Experiment #1

The first try after buying lots of chemicals, thermometer and all was with a half of Ilford HP5+ film that was left over from the course I did in January. I have used half the film so I had been left with more or less 16 exposures. 

So there we are. I am using R09 one shot developer which means I need to measure very small (like 7 ml) amounts of developer to mix with water. The tall bottle is the fixer and the black is a stop bath. These are easier as they can be mixed and re-used many times. The small amounts however mean I don't need to make complicated physics calculations when chemical is 15 degrees and I need to mix it with water at what temperature to make 20 degrees at the end...


What generally happens with film development: you need to mix a developer with water in certain proportions that depend on the film, than you develop the film in that solution for a certain amount of time which needs to be quite exact, than you poor out the developer and pour in the stop bath which is also mixed in proportions depending on the film and generally film stays in the stop bath a minute. Last one is the fixer which is same story as the developer and the stop bath and film stays in it for about 4-5 minutes. 


All this happens with a stop watch and ably pouring chemicals from one bottle to another watching not to spill too much around and importantly non over the iPhone!


With the first film I think everything went very well. 


Here are some of the scans

The first image is simply to show off. 


The second is a note how not to meter. It was a very sunny day and I was using a sensitive film (400 ASA), plus J had the sun in her face, so yes, crap metering and over exposure. Although it can be fixed later on. 


The third one is a note how not to dry negatives. You might be able to see lines running horizontally through the pictures. This is because when drying the negatives the water wasn't wiped properly and since London water is very hard it left marks on the negative. 


And since I thought that I will definitely avoid the same mistake with drying again I went and bought shammy cloth. What a disaster it was  (although I am not enitrely convinced the shammy cloth is the one to blame) is coming up next.