schmidtjas
30-Aug-2012, 08:11
I figured I would share my experience with my first 4x5 image and my first development. I took a "quick" first shot with the 4x5 of my son standing in the back yard so that I could see if I could do it and to make sure the whole process worked without potentially sacrificing a real keeper. I blocked as much door light in our upstairs windowless bathroom as I could went into the tub with the bath curtain drawn and then went underneath a big towel to do the actual film loading, so I don't think I let any light leak onto the film pre-exposure. I settled on HP5, D76 powder, Water Stop, Kodak powder fixer, photo flo in trays. I made a lot of mistakes but I was so excited to actually produce a hand-made negative. I later scanned with a regular "all in one" scanner and inverted into a positive followed by lowering the exposure by a stop in Lightroom. Due to my errors I believe the over exposure was a result of my development process.
7970979710
My development plan was d76 stock for 7.5 minutes agitating for 5 seconds every 30 seconds, 1 minute constant agitation with two water changes for stop, 5 minutes agitating for 5 seconds every 30 seconds for fixer, 10 minute rinse (I left the water slowly running into the tray and agitated occasionally), 30 seconds in photo flo water, hang to dry. I'm positive my actual development deviated from this plan significantly due to my fumbling in the darkroom.
Mistakes I made:
-When mixing the D76 I failed to realize I was supposed to heat up the water to 50C. So when it wasn't dissolving I realized why, so I had to microwave it carefully to get it up to temperature before doing more stirring. No idea if this messed up the batch, but it developed the negative and everything is dissolved now. I think going forward at some point I may switch to a liquid concentrate to make this easier.
-I know my temperature wasn't 20C for the developer. Before beginning I measured 22C roughly after it had been in the fridge for awhile to cool down. I know this should be compensated for but I was too excited to just do it and it was already getting late at night.
-My iPod "Talking Timer" app decided to go to sleep in my pocket around 4 minutes into development, so that caused some fumbling and I'm sure I got my times wrong by some margin. I was able to get it going again in my pocket but now I know to use something else.
Questions:
-My scanner does 9600dpi, though I set it to 2400dpi for this scan. Is there anything special I need to do to scan properly? I just scanned it as a 24bit color image. The scanner has a light from underneath the glass and a white reflective "roof". The negative seemed to come out ok scanned, but I have nothing to compare the results with really.
-What might cause the streaks etc on the image?
-Is there a good resource that discusses common problems caused in the dark room and their source?
-Is there a simple way to get water off the negative? I hung the image with a clip. Can I use a hair dryer or will that just cause other issues? I thought photo flo was supposed to do a better job but maybe I was expecting too much.
-Can a negative be cleaned after the fact? Meaning, can I put it in some water with a pinch of photo flo and wash it again without ruining it?
-I poured my d76 stock and fixer back into their jars for reuse. From what I understand for such a small development (one sheet) this shouldn't be an issue initially.
Anyway, I thought you might enjoy seeing my first negative, such as it is. It was a really exciting process for me haha
7970979710
My development plan was d76 stock for 7.5 minutes agitating for 5 seconds every 30 seconds, 1 minute constant agitation with two water changes for stop, 5 minutes agitating for 5 seconds every 30 seconds for fixer, 10 minute rinse (I left the water slowly running into the tray and agitated occasionally), 30 seconds in photo flo water, hang to dry. I'm positive my actual development deviated from this plan significantly due to my fumbling in the darkroom.
Mistakes I made:
-When mixing the D76 I failed to realize I was supposed to heat up the water to 50C. So when it wasn't dissolving I realized why, so I had to microwave it carefully to get it up to temperature before doing more stirring. No idea if this messed up the batch, but it developed the negative and everything is dissolved now. I think going forward at some point I may switch to a liquid concentrate to make this easier.
-I know my temperature wasn't 20C for the developer. Before beginning I measured 22C roughly after it had been in the fridge for awhile to cool down. I know this should be compensated for but I was too excited to just do it and it was already getting late at night.
-My iPod "Talking Timer" app decided to go to sleep in my pocket around 4 minutes into development, so that caused some fumbling and I'm sure I got my times wrong by some margin. I was able to get it going again in my pocket but now I know to use something else.
Questions:
-My scanner does 9600dpi, though I set it to 2400dpi for this scan. Is there anything special I need to do to scan properly? I just scanned it as a 24bit color image. The scanner has a light from underneath the glass and a white reflective "roof". The negative seemed to come out ok scanned, but I have nothing to compare the results with really.
-What might cause the streaks etc on the image?
-Is there a good resource that discusses common problems caused in the dark room and their source?
-Is there a simple way to get water off the negative? I hung the image with a clip. Can I use a hair dryer or will that just cause other issues? I thought photo flo was supposed to do a better job but maybe I was expecting too much.
-Can a negative be cleaned after the fact? Meaning, can I put it in some water with a pinch of photo flo and wash it again without ruining it?
-I poured my d76 stock and fixer back into their jars for reuse. From what I understand for such a small development (one sheet) this shouldn't be an issue initially.
Anyway, I thought you might enjoy seeing my first negative, such as it is. It was a really exciting process for me haha