Expired developer or something else?

Ok, this has happened to me before. Last time I sincerely thought this simply was the developer gone bad. And it really was the case. However I have no idea what is the reason of the very weird background this time...

Bad developer? Too much fixing? Something else? I have asked the question on Flickr. Let's see what will come back...

Patience is a virtue...

... especially when you do film photography. I haven't developed a single film in 2011 due to many different reasons, but mainly because I didn't feel like it. 

I have now stocked up on fresh developer, my Pentax mirror is no longer stuck, days are long and I have found new inspiration in the fact I will be leaving London in August to a sandier, sunnier, warmer part of the world - the Middle East and Dubai. This will most deffinately affect my film photography mostly due to the fact I am not quite certain on whether B&W chemistry is as easily available as in London and second because I am not quite sure on what is there to take pictures of. But this will show later on. 

As of now, I still have 6 more weeks in London, enough film and developer and enough energy and inspiration to get out. 

Going back to the patience bit. Here is why: 

Do you see the top left corner? Or should I rather say: do you see the lack of any image in the top left corner? Here is the story. This is the first film I developed since November and the spiral I was using felt rather sticky towards the end of rolling the film onto it, so I thought: Whatever, I'll just roll out the film and roll it around the spiral. Big mistake... The film got stuck to each other and as I also didn't presoak it the developer simply couldn't get there... So there you go. Next time - patience. It will eventually get there.  

On another note. This is Delta 100 film. Love it! And given it is currently on a summer sale price at Silverprint might get a couple of rolls for portraits this summer! 

A few more images from the same film. All taken during my resent trip to Germany and France. 

I especially love this last one. It happened because the film was stuck and wouldn't rewind properly. I have found with a few other film that for some reason the spool in the Pentax doesn't take them in as easily as the Acros or 400TX. But sometimes those faults just play nicely together! :)

A new developing disaster - updated

And it is indeed a disaster. After being able to get out the most fantastic shades ever from the Pentax, Acros and Rodinal I finally thought I got this...

Couldn't have been more wrong. 

I use R09 One shot developer which is basically Rodinal under a new name sold in the UK. It is a very unstable developer and you only mix it before you actually start developing as much as you need. The bottle says that it can keep at least 6 months after it has been opened. 

Nothing of that kind. Apparently the summer heat and the fact there is now very little left at the bottom of the bottle have speeded up my developer going bad.

I am now crying over three spoilt negatives with pictures that could have been great... yes, I am an idiot. However there isn't anything I can currently do, unless someone teaches me some PS magic. Because the result is this bad:

I mean this does not even look like a picture! Seriously!

After Ivan telling me about a super magic called stand development I thought I should try it and when the first film came out like this I thought it must be the stand development or something funny going on with the scanner. So I thought I will develop the film from the Fed. It came exactly the same...

Here is when I thought there is something wrong with the developer. However now, when I am typing this I am thinking could this be the fixer? The fixer actually being exhausted and playing silly buggers...

So you would think I would have stopped here and just gone to buy new developer. I though I would give it one last try... and another disaster. That is the thing with film, that you have to try and there is no undo button. 

Crap altogether. Very disappointed. I have one more film which will hopefully turn alright, but before that I will get a nre developer. 

Update 3rd Oct:

I went to Silverprint today to get a new developer and the guys were not sure what exactly happened to the negatives, but they were as always super helpful and said that on Monday there will be someone who can look at them. I got a new (smaller) bottle of R09, which is the newer formula of the Rodinal which is no longer sold in the UK and a new fixer as well, just in case. Now with the new bottle and one film developed I get a feeling it is almost 100% certainly the developer that has stayed for too long in the bottle.

Adox CHS Art 100

Experimenting is a good thing. That is how I found my favourite film so far - Acros 100. Pity soon it will be way to grey and dark in London to use it.

I went this Friday to buy some film as I was running low and I thought I would go adventures and try something new, the only film Silverprint has in stock and I haven't tried so far was something called Adox. Cheap and cheerful, so why not try it.

And so I did.

I think the results didn't turn too well. It was already getting dark outside and on top of it was cloudy, so I had to shoot on low speeds hand-held, which led to quite a few of the shots being blurred.

I also messed up the development, which led to the non-blurred shots to get burnt areas. The thing is Adox apparently is a single layer film which makes it very sensitive to all the chemicals, unlike all the others I have used so far (mostly Acros 100, Kodak and Ilford). I normally soak the film in tap water while I am mixing the developer just to get it ready and all. However I realized something is not right when the water I poured out of the development tank was blue. I used just tap water instead of stop bath and fixed for just 4 minutes instead of the 6 I usually do. After I went read a bit more (unfortunately I was too excited to develop it to take the time to read all this in advance) turned out Rodinal (the developer I am using) gives a lot of grain with this film

Sorry for posting the same bench from the back and from the front, but this is only for illustrative purposes of my inadequacy with the Adox film. Plus I have a thing about benches!

I have one more roll and will use it next weekend with proper light and will also do some portraits to check how it behaves with those.

Coming in the next post few of the good shots.

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.