now expect to use often; I applied better developing and quality-control practices carried forward from the previous session; I experienced and dealt with a few problems, made some interesting observations and learned several lessons that will inform my future efforts. Overall, a very worthy exercise that's left me keen to shoot and develop more
Like my previous roll, this one was made up mostly of test snapshots. Nonetheless, whilst nothing to shout about, a few are "keepers" that - at the very least - document this step in my film journey. In the circumstances, I'm pretty pleased with the results (but man, oh man, Fomapan 400 is
grainy ).
Thanks for reading, and I look forward to any comments, advice or questions
Last edited by BigMackCam; 01-08-2022 at 01:22 PM.