lost and found

 It has been a very tiring year. One that has knocked out of me any notion of making photographs in any shape or form. I have not wanted to do any of it - not make, print or talk about it. My interest has been rubbed out to such an extent that I have wondered whether I was ever a photographer.

The writing of this article is the first time I have given photography any serious thought recently. I have noticed over the past few weeks that my interest has started to re-assert itself here and there. I have never found it easy to write about my love of photography and the scrapes I manage to get myself into. This blog still remains a mystery to me as to why I started it.

I am still surprised at how popular it is. I know a lot of you judge popularity by comment and the number of likes, but I do not. For me it is the number of visits and also the number of other blogs carrying some of the themes I have talked about long with the odd magazine article. That in itself is all the incentive I need. 

So, to the year ahead. I’m hoping I will be able to get on with all the things I have been meaning to, including making more magazines, selling more prints etc. Will just have to wait and see.

 I’m going to end with a big thank you to all those who have been reading the blog in these barren times with few new posts. To all of you, I wish a very creative future.

The articles that follow this post were, in some cases. written before my creative slump and are now being published.

A big thank to our new editor for getting things rolling again.

 

How well will RO9 Special/ Studional perform a month on from dilution.

Nikkormat FT2 camera

 The developer has been diluted for two months, it's time to see if there has been any degradation of the solution over those months. It was not my intention to put the developer on the spot by using an out of date film and then to pick a make of film that I find difficult to get good results with but the die had been cast by the fact that a film had been loaded into my FT3 some time ago and then promptly forgotten about.

 

Developer  has changed colour

So what happened? To start with as I poured the developer into the graduate it was a gorgeous turquoise in colour. This is the second time I have used this batch of Studional so I have not a clue what this colour represents, it was clear when it was fresh. For all I know this could mean that it is dead and buried and the best thing to do is pour it away. RIP. I carried on anyway no point stopping now. I need to know what the colour represents. Good or bad?

 

This batch of developer had been diluted 1+15 but according to the data sheet it should be 1+30 for Fomapan 200 processed for 12 minutes plus 20% increase for the age, as the table indicates. Seeing as I have not taken any notice of the indications this will not work I throw caution completely to the wind and cut the development time in half and add 20% which I ignored developing for eight minutes. What the hell!

 

Contact print Fomapan 200.

So what did you think happened? Well! Yes, you are wrong. I am astounded these are some of the best negatives I have made with Fomapan 200 they are crisp and punchy or should I say they have a very good tonal separation, producing some rich blacks as the photographs that illustrate this post show.

8 X 10 print on  Ilford RC gloss

I should throw caution to the wind more often if the results are going to come good like this!

Dogs Dinner.

Well not quite, a dogs water bowl! There is no chance of it falling in his dinner because his head is in the bowl before it hits the floor. The film was more likely to become a chew.

I noticed that two film containers were sitting on the kitchen table. Thinking they were empty I picked them up to throw away, to discover that they were not. I opened one and out dropped a roll of exposed colour film. Butter fingers here managed to drop the roll of film! The consequence of these finger fumbling, was splash! straight into the dogs water bowl. My wife said that she had not seen me move that fast since my superman days. I need reminding, what superman days?

After a bit of dancing around to shake the water out, it was off to the local supermarket for development. An outlet we had not tried before. The film was also long out of date - nearly a decade. If it had not been for the fact I was on my way out I would have blacked out the darkroom and removed the film for drying. These things always happen when you're short of time.

As it turns out the water had destroyed nearly half the frames on a film of twenty four. The up shot of this was we only had to pay half the normal fee. There was also colour shift on some of the prints. This I put down to the water damage.

Am I disappointed? No! Not really, but I am with myself for the butter fingers, but not with the results we have, as neither of us could remember who, what, when or which camera was used in the first place. The big disappointment is with the quality of the processing and paper used. 

Ye old R3

Out of date R3

Over recent times I have had the tidying up bug  including a good rummage round in my film cupboard where I discovered four rolls of film. Nothing remarkable in that, I hear you say! However what I came across were two rolls of Rollie retro 100 and two rolls of R3, tucked away in a corner! I know! very out of date unless your name is Mitch in which case they are reaching maturity. It is strange how things come together. I recently posted a very grainy picture of a surfer dramatically falling off his board to illustrate how grainy things can get if you do not process your negs correctly. The film used to take the picture is the late lamented Rollie R3. If I had used the film with a fine grain developer the 1600 ISO negatives would have been a lot smoother.

R3 used at 400 ISO

When available it was advertised as a variable ISO film ranging from 50 to 3200 The idea of a ultra fast film is what encouraged me to purchase some. It took a little while for me to find a suitable subject to test it out on. By chance I was walking along the coastal footpath into Croyde Bay with an empty camera.  So I loaded the R3 set 1600 ISO and spent an hour or so taking pictures of surfers as the sun went down.

R3 used at 400 ISO

I cannot believe that it was 2009 that I last used the R3 and then at 400 ISO, having learnt my lesson previously, I used a fine grain developer. You could not of hoped for a finer set of negatives, they were that smooth it looked as though they had been sprayed on to the film back.

I don't use fast films a lot as I like bright sunny days with lots of contrast. It just so happens I was recently given the imaging warehouses catalogue and while thumbing through it I noticed they stocked Rollie 400s, which got me thinking  how would it compare to the old R3? There is only one way to find out!

Post cards from the Humber!

Recently I teamed up with my wifefor a bit of an experiment and road trip. I loaded the Olympus mju compact with a roll of eight years out of date colour film. The idea was to share the camera between us taking pictures as we went along. Once the roll was finished I took it in to be developed at snappy snaps. No special instructions were given. The results speak for themselves. What if the film had been blank? Notch it up to experience and move on. Wouldn't it have been a waste of time and money? No! we still have the memories of an afternoon well spent, plus we had the 'mystery' to look forward too!

 

Colour film well out of date.

The friend that gave me the out of date colour film did so in part for the removal of a partly exposed roll of film from her Dads camera a week or so earlier. She was not sure if it had become stuck or not.

The camera was an Olympus OM707. The battery carrier lid was broken and held in place with sticky tape and not working. The batteries were flat, so I tried some new ones but there was still no life which is a shame as it was in good order otherwise and had been in regular use up until eight years earlier. I had not come across this camera before so was not sure if I would be able to unwind the film manually. I found a re-wind button on the base plate, pressed it and went into the darkroom and opened the back. I took the cassette out first then gently pulled on the film and to my surprise it started to unwind. Once the film was fully removed I wound it back into the cassette.

A couple of weeks later I found out that the film had been developed and to her surprise it had produced some excellent results. It just goes to show even with a partly exposed colour film that has been sitting in a camera for eight years and extremely out of date, it can still produce some unexpectedly good results!

Yes I will admit that it is a risk when using film well outside the bbd; even more so with colour but I do not believe, like some, that you should only use this film with a so called toy camera as it suggests that if it goes wrong then it's “OK!” You just have to look at the lomograph site to see some excellent photographs. Personally you should have the courage of your conviction, use the best camera you can lay your hands on and embrace the results no matter what!

The colour pictures attached to this post were taken on my F5 on Agfa vista neg film that could have been out of date by fifteen years or so and kept in “iffy” conditions. So I walked into Lincoln on a warm sunny day with this film     and an open mind.  If I had listened to the doom and gloom merchants it was likely a waste of time! As it happens it was a good result even though I would have liked some colour shift to the pictures.

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