180 years later... Magic!

[Godfrey]

One hundred and eighty years after the invention of Photography, I mixed up some chemistry and dipped a strip of gelatin covered plastic into it. I switched to another chemical eight minutes later, and eight minutes after that I rolled the strip of plastic through a wetting agent. On the strip of plastic now hanging in my shower, a set of 36 little shadow images created by exposing the strip to light now exist.

The magic still works!

First roll of 35mm film I've processed in a LONG while. Whee!

G
—
"No matter where you go, there you are."

 

[Godfrey]

And I’m happy to report that the negs look good! Couple of nice keepers. Photo post coming soon.

 

[Jorgen Udvang]

Yesterday, I had another look at that empty space in my bathroom where the architect had planned a bathtub that was never installed...

 

[pegelli]

Film development is indeed a nice experience, but for me the greatest magic has always been seeing pictures appear on paper in the developer tray under the dark green light.

I still develop a film once in a while (from my M2) but I can't find the energy to do darkroom printing anymore, so after the film is dried it's scanning, photoshop and inkjet printing However the big plus is that I never enjoyed sitting whole days in a stinky dark room and come out with 10 (maybe 20) decent prints after a full day of work :angel:

 

[Photon42]

Did some black and white 120 rolls as well recently. Color goes to the lab but BW I do myself. If everything works, it is actually quite ok. The medium format look is priceless. After two years not fiddling the 120 into the steel rail spool at new moon, it was a wise decision to do a test drive first

 

[Godfrey]

I can relate to it all...

• I'm a better printer with a image processing and an Epson P600 than I ever was in the darkroom...!
• Color work, other than scanning negatives or slides I already have, is only for digital capture now. I get no pleasure out of dealing with color film and all its issues.
• Loading reels, all the mess, etc, makes doing film a slow messy thing.* I've killed the film loading problems by using Agfa Rondix and Rondinax daylight loading tanks for 35mm and 120 format. If the Film Lab kickstarter I've put money into ever completes and produces the product, I'll have some new daylight loading tanks that work better even. That will be fine for most anything I'm going to do nowadays other than the occasional Washi-120 rice paper film material I have, which can only be processed in trays or in the old Kodalux film tank with the lasagna plastic spiral—it's just too fragile when wet to be able to use ANY reel type tank.
• Scanning is the ultimate in mindless boredom. I scanned these with the Nikon Coolscan V, but I'll do them over again with the copy camera setup I've constructed to compare results. Each has its plusses and minuses.
• Seeing good photographs on paper is my ultimate joy. Once I have the images scanned, those are my masters and I know how to work them very quickly for the printer.

* One amusing simplification I've made to the entire film processing game is that I process ALL B&W films, regardless of type (aside from the Washi-120 material, which needs paper developer to work at all), at room temperature in HC-110 diluted 1:49 for 8 minutes. This produces the coarse, grainy, contrasty yet detailed looked that I like. My processing is very simple now: pre-rinse water bath, 8 min in developer, water bath, 8 min in fixer, rinse water bath, six changes of water with a minute's agitation between for wash, one minute in Photo-Flo, then hang to dry. I tweak the EI a bit when shooting to push the film to record differently.. It varies a bit unpredictably regardless, which is one of the charms of film that I really enjoy. I never truly know what I'm going to get.

I don't spot dust or scratches much: I'm interested in film for all the individual emulsion defects and texture inherent in film processing ... I'm not looking for technically perfect images from film at all. It's all about the expressive joy of film's variability and defects that makes it interesting to me.

This is why I still also love instant film...

Onwards!
G

 

[JoelM]

I used to do Pt/Pd printing and can't explain how it felt to see the results of all that hard work. If I had the time, space, and money, I would love to do that again. Greatly missed!

Joel