mcnicks

I just bought an Olympus OM-1n, a 28mm f/3.5 and a 50mm f/1.8 so there is some demand, although perhaps not enough

to drive the price up. I had to buy them separately, though, some from a second hand store here in Scotland and some

from eBay. There were definitely other bidders interested in the lenses on eBay.

I encountered a strange effect when I developed some black and white film that had been kicking

around my drawer for a while. I have just started developing again after a bit of a break, so I am not

sure if this is to do with the film lying around for a few months, or whether it has to do with my

process.

Hopefully I will be able to attach a photo of the developed negatives when I post this but, in case I

cannot, I will describe what it looks like. I took some test shots of a towel in the first three shots,

metering them so that the frame would end up in zones 7, 8 and 9. It appears that the black in the

second and third frames have smeared over the gap between the frames onto the next frames as if

it were wet ink soaking downwards. It doesn't appear to have happened on the first frame and the

rest of the frames, which have actual shots, all appear to be ok.

Any ideas on what could have happened? I developed the film (Ilford delta 100 @ ISO 100) on a

stainless steel reel in HC-110 dil B for 6 minutes at 20C.<div></div>

First of all, are you sure that you are loading the film correctly? Its possible that, when you

close the back and start to wind the film, the tab could be coming loose from the slot in

the empty reel, meaning that the reel would spin round without actually pulling any more

film. You might have to waste a film, open the back and have a look at what is going on.

If that is ok, can the little winder in the film back wind the film on until the counter

reaches '1' when the back is not attached to the camera? If it can, then you should be in a

position to reattach the back to the camera body and take a photograph. If the main

winder on the body does not then wind the film onto '2', try using the small winder on the

back to advance it instead.

I am no expert - these are just things I ended up doing when I bought a second hand SQ-

A a short while ago. It may be that the sprocket on the body that winds the film on is not

engaging with the back properly, or it may be that the multiple exposure lever /

mechanism is broken. Either way, you might have to send it off for a service to get the

problem fixed... but before you do that, it is well worth examining the camera and the

back yourself to see if there is anything obviously weird going on. I did that when I was

having difficulties initially, and I ended up getting to know the camera much better as a

result.

I have just bought a Bronica SQ-A myself. You didn't mention if you had manuals so I thought

I would post a link. Here is the official manual from the Tamron site:

http://www.tamron.com/assets/pdfs/SQ-A.pdf

The one thing that caught me out was the multiple exposure lever. Its worth reading up on:

at the beginning I somehow got the positions mixed up while I was testing the mechanism

with no film in the back.

I am about to do a bit of testing of film speeds and development times. I have shot a couple of test rolls of

35mm film by metering my living room wall (in lieu of a grey card) and I have a range of exposures that

should start at around zone I and increase in half stops up to zone XI. Now I want to develop these rolls

for different times. I will develop the first roll at the time recommended in the 'massive dev chart' but how

should I develop the other rolls: would +20%, +40% and +60% give me a decent range of values?

Thanks, David

Thanks for the quick responses. Its good to know that it will easily survive in the cupboard

for a few weeks.

Does anybody know how long Perceptol will last when mixed into a solution? I have just mixed up my first

batch and I plan to use some of it this weekend. Will the rest of the mixed solution last longer than that,

or should I aim to use it all up quickly? I have stored the solution in four 250ml glass bottles filled to the

brim, so its not being exposed to air.

Thanks, David

I have no idea about the US but, if you are in the UK, 7dayshop.com sells most Ilford film very

cheaply. Delivery takes a while but if you plan ahead its worth it.

Hi,

I have recently started developing black and white film at home. I do not have a great deal of space in my

flat, so the only place I have found to store my chemicals is a shallow cupboard where my combi-boiler is

fitted. I thought it was ideal: dark, dry and about 20C for the past few months but, now that the boiler is

coming on in the morning, I noticed that the temperature in the cupboard rises over time to 28C just

before the boiler shuts off.

Will this adversely affect the chemicals? I am storing them in dark glass bottles filled up to the brim so

they should be ok otherwise.

Thx,

David

First of all, thankyou for all of the feedback. I have developed a few more test rolls and I

think I have sorted the contrast problem out. I am just waiting for my second test roll to

dry but it looks promising. The first thing I addressed was the temperature: I bought an

accurate thermometer so that I could calibrate my spirit thermometer. The next thing I did

was shoot the test rolls using matrix metering and bracketed at +1 and -1 stop so I got

lots of feedback. Finally, I payed far more attention to my fixer. I suspect that I might not

have been fixing for long enough, so I was leaving a slight uneven fog on the film. Now I

am testing my fixer times - as I should have been doing from the beginning - by timing

how long a clipping of the film takes to clear ...etc.

As for the zone system, the reason I got interested in it is simply that matrix and centre-

weighted metering drive me nuts. I hate having to guess what the camera's meter is doing

and trying to compensate in my head. I figured it was better to spend time understanding

the light in the scene rather than the complicated machinations of the every camera /

meter that I might use.

Cheers,

David

I was hoping that the unadjusted scan would tell you more about the negative: if you invert it,

you get something that looks pretty much like the negative itself.

For the clouds 'ending up in' zone VI, I mean that I made a note at the time that the clouds

were +1 stop according to my meter. I did not know as much about the zone system back

then. What I meant was that I metered off something else, placed it in a zone that I did not

note down, then I did note down that the clouds consequently fell in zone VI. Now that I

have a bit more idea what to actually note down, I should get better feedback when I shoot

my next film.

As for the temperature thing, it is a bit confusing. My thermometer is definitely one degree

off at zero centigrade but it is more difficult to calibrate it at higher temperatures. Should I

just assume that it is one degree off through its entire range? Or could it possibly get

more and more inaccurate as temperature increases?

I have not yet tried to do any printing. It will be very interesting to return to these

negatives and see what detail I can pull out of them when I do, though.

<p> Hi, </p>

<p> I am not sure if this is the correct forum to post this, so apologies if it should go somewhere else.

I have just started shooting with b&w film and developing at home. So far, I have developed two

rolls of film, so I am very much on a learning curve. I would like to show a particularly bad shot to see

what you think I am doing wrong: </p>

<p> Whoa, that is grey! I picked it deliberately because it was truly awful. Needless to say, there are

probably a number of contributing factors. First of all, according to the notes I took I used 1/350s at f/

16 on Ilford HP5+, which more or less conforms to the sunny-16 rule. It was a glorious day so that

makes sense. However, I metered on the clouds in the sky and they ended up in - if I can interpret my

notes correctly - zone VI. That is probably too dark. </p>

<p> The next possible problem is the development temperature. I developed in HC-110 B for five

minutes at what I thought was 20C (I got those numbers from the digitaltruth chart). I have a spirit

thermometer that I calibrated by putting it in crushed ice water. It showed 1C so I had my chemicals in

a bucket of water at 22C and checked that they were at around 21C when I used them. However, the

thermometer may not be precise. The other day I used a mix of boiling water and ice water mixed 1:2

to see whether it would read roughly 33C. It actually read about 5C higher, which led me to develop my

first film at 24C (according to the thermometer), assuming that it would actually be 20C. That film had

lots of blown highlights, which led me to think that my temperature was too high. However, I was also

using 7 minutes as the development time due to misreading the chart so that might have been a

contributing factor. Phew - complicated! </p>

<p> The long and short of it is, I don't think I can trust my thermometer. From what I have read,

looking at that photograph (which was scanned raw so no level adjustments have been made), I have

not metered properly for shadow and I have underdeveloped, leading to a very, very small amount of

contrast. Does that sound right? I guess I need to find a better thermometer or at least calibrate my

spirit thermometer against a really trustworthy source. </p>

<p> Still, I am having great fun even though I am producing some really awful pictures :) </p>

<p> Thanks in advance ... </p><div></div>

Hi,

I am fairly new to film photography, and I am keen to try out developing my black and white film at home.

I have done a lot of reading and asked a few photographer friends for advice, so I think I am ready to go.

However, I have some doubts about the suitability of my flat. In a word, its small. My bathroom is basically

a shower room with a small sink, so it would not be practical to work in there. The only other source of

running water is my kitchen, but I am concerned about working with chemicals where I prepare food.

So I had an idea and I thought I would ask how feasible it might be. Since I would only be developing small

amounts of film and my tank only takes a single 35mm reel, I thought that I could possibly do without

running water by keeping a large bottle of water to hand for washes and use a bucket to empty the water

and chemicals into after use. Does that sound even vaguely workable? It may not be the quickest setup in

the world but I am not looking for quick - just simple and safe.

And thoughts would be greatly appreciated ...