Processing time during lockdown

John Bragg

John Bragg

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Hi all, what are you doing to pass the time during the enforced house confinement that we are facing? I am using the time to catch up with a small backlog of exposed film and make some new images of my young daughter. My usual favorite recipe is HP5+ @ ei200 and my soup du jour is usually HC110 dilution H. I have decided to experiment a little and have just developed a roll in Ilfosol 3 with minimal agitation. Ilford advise a starting point developing time of 5 mins @ 20°C with "normal" agitation and I have taken a swag (scientific wild assed guess) at 6 minutes with initial agitation of 15 seconds and 2 invertions at 2 mins and 2 more at 4 mins. My previous experience of Ilfosol pointed to it being good for long scale subjects and I have tried to exploit this trait as well as its sharpness, being a non solvent developer. So far so good it seems, as the first roll is hanging up drying and it appears to the Mk1eyeball to have plenty of shadow detail and very well separated highlights. I am now in a state of anticipation and will be warming up the film scanner as soon as I can. I will be happy if I am in the ball park and a slight tweek may or may not be nescessary, but these negatives look well nigh spot on. Fingers crossed and I will post some examples here as soon as I can.
 
Be sure and post them. I'm going through a backlog of old (and I mean old) negatives, and slides. Also I'm doing some maintenance on some less used cameras and other photo equipment.

Here is a digital photo with flash for what I've been seeing for the last couple of weeks.

Stay-at-Home bounce flash fill by John Carter, on Flickr

Also, I haven't opened my suspect bottle of NEW HC-110 yet. But I'm going to use it as I've paid for it and I can't go to the photo shop to return it. So I'm hoping it will be fine. If not I'll try something else. I should be upset about the crystals in the bottle I bought, but I guess I'm not upset at all. If there is a problem I'll just say there are worst things going on now so why worry about a developer.

The picture above is one of my daughter's growing up room. She liked it this way and I don't have the heart to change it. Her room reminds me of her. John, you will have something like this happen to you when your girl grows up and leaves home. Cheers, stay safe and enjoy your family during the 'shut down.'
 
Thankyou for your kind thoughts John. My 2 year hiatus has left me with a fresh mind and eager to get stuck in. My littleun is eager to know about Daddy's magic camera and I am all too pleased to show her in small bites. She already knows that Dad's cameras don't make photos instantaneously and he has to do Magic to make them appear. She saw a negative for the first time today and I explained that the magic happens when we shine a light through those little windows. It may seem crazy going to Ilfosol 3 from HC110, but I found the old Ilfosol S to be very good image wise, with great tonality and sharpness as good as it gets, as long as you don't let it get old, or it will fail. The newer iteration has allegedly fixed that and seems at first sight to be as good or better than the original. I didn't have a clue about minimal agitation when I last used it, but now I feel able to get more out of it..
Cheers John. Be well and stay safe
 
This is the best time of your life, so enjoy it. Yes, a couple of years ago I took a picture of a mother and daughter that I sometimes walk with on their way to school. The girl wanted to see the picture right then. She didn't believe me when I said it isn't that kind of camera.

Not my best focus:

Tmax 100 at 50-HC-110h by John Carter, on Flickr
 
Currently, I am going right back to basics with my OM1n and 85 f2 and 50 f1.8 Zuickos. Good enough for Jane Bown and good enough for me. That is possibly my favorite 35mm and I have 2 of them. Very quick and discrete.
 
Nothing like a small and superior camera. Olympus over the years made the best range of good cameras: everything from superior sub-compacts to easy to carry around SLRs. This is from my Olympus Stylus Infinity, which I still have and occasionally use, check the lens sharpness (onboard fill flash setting):

From my first roll of TMY-about 1997-8 by John Carter, on Flickr
 
Great shot John. I always preferred the Stylus Infinity to the Epic
I had far more failure to focus with the Epic and its program bias towards shooting wide open.
 
John Bragg said:
Currently, I am going right back to basics with my OM1n and 85 f2 and 50 f1.8 Zuickos. Good enough for Jane Bown and good enough for me.
Click to expand...

My favourite portrait photographer. The quality of her work - with simple equipment - is a lesson to us all.
 
We are allowed to have a session of exercise a day, and I have a vigorous walk over Plymouth Hoe, with fabulous views out to the Sound and the sea, and paths up and down cliffs to small coves and swimming areas - all just 15 minutes fast walk away. Everyone bar a tiny number is behaving well, but I get the occasional people photo.

I normally develop in PMK Pyro, but I wanted a bit more speed for evening photos, so did this Tmax400 at box speed in Tmax developer. It's less atmospheric than I'd like.

peoplehoelastnight-1-of-1.jpg
 
CharlesDAMorgan said:
We are allowed to have a session of exercise a day, and I have a vigorous walk over Plymouth Hoe, with fabulous views out to the Sound and the sea, and paths up and down cliffs to small coves and swimming areas - all just 15 minutes fast walk away. Everyone bar a tiny number is behaving well, but I get the occasional people photo.

I normally develop in PMK Pyro, but I wanted a bit more speed for evening photos, so did this Tmax400 at box speed in Tmax developer. It's less atmospheric than I'd like.

peoplehoelastnight-1-of-1.jpg
Click to expand...

Lovely luminous shot.
 
charjohncarter said:
You have it all. Developers are a very small cog it the whole process. So you were lucky and found one that suits you.
Click to expand...
Thanks John. I now have two subtly different results from one film and two developers. I think I am finding the wisdom in DF Cardwell's writings helpful and as I get older, I have more confidence in predicting what will happen if I deviate from "official" development times. I am also able to see if they are just plain wrong for me. These early results show the kind of look that I am after with crisp microcontrast and very regular honest grain structure. Ilfosol is often overlooked in favor of other brews but it is officially Ilford's sharpest developer. I see it possibly as a kind of liquid Perceptol and capable of producing the kind of look that James Ravillious was famous for. That would be a cool project when lockdown is over. Load the Leica and do it like James !
 
Thanks - the levels of activity outside are a bit low at present, but those are among my favourite hunting grounds.

But when this is all over, I want to get out on Dartmoor and just walk and shoot!
 
At the moment I've been caught up with other obligations in life and got rather busy. Wer're not in a lockdown here so one can go out and have reduced meetings. More individual meetings lately and a different athmosphere from people.

However, I do actually still have time for some nice darkroom session but I haven't bothered dragging myself to the community darkroom.

I was given an old box of Ilford FB paper that's supposed to be fine. I want to print some family pictures and portraits on it. Perhaps during Easter, which given the strange situation, I perceive it as being erased from the calendar...

Got some film last week, as I had no BW in 35mm left, and loaded my mju I as an EDC camera.

John Bragg said:
My usual favorite recipe is HP5+ @ ei200 and my soup du jour is usually HC110 dilution H.
Click to expand...
What regime (time & agitation) did you use for this combination? I've often done HP5 at EI250-320 and Dil. E at 7:30-8 minutes. Finding HP5 flat (lighting doesn't help that too), but then I split grade print with a heavy bias towards grade 5 when I want heavier contrast.
 
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