First film processed - Lessons learned

[nathanp]

I've just processed my first film and it has images on it which means I'm happy even if they're rubbish 😀

It was all a bit of a nightmare. First of all, while finishing off the roll of Tri-X 400 this afternoon I noticed that at some point the ISO selector on my MG-1 had moved from 400 to 200. This could have happened at any point in the film so I convinced myself that it had happened recently and carried on.
Lesson 1 - Check the ISO setting frequently

I got home, excited to have the roll ready to develop and messed up badly when rewinding the film. I got to a point where it felt like it was fully rewound, and let my 2 year old son do the honours of pulling the rewind knob to open the rear door. I almost screamed when I saw that there was half a roll still on the take-up side! I tried to slam the door shut but my son's finger was in it (I didn't squish it, his finger is more important than my images)
Lesson 2 - If you think it's rewound, keep going, it probably isn't :bang:

I resigned myself to the fact that most of the pictures would be ruined but carried on anyway. The next problem I had was when winding the film onto the reel. It got to a point where twisting the reel wasn't pulling in the film. I had to wind it back into the canister and start again - it was all a bit messy but I got it on there in the end.
Lesson 3 - More practice at loading the reel

The actual processing went pretty smoothly. It took a while to get the developer to the right temperature (my cold tap water appears to be about 12 degrees c), and I missed one agitation while messing about with make-shift film clips. By the end I was trying to tell myself not to expect anything so I was amazed and really happy to see images on the negatives! There's about 5 frames or so that are completely black and streaks on others but I'm just pleased that there are images there at all. I can't wait to scan them (I considered breaking out the hairdryer for some accelerated drying but it's probably a bad idea).

I'll post some scans as soon as I can. If anyone is interested I can post up more detail of the volumes I mixed etc.

 

[Vince Lupo]

You could possibly add Lesson #4: Expose for the shadows, Develop for the highlights.

 

[dfoo]

Exposing at ISO 200 almost certainly won't hurt the images. However, opening the camera back while half the film is still out of the cassette will have a very detrimental effect 🙂

 

[gho]

... I can't wait to scan them (I considered breaking out the hairdryer for some accelerated drying but it's probably a bad idea).

Umm, the hairdryer worked for me once 🙄. But keep it gentle. Not recommended though. And congratulations for your first film development! May it be a long and exciting journey.

 

[Vince Lupo]

I'll be interested to see your photos - I'd actually be more interested in seeing your negatives.

Not that you've done this, but one of the things that I've seen 'beginner' black + white film folks do is overdevelop their negatives. The highlights are often 'bulletproof', as they say, and no amount of 'burning' will bring in any detail.

If you have a choice between contrasty negatives and flat negatives, go for flat negs.

Easier to add to contrast to a print than to try and remove contrast.

 

[nathanp]

You could possibly add Lesson #4: Expose for the shadows, Develop for the highlights.

At the moment I'm still working on "Don't ruin it by making stupid mistakes" 😱

After the film-door mistake I'd pretty much written the film off and decided just to give it a go. For the record I was aiming for Rodinal 1+50 / 13 mins / 20c. As it turned out my last-minute measuring cylinder only had graduations from 10ml upwards - I needed 8ml of Rodinal. I measured out 10ml, then poured out what looked like 2ml worth so it wasn't too precise! I do have a better cylinder on order for next time.

 

[Vince Lupo]

You'll get the hang of it. Just wait until you get to printing!

Actually exposing your film at 200 instead of 400 might even be better for getting those shadow details...then cut your developing times by about 25-30% and you should have some nice negs. Of course these are ballpark figures - you'll probably have to fiddle with it until you find a formula that works for your particular system (and also depends on whether you're using a condenser or diffusion enlarger).

Let us know what happens!

 

[ZeissFan]

Be careful about your temperatures. You want the developer/stop/fix/wash to be within a few degrees of each other.

If there's a large difference, you can run into reticulation. Basically, think shrinkage. Warm fluid followed by cold fuild can cause the emulsion to shrink.

I ran into reticulation issues overseas when I had a lot of problems keeping temperatures consistent.

Sounds like you've learned some important lessons. The key is to not repeat the mistakes. Or at least, not to repeat them to often.

Good luck.

 

[nathanp]

Be careful about your temperatures. You want the developer/stop/fix/wash to be within a few degrees of each other.

If there's a large difference, you can run into reticulation. Basically, think shrinkage. Warm fluid followed by cold fuild can cause the emulsion to shrink.

I ran into reticulation issues overseas when I had a lot of problems keeping temperatures consistent.

Sounds like you've learned some important lessons. The key is to not repeat the mistakes. Or at least, not to repeat them to often.

Good luck.

Good tip - thanks! I probably should have warmed up the stop/fixer/rinse a bit.
I want to go home and scan them - stupid work days.

 

[nathanp]

Here's some of the results. They were scanned quickly so haven't been de-dusted or post-processed properly (just a quick adjustments of levels in EpsonScan, a slight tweak of exposure in photoshop raw and a tiny bit of unsharp mask on some).

Worship Watch

Abandoned Building 1

Big Wheel

And some smaller versions...

Isaac

Happy Ho(mes)

Inspiration

Ambulance

 

[JPSuisse]

Looks good! Congratulations!!

JP

 

[Roger Hicks]

As others say, doubling the exposure doesn't matter at all: you may even prefer the tonality.

DON'T use a hairdryer -- they ALWAYS give you lots of dust.

Slamming the rear door shut is a natural reaction, but as my chums at Ilford pointed out years ago, there's no point -- you can't move faster than the speed of light.

Reticulation is far less of a problem than it used to be and indeed is now quite hard to provoke.

For a first attempt, you could have done a lot worse!

Cheers,

R.

 

[Vince Lupo]

Overall pretty good! They seem a tad dark, but it looks like it was a bit of a dreary day, so it might just be the lighting.

Was your ultimate plan to print the photos, or just scan them?

 

[btgc]

Kid would still have 9 fingers, while it were your only film!

I think almost everyone has opened camera with partially rewound film. Now with BW film I go to dark closet room, rewind close until end and then open back cover to control leader.

 

[nathanp]

Overall pretty good! They seem a tad dark, but it looks like it was a bit of a dreary day, so it might just be the lighting.

Was your ultimate plan to print the photos, or just scan them?

Initially just to scan but I may get them printed from the scans just to see how they look. Unfortunately I don't have a the space for a darkroom (or the time to make it worthwhile).

It was a really dull & wet day but they do look darker on my work laptop compared to my Mac at home so I suspect I should do some more calibration on my Mac. I've noticed the same thing with other pictures I've processed at home.

 

[degruyl]

Initially just to scan but I may get them printed from the scans just to see how they look. Unfortunately I don't have a the space for a darkroom (or the time to make it worthwhile).

It was a really dull & wet day but they do look darker on my work laptop compared to my Mac at home so I suspect I should do some more calibration on my Mac. I've noticed the same thing with other pictures I've processed at home.

Gamma issues, maybe.

I have it all the time: color corrected work environment on the mac, and then I go and export for the web, and everything is dark.

If I were exporting to a printer (say, Adoramapix or El-Co or something) I would do soft proofing, which is pretty good. For the Web, I do not bother.

If someone has an easy solution, I'd love to hear it as well. 16 bit Black and White looks to be the worst case for Tiff - JPEG conversions. Maybe Lightroom does not embed the gray profile?

 

[sevo]

Umm, the hairdryer worked for me once 🙄. But keep it gentle. Not recommended though.

I used to work for a big newspaper where all important jobs got the hairdryer treatment, as that saved several minutes over the cabinet dryer...

Sevo