What did you compose at Waters Edge?

[Joel Truckenbrod]

I exposed this after Christmas and found it when I processed my film from a Death Valley trip a week ago. I forgot I exposed it. It was made on the Santa Ynez river in the mountains behind Santa Barbara.

Comments or suggestions are always welcome on my image posts.

Chamonix 4x5
Nikkor M 300
Delta 100

The sense of quiet and stillness is very appealing here. I suspect it would have been easy to work the tones in the rocks more to create something a bit more dramatic, but this rendering seems to feel "right" given the subject matter.

[Kirk Gittings]

I exposed this after Christmas and found it when I processed my film from a Death Valley trip a week ago. I forgot I exposed it. It was made on the Santa Ynez river in the mountains behind Santa Barbara.

Comments or suggestions are always welcome on my image posts.

Chamonix 4x5
Nikkor M 300
Delta 100

superb.

[alexn]

Heres the first negative from my shiny new 045N-2... I've not shot film now for a couple of years, so it was great to be back composing on the ground glass again, and definitely happy exposure wise... I made a bit of a judgement error though, I'd read that B/W chems last indefinitely. I had some rodinal and some Ilford Rapidfix left over from when I used to shoot film a couple of years ago, so I assumed it would still be ok.. the rodinal looked (and smelt) as I remembered it to, however the Ilford rapidfix had a stronger smell than I remember and had a few bright yellowish-green floaties in it... I strained out the floaties and mixed up the chems... again, the Rodi looked fine but instead of being crystal clear, the fixer solution looked cloudy like a 70:30 water:milk mix or something... Going against my better judgement, I used the chemicals.. Well... My negs turned out a little strange...

I feel I under-developed (or, perhaps, the old rodinal is cooked) however its the first time shooting this film so its really hard for me to say..

Details:

2sec f/32
Fomapan 100 in Rodinal 100:1 for 25min @ 20°C (two agitations, 10sec each at 7 and 14 minutes)


you can see in the sky the weird marks on the negative.. There were 5 other sheets I processed in the same run and this is perhaps the best of the lot.. the rest suffering badly from drying marks, clumsy finger-prints on the negs etc..

[StoneNYC]

Heres the first negative from my shiny new 045N-2... I've not shot film now for a couple of years, so it was great to be back composing on the ground glass again, and definitely happy exposure wise... I made a bit of a judgement error though, I'd read that B/W chems last indefinitely. I had some rodinal and some Ilford Rapidfix left over from when I used to shoot film a couple of years ago, so I assumed it would still be ok.. the rodinal looked (and smelt) as I remembered it to, however the Ilford rapidfix had a stronger smell than I remember and had a few bright yellowish-green floaties in it... I strained out the floaties and mixed up the chems... again, the Rodi looked fine but instead of being crystal clear, the fixer solution looked cloudy like a 70:30 water:milk mix or something... Going against my better judgement, I used the chemicals.. Well... My negs turned out a little strange...

I feel I under-developed (or, perhaps, the old rodinal is cooked) however its the first time shooting this film so its really hard for me to say..

Details:

2sec f/32
Fomapan 100 in Rodinal 100:1 for 25min @ 20°C (two agitations, 10sec each at 7 and 14 minutes)


you can see in the sky the weird marks on the negative.. There were 5 other sheets I processed in the same run and this is perhaps the best of the lot.. the rest suffering badly from drying marks, clumsy finger-prints on the negs etc..

FOMA has terrible reciprocity failure, so you may have run into under exposure if the exposure was more than 1/2 second.

The Rodinal is probably fine, but 1:100 with only 2 inversions should have been 1 hour... 25 minutes is too short for a semi-stand like that, if you like the 1:100 I suggest agitations every 20 minutes over the course of 1 hour (after the initial 1 minute agitation at the beginning of course).

I would also re-fix with new fixer... The fixer is certainly bad.

Can't account for the streaks, did you pre-wash for at least 2-3 minutes?

The drying marks can come off by re-soaking and drying them, use wetting agent / fotoflo to help dry evenly. But again, re-fix with fresh fixer first just to be sure all the silver is out, or the negative might go dark over time.

BTW it's a friggin gorgeous image!!! Wow, welcome back! Your envisioning skills are very high

[alexn]

FOMA has terrible reciprocity failure, so you may have run into under exposure if the exposure was more than 1/2 second.

The Rodinal is probably fine, but 1:100 with only 2 inversions should have been 1 hour... 25 minutes is too short for a semi-stand like that, if you like the 1:100 I suggest agitations every 20 minutes over the course of 1 hour (after the initial 1 minute agitation at the beginning of course).

I would also re-fix with new fixer... The fixer is certainly bad.

Can't account for the streaks, did you pre-wash for at least 2-3 minutes?

The drying marks can come off by re-soaking and drying them, use wetting agent / fotoflo to help dry evenly. But again, re-fix with fresh fixer first just to be sure all the silver is out, or the negative might go dark over time.

BTW it's a friggin gorgeous image!!! Wow, welcome back! Your envisioning skills are very high

Thanks, I have shot this little jetty once or twice before and never produced something I was happy with... This time around I really feel happy with the result, just not so happy with the negative...

I didn't pre-wash the negative at all which may well be the issue with streaking... It could have happened as the fresh developer poured into the tank?

As for Foma's reciprocity, I use an iPhone app created by a forum member Stef "Boinzo" Dunn. Its called 'Reciprocity Timer'. Its a god-send, you just plug in the metered exposure time and it spits out the adjusted time factoring in reciprocity... I feel confident on the exposure time (Metered 1 second, exposed for 2 seconds), but I blindly followed the Massive Dev Chart with regards to the 1:100 dev time of 25mins... As its my first time working with the film and developer combination I thought I'd use the massive dev chart as a baseline and work from there.. Next time I will bump it up to an hour and see how I go.

I didn't know I could re-fix the negs? I've got a fresh bottle of rapidfix inbound, as soon as it gets here I'll re-soak the negatives, re-fix and hit them with some fotoflo.. (I've not used that before either but I do hear it really helps)

Thanks for your help, hopefully I can salvage this one.. Luckily the jetty is only 10 minutes from home so I can re-shoot if need be.

[StoneNYC]

Thanks, I have shot this little jetty once or twice before and never produced something I was happy with... This time around I really feel happy with the result, just not so happy with the negative...

I didn't pre-wash the negative at all which may well be the issue with streaking... It could have happened as the fresh developer poured into the tank?

As for Foma's reciprocity, I use an iPhone app created by a forum member Stef "Boinzo" Dunn. Its called 'Reciprocity Timer'. Its a god-send, you just plug in the metered exposure time and it spits out the adjusted time factoring in reciprocity... I feel confident on the exposure time (Metered 1 second, exposed for 2 seconds), but I blindly followed the Massive Dev Chart with regards to the 1:100 dev time of 25mins... As its my first time working with the film and developer combination I thought I'd use the massive dev chart as a baseline and work from there.. Next time I will bump it up to an hour and see how I go.

I didn't know I could re-fix the negs? I've got a fresh bottle of rapidfix inbound, as soon as it gets here I'll re-soak the negatives, re-fix and hit them with some fotoflo.. (I've not used that before either but I do hear it really helps)

Thanks for your help, hopefully I can salvage this one.. Luckily the jetty is only 10 minutes from home so I can re-shoot if need be.

Lucky you on the close location, but are those clouds always there?

Yes you can re-fix, just to be safe.

Massive dev chart is good for "normal" times that mostly are given by manufacturer, so I would follow the 1:50 dilution for FOMA of 9 minutes. But if you wanted to do stand development for a reason (like pulling the shadows and preventing blowout in the highlights because of a contrasty scene, or a bad exposure you wanted to recover, or an UNKNOWN exposure you wanted to recover, then 1:100 semi-stand for one hour (with a single inversion every 20 minutes) works well. The SEMI part is the inversion every 20 minutes, TRUE stand is literally one minute of inversion at the beginning, and nothing at all till the hour is UP... But I like a LITTLE agitation to refresh the dev personally, you have to experiment to find what you like. The semi stand technique is a variant of the standard one, I just modified it for my own likes.

I use the same app, it's great, especially version 2!

I've only been at this for 4 years now, so please take all my advice from that of a "beginner" when it's 20 years then it should be "Fact".

[Maris Rusis]

Heres the first negative from my shiny new 045N-2...

What lens, what filter? 2 seconds at f32 seems a long exposure on Fomapan 100 for a daylight scene.

I've not shot film now for a couple of years, so it was great to be back composing on the ground glass again, and definitely happy exposure wise... I made a bit of a judgement error though, I'd read that B/W chems last indefinitely. I had some rodinal and some Ilford Rapidfix left over from when I used to shoot film a couple of years ago, so I assumed it would still be ok.. the rodinal looked (and smelt) as I remembered it to, however the Ilford rapidfix had a stronger smell than I remember and had a few bright yellowish-green floaties in it... I strained out the floaties and mixed up the chems... again, the Rodi looked fine but instead of being crystal clear, the fixer solution looked cloudy like a 70:30 water:milk mix or something... Going against my better judgement, I used the chemicals.. Well... My negs turned out a little strange...

The Rodinal is probably ok, The Ilford Rapidfix is definitely "sulphured out" and should not be used even if there is some residual fixer activity.

I feel I under-developed (or, perhaps, the old rodinal is cooked) however its the first time shooting this film so its really hard for me to say..

Details:

2sec f/32
Fomapan 100 in Rodinal 100:1 for 25min @ 20°C (two agitations, 10sec each at 7 and 14 minutes)

you can see in the sky the weird marks on the negative.. There were 5 other sheets I processed in the same run and this is perhaps the best of the lot.. the rest suffering badly from drying marks, clumsy finger-prints on the negs etc..

Stand and semi-stand development of sheet film is a long way from how sheet film was designed to be routinely processed. I reckon it is just asking for trouble. Spots, streaks, weird edge effects, unusual tonal outcomes are absolutely characteristic of minimal agitation processing. In several decades of sheet film processing I've never encountered a situation (warning: biassed personal opinion/experience) where stand or semi-stand development solves more problems than it creates.

[alexn]

StoneNYC - I went for a semi-stand because I was trying to make a low contrast negative. I find them easier to scan and I add contrast after the fact... Next time I might go something more normal but I do think that yes, it's safe to assume that I under-developed and the fixer was dead..

Maris - Thanks for your thoughts Maris (I'm still going to call you when I have a few minutes at a reasonable time of day )

Lens was a Schneider SA 90mm f/8, I used a 3 stop ND to pull the exposure time down, I wanted just long enough to smooth the water, but not so long as to remove all texture from it. The image was made about 6:30 AM, so still very much an early morning scene, I waited until a large, dense cloud obscured the sun, leaving the bright highlights in the background to add some drama and depth to the sky. I was happy the clouds were moving relatively slowly the morning I shot this as it really gave me the dynamic tension I was going for, turbulent skies against smooth calm waters, using the weathered jetty to tell of years of the same.

I have discarded the fixer I had left, the Rodinal should still be ok, but I have another bottle of each coming, so I will re-fix this, and a few other images hopefully early next week and see how they come out...

My film holder also seems to have a slight light leak at the flap, you can see it in the top edge of the neg about 1/5 of the way in from the right hand side..

[Maris Rusis]

My film holder also seems to have a slight light leak at the flap, you can see it in the top edge of the neg about 1/5 of the way in from the right hand side..

I'm not too sure about the light leak. The top of the picture is actually the bottom edge of the negative as it sits in the camera at the time of exposure. And there aren't too many leaks caused by light coming from the ground up. On the other hand long exposures in daylight will find the smallest light leaks. You did have the focussing cloth draped over the back of the camera to defend against this, didn't you?

[alexn]

I really want to say that I did, but I removed the black jacket from the camera prior to exposure. I find pulling the dark slide out while under the dark cloth a bit troublesome at times so I tend to remove it... I might have to persevere however, I don't want to lose anything really important to me because I was careless..

Its possible the light leak occurred between taking the holder out of my bag and placing it into the camera.