First post and a negative question ( film negative)

[weirdnerd]

I am a noob, Started last August jumping into the deep end, Got a Canon FT and a yashica Electro 35, using OrwoPan 125, expired in 2005, and because I am who I am, decided to make my own developer, dev stop and fixer.

So far so good, first couple of rolls showed me that the film ( seems to be Ilford FP4, 125 speed) had degraded in speed down to ASA 64.

The question I have is on how to evaluate negatives, how to "see" if I am over or under developing the film.

At the moment I am using Parodinal and developing at 13 minutes at 20 Celsius. and somehow I am not seeing a lot of detail as I have seen you get here. some of the pictures are nice, but some are what you call "muddy".

I want to find the way on how to make my pictures 'technically sharp", I know it is subjective and everyone has a different idea. At the moment I am very low tech, using a homemade "light box" to take pictures of the negatives with the cell phone, I know, not optimal, but at the moment I just bought a Durst enlarger and I need to get the paper. ( with the inconvenience that I have no dark room yet)

I just want to "understand" the chemistry behind, and to do that I need to understand how to evaluate the negatives, that way I can adjust the times to match what I want.

Must emphasize that all my previous film experience was using a point and shoot and sending the film to a photolab.

here are some of my best pictures:

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Good, good .

Negatives for what? DR prints or darkroom scans? For darkroom prints I prefer more dense negatives. Well, been told to prefer by very experienced film and DR user.
One day I meet him and he took his negatives from home to show me good density for DR prints.
Try to find someone alike or get darkroom for beginners book. Showing it over Internet might be not accurate due to misalliance of exposures levels and monitors brightness.
Book like this: https://www.amazon.ca/Darkroom-Basics-Beyond-Roger-Hicks/dp/1843400480
I think everyone who is at RFF and with film must have it. I have it. If you stay here, at RFF, you might find out why.

Oh, and showing processed scans over photographed negatives ain't any better.

 

[MJ Buckpitt]

Weirdnerd,

This might help you navigate through the maze https://www.ilfordphoto.com/common-processing-problems/

And welcome to the RFF

 

[Peter Jennings]

development looks fine to me, but the scans are not very good. I'd concentrate on improving that.

 

[weirdnerd]

This is a great resource for me!.

I know that working with 15 years old film is not easy, and for me it is hard to determine which way the negatives came through, so far I am expecting to correct my mistakes through experimentation, at the moment my little "light box" works OK to see what did I come with, I started at 9 minutes and the pictures were underdeveloped, I am slowly going up in time to see if I can come with something I like.

The most likely issue is the film itself, I was expecting to come with sharp pictures and inky blacks ( I have some of my grand fathers photos from the 1930's, that to me look like what I want to obtain, I believe he had a Leica or something that looked like one, unfortunately I remember playing with it when I was a kid and "dis assembled it" to get the magnifying glasses inside :bang: )

Weirdnerd,

This might help you navigate through the maze https://www.ilfordphoto.com/common-processing-problems/

And welcome to the RFF

This is the kind of results I would like to have:

 

[weirdnerd]

I am working on that, Last weekend I got a photo enlarger ( Durst 76? with two lenses, one I believe is a 60mm and the other is an 80mm) and I ordered some print paper, this is a slippery slope I am going through...

My main issue is building a dark room in the garage.

development looks fine to me, but the scans are not very good. I'd concentrate on improving that.

 

[Huss]

If the film is properly developed the edge strip (the area that is not exposed by the image) should be dense solid black. When converted from neg to positive.
Yours are not, at least from the images you provide. So it suggests that they have not been developed enough.

 

[dourbalistar]

If the film is properly developed the edge strip (the area that is not exposed by the image) should be dense solid black. When converted from neg to positive.
Yours are not, at least from the images you provide. So it suggests that they have not been developed enough.

I would say that's true... unless the OP's negatives were not completely flat on the homemade lightbox surface. Looking at the curved sides of the frames attached, I think might be the case. So I tend to agree with Peter that the scans make it more difficult to troubleshoot and offer suggestions for improvement.

OP, welcome to the forum! You'll find lots of friendly and helpful people here. Generally, I think if you eliminate variables (like expired film), you'll get consistent results more quickly.

 

[retinax]

If the film is properly developed the edge strip (the area that is not exposed by the image) should be dense solid black. When converted from neg to positive.
Yours are not, at least from the images you provide. So it suggests that they have not been developed enough.

That's not a reliable way to judge development. The edges are clear film base and remain clear irrespective of development time (although they can fog a little more with longer times). If you rely on some sort of auto exposure to scan the negative, the edges may indeed get darker (in positive) if there has been more development, because now the highlights are denser and the auto exposure swings further toward them.but that depends on how large highlight areas are just as much as on their density.
How dark the darkest tones in your scans are is just a function of scanning exposure and post processing, if we leave aside the possibility of extreme overexposure, which is not a problem in your negatives. As has been noted, your illumination is not even, and it looks like you have contamination with ambient light (turn it off!). Fix that, then expose your scan so that the shadows are black. If then the highlights are too dark (use the most contrasty negative on your typical roll to judge this, this way you'll err on the side of too flat negatives, which is better) you're underdevoping for that scanning method. There's no universal standard. And need for some post processing is to be expected, if just because not all negatives on a roll of film will have the same subject brightness range. So just go ahead and pull down them shadows on what you have and it will look much better, except that you have some unevenness so you'll lose some shadow areas that already look black.

 

[weirdnerd]

Will do some testing, Yesterday I got a "Dailight film loader" from who knows when, ( Bakelite) and ordered a 30 meter roll of Orwo UN54 film, New film will teach me more than fidgeting with expired film.

I am refining my "lighbox" and will cut new parts at a CNC I have access to ( in phenolic board), that will solve my "lack of flat negative" on my makeshift foamboard one, that way I will be able to use my phone to take better negative pictures.

I have to develop some pictures I took a couple of weeks ago ( Chipmunks almost inside the camera) and will experiment at 15 minutes, 20 Cesius. I may be arriving to a definitive developing time as I still have around 20 rolls left. Print paper will be arriving early next week and I will have to figure out how to make a temporary dark room here.

Now I have to convince a lady friend to be my muse, (in a purely artistic way, do not get ill ideas)...hehehe