joris_van_looveren

Ilford's life times are probably conservative estimates. Don't know why the PDF is different from what's printed on the bottle though.

 

I have had good results using old Ilfosol-S that was in its original plastic bottle, but also lost a roll once because it was so underdeveloped using my normal time for that film that there was hardly anything left on the film after fixing; it's hard to say when it goes bad.

 

I have since switched to Ilfotec LC29, which is clear when new. It slowly turns brown as it oxidises, and I throw it away when it is more than just a little brown.

I'd develop the first 10 or 15 cm first before doing the rest of the roll. This will tell you how to adjust the development procedure, and the edge of the film will probably tell you exactly what film you have in hand.

Have you been satisfied with your Delta 400 negatives @ 800 developed according to Ilford's times before?

 

If not, maybe Ilford's times are just generally too long for your taste.

 

Have you tried printing them? Maybe the negatives look strange but print fine.

"(the negs came out very thin, grainy, with high contrast and hardly any shadow detail)"

 

These sound like the symptoms of overdevelopment. Maybe use a shorter development time? I also understand that Delta films don't like to be pushed. I'd conclude that your roll at 400 will be fine in LC29.

 

Rodinal seems to generally be a bad choice for fast films.

<a href="http://news.agfa.com/corporate/news.nsf/news/F07C0210ECC86EA9C1256EF3004D27CE?opendocument">Agfa's own press release</a> is a bit more readable...

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It sounds like the lock/unlock button does not work properly any more. I didn't know you could turn the lens further than the red dot though, maybe you can if the button sticks in "unlock" position.

 

One lever is to operate the aperture blades in the lens, the other is to convey the aperture ring setting to the camera. Turning the lens further than the red dot may have damaged that lever. This may or may not be a problem, I don't know.

In the mean time the top is off. That seemed to have been peanuts however compared to getting the advance mechanism out and understanding it...

I came across an OM-2S on a flea market and took the chance... The

electronics seem to work fine but the film advance mechanism is stuck

in "rewind" mode. Is this repairable?

"... After he has figured the ISO out, he keeps the dial on his camera at that ISO, no matter what. That is his fixed starting point. Then, ..."

 

I have a fixed starting point too: the ISO rating. I then use the ISO dial because that allows me the finest adjustment of the final exposure.

 

Let me define the reference point as "the point from which one would have to compensate for the meter the least (or least often)" (using whatever means available on the camera). I'm sure I will arrive at such a reference point, and maybe then I will not find it necessary any more to compensate.

 

I agree it's a case of semantics.

> Using a personal EI you would still need to do what you're doing. My main B&W film I expose at 64 not the ISO of 100.

 

To be sure we are talking about the same thing: do you also develop for EI 64, or do you still develop for EI 100 in this case?

 

Because if you develop for EI 100, you're doing the same thing I am, which is to compensate for the meter in your camera towards the negative quality that you like. Except you give more exposure to all your frames, while I do it for some frames. My appreciation of this is that what you do is mostly convenient. And after getting some more experience, I might just do the same. The goal is the same, but the methods are different because the means (equipment) are different.

 

If you also develop for EI 64, it becomes a different story, because the characteristics of the film developed at 64 will probably be different of the characteristics of the same film developed at 100.

> You guys are talking about two different issues.

 

No.

 

I have to compensate for my meter and do it using the ISO dial on a per-picture basis for now. Modern meters are probably more consistent. But still, if everything comes out too dark for your liking or printing practices, you set the ISO at 80 to get some more exposure. It's the same thing, just not on a per-picture basis.

Shoot your roll at the given film ISO speed. Develop for that speed. Make a good contact print. Examine the pictures. Some you will like, others you will find overexposed, still others you will find underexposed. Find the regularities in the underexposed and overexposed pictures, so that you can determine WHY they are underexposed/overexposed.

 

Next roll. When you take pictures, try to see whether they represent any of the cases for which you found (in your first roll) that your camera over- or underexposed. If yes, adjust your exposure accordingly: in underexposure circumstances, use slower shutter speeds, in overexposure circumstances, use faster shutter speeds. One way to achieve slower or faster shutter speeds is manually setting shutter speed to slower or faster than your meter indicates. Another way is to change the ISO setting of the film. The meter in your camera will always determine shutter speed relative to the ISO setting, so changing your ISO setting to a lower number will prompt the camera to use longer shutter speeds.

 

Any changes/compensations you make to pictures on your second roll are against evidence collected (i.e. bad images) from your first roll. So, in order to see the effect, you need to develop in the exact same way. So, in my example you'd also develop for the film ISO rating.

 

In the beginning, always use the film's ISO rating as the development EI. Once you start to understand how to tweak your camera settings (including slight changes to the ISO setting) to achieve good exposures when developing for the ISO exposure index, only then are you ready to develop for other EIs and understand what is going on.

 

Don't just look at your pictures when you printed them. Compare them technically. Ask yourself questions. Find common denominators in pictures that came out similarly. Be systematic. Not necessarily the writing-down-everything-in-a-notebook biologist-in-the-field type of systematic, but make mental notes, create rules of thumb. "Light patches in viewfinder -> slightly overexpose". You will refine them as you "grow into" your camera, and you will start applying them automatically at some point.

 

Still don't understand? Reread at half speed, and actively imagine every step. I don't think I can make it any clearer than this...

I am new to this as well. I am still trying to learn how to get consistent exposure with my camera (Olympus OM10). It uses centre-weighted metering, which is easily confused into under- or overexposure. But even if this happens, the negatives are usually printable with some effort. Nevertheless, it would be nice to get the ratio of well-exposed vs. over/underexposed pictures up a bit.

 

My method: expose a film at its ISO value, develop it at that ISO value, and study the contact print to find regularities in under- or overexposed pictures. In my case: pictures with balanced lighting come out OK (good shadow detail, no blown highlights); lots of light in parts of the picture (snow, white clothes,...) causes them to be underexposed (shadows become too dark, lights become grayish); lots of darkness and few light areas cause them to be overexposed (blown highlights).

 

When you find out the regularities, you can start anticipating: when you see lots of light in parts of picture, the camera will underexpose, so give a bit more exposure. In the beginning I used to do this by manually setting the shutter speed slower, but since the shutter speed can only be changed in 1 stop intervals, I am now using the ISO dial of the camera to be able to do this in 1/4 stop intervals. To expose longer, make the camera believe the film in it is slower than it actually is: set it to e.g. EI 75 instead of the standard 100 ISO. For me, I seem to get better results than before when I expose 1/2 stop longer when I notice highlights in the viewfinder. I just started experimenting though, and hope to be able to do more subtle compensations in the future.

 

My take specifically on the EI stuff (up to now): the EI numbers usually given implicitly seem to assume that one exposes a whole roll at that setting. I don't usually burn a whole roll on the same subject; besides, you "violate" that setting anyway when bracketing etc. So the EI number kind of gives the "average ISO dial setting" for a range of pictures with a good contrast and tone range, for a specific camera, for the taste of the photographer/printer. So, to me it does not seem very useful in communication about films (except for pushing/pulling) etc, but it's something you need to find out for yourself in order to get consistently well-exposed pictures with your camera.

 

So, start experimenting!