Developed my first roll ever

H

hteasley

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I'm a professional artist, have been for 20 years, with a BFA in Drawing, and never took a photo class. Never been in a darkroom, except to talk to friends while they worked. And, with the help of several web pages and some YouTube videos, I just developed my first roll of film. It was kind of magical, opening the can and seeing that I hadn't completely screwed it all up. There were little pictures on the film and everything.

The negatives:

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Shot a bunch of random things yesterday, M3/50mm Summilux II/FP4+, just to have an exposed roll that I didn't mind if I ruined – which I was fully expecting to do. But I think they came out pretty good. Full-strength D-76 for 8.5 minutes, water for stop, Kodak fixer, and I think it's OK.

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I don't know if there's any telltale "you did this wrong, or badly" in the images, but if there is, I'd appreciate any help anyone could provide.
 
The photos look good to me. I especially like the middle one. I just made..well more like asked a question in the gallery. They say it's best to use one film & developer til you get used to it. Then start branching out. Advice I should probably heed myself.
 
Chinasaur said:
Woot! Crisp, clean and clear. Good job brother! Is that a Freestyle brick of B&W?
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One brick of Legacy Pro 100, and one of Legacy Pro 400. The price was sort of hard to resist. Some Neopan in there, Kentmere, Rollei Advanced Technical Pan, Adox, Arista EDU, the Efke IR film there in front,... just trying out a bunch of films I've never shot before, some of which I have never heard of before. And the prices, they were just too good.

Anyway, thanks for the comments. I'll take that advice on sticking with the one set of chemistry: I'm going to stick with the D-76 and Kodak Professional Fixer, seeing as I have some, and I have no idea what switching to something else would do. And I'm not sure what "getting used to it" will feel like. I think I may have to ruin a few rolls of film to start developing some judgment about what happens when you dork with things. I just went by the Massive Dev Chart, what it said to do.
 
Congrats! I only started doing my own about a year ago, and many rolls since then. As said, it's magical and addictive, and makes you into a true craftsman of your images (IMO).
 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/harryteasley/sets/72157626570131617/

Most of the roll is there.

I realize this is old hat for most folks, but darkroom stuff has been, my entire life, a fairly mystical, likely completely-beyond-me, thing. School was charcoal drawing and oil painting, and the photo lab was bizarre to me. So I'm sort of riding a high that I finally decided to see how to to this, and discovered that this dragon is slayable.

Even with a house full of kids and a violently flatulent dog, I can develop some film.
 
SciAggie said:
Welcome to wonderland! I fell down the rabbit hole not long ago myself.
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Me too. Did it out of necessity more than anything because the local labs did not do B+W. Also, you tend to take a lot of care in handling when you do it yourself cause you know what junk on the negative is gonna look like on the scanner so the end result is fewer scratches, dust, blotches and cleaner scans.
 
Ya done good! I just started developing my own black and white film about a year and a half ago.

Pretty soon you will change your tag line from "Pupil" to "Master" 🙂

Thanks for sharing your experience!

Ellen
 
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