One of the trees form the picture in yesterday’s post can be seen again in today’s picture, lthough it has been relegated to a supporting role in this shot. Instead, the star of the show today is the head of some dried cow parsley which was growing (or had been growing) at the edge of the country lane I was walking down.
As I already mentioned yesterday, I’m very happy with a lot of the pictures that I got from, what was in effect, a test roll.
All three of today’s pictures were taken while walking along a narrow lane that led me out of Whitwell and towards the main road (the A619, or Clinthill Lane) and from there, back to where I’d parked my car in the layby in front of Whitwell Woods. The weather was fine and I had to remove my fleece long before I reached the road.
I like the middle shot the best. The power pole almost feels like it’s beckoning me closer, and then point the way I need to go.
A few weeks back I shot a roll of Agfa APX 100 during a trip to Lincoln. It was only as I went to rewind the roll of film after shooting all 36 frames that I realised I hadn’t set the ISO dial when I loaded the camera, and that the meter had been set to 400asa for every shot.
If I had been shooting Ilford HP5+ of something, I would have just push procesed the film -something I have done with good success in the past – and, indeed, I thought this would be my plan for the APX 100 too. Unfortunately, there is much less data available on push processing this particular film stock, at least beyond a one stop push to 200asa.
Asking around for advice resulted in a number of recommendations for stand or semi-stand development and, after looking into this further, I decided the semi-stand approach might be the best approach. However, as this would be the first time I’d ever attempted this method of developing film, and as I had an idea there would be some shots from my Lincoln trip that would be worth keeping, I decided that I would have a trial run on another roll of film first.
So, a week after visiting Lincoln, I took a shorter trip to the village of Whitwell and shot another roll of APX 100 at 400asa so I could test out semi-stand developing.
I have two developers to hand at present – Ilford DD-X, and Agfa Rodinal. As there was far more information available on performing semi-stand development with Rodinal, I opted for that. It also has the advantage of being much cheaper than DD-X. My research suggested that a 1+100 solution would be the best option, with a couple of extra millilitres of developer added to compensate for the push processing , so I made up a mixture of 500ml water, with 7ml of Rodinal (again, based on research online). This is more developer than I would need for a single roll of 35mm film, but I wasn’t sure how much extra developer to add to 300ml to compensate for the push as the online advice had stated a 500ml volume of water.
I’d also read that a pre-wash would be a good idea for semi-stand, so before adding the developer I gave it a soak in 20° water for 5 minutes, agitating it for a couple of minutes. I’m not sure if the agitation was necessary at all, but I didn’t think it would hurt.
After emptying the pre-wash water, I added the developer and agitated the developing tank with inversions for 1 minute. I then gave it a tap on the counter and left it to stand undisturbed for the next 30 minutes. After this first half an hour I gave it another single firm inversion, another firm tap on the counter to remove any air bubbles, and then let it stand for a further 30 minutes.
At the end of the hour I emptied the developer, used 20° water as a stop bath for 1 minute, and then a further 5 minutes in the fixer. After this I washed the negatives in tap water using the Ilford method, soaked them for a couple of minutes in a wetting agent solution, spun the reel in a salad spinner to remove most of the water, and then hung them to dry for 3 hours.
I was very happy to see nice looking negatives as I removed the film from the reels. They maybe looked slightly thin, but nothing to cause great concern and I was able to get results I was happy with when scanning and post processing the photographs.
The final results are pretty good, I think. There’s maybe a little more grain than there would have been had I shot and developed the film at 100asa, but it’s nothing I’m concerned about, and the images are sharp, have good contrast, and the highlights and shadows contain plenty of detail.
I don’t think I’ll use semi-stand development all the time, but I will certainly use it again in some situations. I’m already curious about shooting a single roll of film at different exposure settings, for instance, and I have a roll of Fompan 400 that I plan on shooting with my Holga sometime soon which I might develop as semi-stand.
Another picture from Renishaw golf course. This old trooper of a tree is exhibiting signs that it’s not yet finished with life.
It isn’t the first time I photographed this particular tree, and an earlier shot from last October shot with my Olympus OM-10 on Ilford HP5+ can be seen below the square Yashica Mat image.
The Moss flows (appropriately enough) through the Moss Valley, an area of farmland dotted with woodland. Despite it’s close proximity to suburbs of Sheffield, it feels very much like you are in the heart of the countryside when you explore the area, which is threaded with a host of footpaths and lanes.
The two pictures today were taken beside The Moss, the first shot required a little patience while I waited for a couple of dogs to finish their excited leaps into the river (the ripples in the water are evidence of their fun).
I’m not sure what lies across the narrow bridge in the second picture. It might be access to farmland on the opposite bank, but from looking at a map, there is also another pond on that side of the river a little further downstream, so it’s possible it’s access for anglers. Whichever, it looks a little overgrown.
The 27th December 2024 was another misty day, and so I loaded another roll of Tri-X and headed out to the Moss Valley, a location that I’ve shot in similar conditions on previous occasions. However, despite being a valley replete with a river and a series of ponds, the area was almost completely mist free when I arrived. Still, waste not, want not – I took a wander down the valley from where I parked my car in the pub car-park at Ford and shot all twelve frames. The selection in today’s post were taken around a couple of the aforementioned ponds.
I’m still months behind with posting pictures, so it’s still got a somewhat autumnal feel here on the blog, including today’s post of this strikingly coloured tree on the gradually-reverting-to-nature Renishaw Golf Course.
Something good that happened today…
A piece of work that I’ve been procrastinating over for the last few days suddenly took shape today. It’s not finished yet, but it’s in good shape now, so that’s good.
Yashica Mat 124G & Kodak Portra 400. Lab developed, home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
There is a house behind that tree. You can just about make it out…
Something good that happened today…
I was told today that I’ve been successful in keeping my job, which is a huge relief.
The relief and gratitude is, however, considerably tempered by the fact that lots of my colleagues have not been so fortunate and will be leaving the team (and possibly the business) in the near future, which is horrible. I’ve been in that position myself, and it was awful. I expect that all of them will be able to find new jobs given the line of business we are in and their hands on experience, but it’s still not a happy situation for them to be put in through no fault of their own. They are all good people and I will really miss them.
I remember thinking at the time that I might as well just pull the sheet of film from the holder and throw it in the bin, such was my certainty that I’s messed it up beyond salvation. In the end, I decided to leave the sheet in the holder until I shot the remaining three sheets I had loaded on some other outing. It took almost a year before that next outing with the 4×5 Ektar came around.
Tempting fate somewhat, I returned to the same location – Padley Gorge – although the weather wasn’t particularly inspiring, it being a typical UK dull and overcast autumnal day. Nonetheless I decided to shoot the remaining three sheets I had loaded into my film holders. This being the first time I’ve shot colour 4×5 film, and as I don’t have the chemicals or equipment I’d need to develop the film at home (as I do with black and white), I had to find somewhere to send the film to be processed. I also had to locate a spare film box that I could use to send the sheets (they need to be sent in a light-tight container, usually a double box with a lightproof bag inside). It ended up being a month before I managed to post them out to the lab I chose, then another week to get them back.
When I saw the negatives, the original badly exposed shot looked a little thin, so I was expecting a bad result. Imaging my surprise when the picture you see below appeared from the scanner! It’s the best of the four sheets by far, I think. Yes, I’ve done some post-processing to make it look its best, but nothing too dramatic, and I’m extremely happy with the result. If you click the photo you can see the full-size version on Flickr, with all the lovely detail that a large format photograph provides.
There’s a lesson here about not giving up on things, even when they seem a lost cause…
Chamonix 045n-1, Schneider-Kreuznach Super-Angulon 5.6/90 & Kodak Ektar. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
It’s been a while since the last one of these posts, but with a shorter gap than before – 7 months this time, as opposed to the 17 month gap between the last two Expiriment posts.
This time, the subject was a roll of Kodak Vericolor HC which had expired in 1992. I have no idea of the entire provenance of the film before I got it, although it’s been in my freezer for about three years now.
Kodak describes Vericolor HC as follows:
KODAK VERICOLOR HC Professional Film This improved color negative film has greater sharpness and finer grain than KODAK VERICOLOR II Commercial Film, Type S. This film is ideal for commercial illustration, industrial applications, low-level aerial photography, environmental portraiture, and other applications that call for increased contrast. It may also be used for any copy work that needs increased contrast, and for outdoor portraiture under low-contrast lighting conditions, such as on cloudy days or in deep shade.
FEATURES • Extremely fine grain, extremely high sharpness, and high resolving power • Built-in dye mask • Balanced for exposure by daylight, blue flash, or electronic flash • Designed for processing in Process C-41 chemicals
BENEFITS • Produces excellent-quality high-contrast prints even with a high degree of enlargement • Makes excellent-quality color reproduction possible without supplementary masking • Allows exposures from 1/ 10 second to 1/10,000 second without filters • Can be processed with KODACOLOR and other KODAK VERICOLOR Films
I took a different approach when shooting this time. Usually I only have a single roll of a particular expired film and tend to take a chance and shoot the whole roll with the same settings, without any bracketing. This going-for-bust approach risks disaster if I misjudge the settings, but the reward is a full set of different images if it works well, rather than a curtailed set of identical compositions taken at different shutter speeds.
This time though, I decided to take the cautious apoproach. The primary reason for this being that I have an entire pro-pack of the film so using one roll as a sacrifice would mean I can shoot the other four knowing what settings will work well. In order to still maximise the number of different compositions, I chose to shoot the roll with my Bronica ETRSi, which gives me 15 shots per roll of 120 film. I decided to shoot each composition at three settings, allowing me five different compositions from the roll.
I didn’t see any point in shooting any of the shots at box speed, so planned on shooting each composition at one, two, and three stops of overexposure. As the film is rated at a box speed of 100asa, I chose to set my light meter to 64asa as a baseline, take a reading for the composition, and then shoot two additional frames with an increase of one stop of exposure for each. That was the plan, at least…
This plan worked ok for the first shot, and the results can be seen below, withe the first image shot at the settings given for 64asa, and the following two images with a stop more exposure over the previous one:
Fot this first shot, the results were all good. The middle image (effectively shot at 32asa) is the one I prefer. The first doesn’t show any major issues with underexposure, although the sky is a bit deeper, and the third, while clearly brighter, is still very acceptable (and I would have been perfectly happy with it if I didn’t have the others to compare it to).
The results were similar for these shots of a willow tree:
Again, the middle image is the best exposed, I think.
The next six shots had an issue – not only did I tamper with the process by changing lenses, I also managed to somehow mess up the metering – shooting each shot at box speed, then one and two stops over for both these compositions. While this was an error, it just means that the best exposed image is now number three, with the fist shot in each sequence being at actual box speed for the film. It clearly shows problems rated at box speed in terms of underexposure.
—
For the final composition I realised my error and got back on track. The middle shot again being the best exposed.
Beyond the issues with underexposure and some small spotty defects in the emulsion, the results are pretty outstanding for a film that expired over thirty years ago. The colours still look very nice too.
I feel confident that, if I meter for 32asa, that I can expect pretty good results from the remaining four rolls I have, although I’ll perhaps overexpose a little more in dim conditions.
Overall outcome: Success!
Expiriment #6 coming soon (I do actually have some more expired film I’ve shot recently, so this might actually be true)…
Bronica ETRS1, Kodak Vericolor HC (expired 1992). Shot bracketed and lab developed for box speed.Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 11 November 2024
I’ve uploaded the images above directly to my blog, but if you want to see the ones with the best exposure at higher resolution, they can be found here on my Flickr account.
Steel City Snapper photography 