Another day and another couple of shots for more development testing. Owing to a complete failure to take comprehensive notes I’d forgotten my preferred development times for the film and developer combination that I’m using for the project. I did, once up on a time, have them nicely dialled-in resulting in images like this one from the incredible interior of Lincoln Cathedral
So, I didn’t have the right timings and I had to start again taking some recommended timings from the Massive Development Chart.
I started with a time of 16 minutes which I wasn’t overly thrilled by as it was too contrasty, reduced that to 8:30 which could have used a fraction more contrast so yesterday’s test was to notch it up slightly and try 11 minutes. This actually isn’t too far off the MDC suggestion of 12 minutes for Fomapan 100 shot at ISO50 but developed at 21 degrees C. I though tend to develop at 20 – manly because I can be a bit contrary and I like the simplicity of a nice round 20.
Not wanting to shoot another couple of sheets in the garden I decided to carry the camera, tripod and 1 film holder to the end of one of the roads in the village. The houses on the road are typically picturesque English village especially at this time of year with wisteria out in bloom; I want to capture them, with nobody in the frame, as part of the project.
Once done, it was back to the darkroom and process the sheets, dry them and see the results.
Negative no 1.
Negative no 2
Both of these scanned very nicely and needed very little tweaking in Photoshop.
Image no 1
Image no 2.
I am far happier with these – the negatives all give me good control over the contrast in the final image and they look great in the hand. I have not printed these yet, so that’s another test job to be done, but this result means I can now start developing the test portraits I’ve already shot with that developing regimen.
Now to record all that here at the end of the blog for posterity and future reference (yes, I’m talking to you future Tim Ingmire as I know you’ll be back here in a few years looking for this information):
Fomapan 100 8×10 shot at ISO50, Pyrocat-HD diluted 1:1:100, 11mins rotary processed at 20 degrees C.
Together in Isolation 