Another Development Without a Proper Darkroom

At least with my Ilford thermometer I can get the temperature right. Thought it's going to take a bit of trial and error with regard to how long the 1 litre of ID11 and 500ml of fixer need to be in the University's Hall of Residence freezer to bring them down from room temperature of 75F to the optimum of 68F. (Though, incidentally, the Ilford thermometer has 65F marked in red, as if that was the optimum... Perhaps it was in pre-central heating times. It's pure social history, this retro photography lark.)

[EDIT 9.30PM: I made a right arse of that. The roll stopped winding on, and in in the confined space of a halls of residence wardrobe, I was getting very hot and stressed. I thought I had most of the roll on, and it wouldn't hurt to sacrifice a few frames from the end...

So I snipped it off. Which was a blunder because only the first ten or so exposures were wound on, and I lost most of the film when I opened the wardrobe door. Bastardo! The roll's hanging up to dry now, and it looks as if there'll be three or four exposures that are ok. Which is piss poor out of 36 exposure roll.

I went through my collection of unexposed film and I've got a roll of Kodak TMax. It will be sacrificed to the Gods of Film Dev later as I play around with the dev tank's spool to see where the hell I went wrong.]

Comments

  1. DexterTue Jul 22, 10:58:00 pm BST

    My money's on a wet spool... It only takes a single drop of wet to fuck it right up! :O)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Garry NixonWed Jul 23, 07:07:00 am BST

    Bugger off, Stevie, you digital numpty.

    ReplyDelete
  3. DexterWed Jul 23, 06:45:00 pm BST

    No... Seriously... I did my own B&W and colour processing for years (1979-1991) and my continual bane was wet spools!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Garry NixonWed Jul 23, 09:12:00 pm BST

    I realised some time ago that your campaign of taking the piss out of my diy developing was based on knowledge.

    I would have thought a drop of water was the culprit, except that the last time I used the dev tank was in Libya, and it would have been left out to dry overnight - you could dry a fucking eiderdown overnight there, if you turned the AC off.

    Fucking nuisance, whatever it was.

    ReplyDelete
  5. DexterFri Jul 25, 12:14:00 pm BST

    Not that you want it, but I'm gonna give you another top tip :O) Don't rewind the film all the way back into the can before removing it from the camera (you'll hear the leader click as it comes off the takeup spool... Stop right there). That way you can wind the film onto the developing spool directly from the can and if it fucks up you can just wind it back into the can and diagnose the problem in daylight.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Garry NixonSat Oct 11, 05:46:00 pm BST

    Well, I've started doing that now.

    AND I've realized that my problems were caused by that particular spool being broken at a crucial point.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Leech or flatworm? Ants and Swiss Chard

Image
For the 2nd time in a week or so, (1st time regarding dwarf beans ), I'm following Alys Fowler's advice, this time with regard to Swiss chard .  Long story short, after midsummer plants which often bolt if planted in spring will resist the impulse to do so, probably because of shortening days; (I say shortening, but in Glasgow, in July, we're still getting 18 hours of daylight).   I got a packet of Bright Lights , at a good price, (another reason to wait until July before sowing, lots of bargains, I've noticed). But where to sow them? Most of the 2nd bed is under a tarpaulin, but it wasn't quite big enough to cover the whole bed, so the last 5ft or so went under a sheet of plastic, (in the background of the photo in this post, here .) Transparent plastic was a foolish idea, weeds were growing underneath it, so I covered most of it with sheets of metal from the old shed. I decided to leave the tarp, but use the area beneath the plastic for the chard. Who-ah there...
Read more

"Chevy Chase. Fuck ever happen to him?"

Image
As Paulie Walnuts said in The Sopranos. It got me thinking. As it happens, he's been working steadily , but you can see what Paulie means. It's like that with film and television actors: you don't see them in anything for a year or two, and you wonder if they're dead or perhaps on a lengthy charlie and booze session. Or maybe doing proper acting on the stage? Only appearing on the telly gives them meaning to us. That video with Paul Simon was on one of the cable music channels the other day. It always makes me smile. As for Paulie and the rest of the crew, the clock's ticking. Of course, America already knows how things finish, but we don't. My mate Ian was telling me about a friend of his, visiting the States a few weeks ago, flicking through the channels in his hotel bedroom, he hit on a repeat of THE final episode, just beginning. What a quandry! He watched it, as it goes, but kept shtum when he came home.
Read more

How many pallets can you fit in the back of a Fiat 500?

Image
At least 1. Maybe I could have got 3 altogether, at a pinch. Also 200+ gorse seeds, which have begun to look in danger of damping off, so I'm thinking they'll be better off at the allotment in the fresh air. I'm worried about slugs, snails and woodpigeons, though, so I put them in a wheelbarrow, covered with a net. Also this morning, planted a row of beetroot detroit.
Read more