~kajtek's analog adventures

Last Saturday I've been developing again. Two rolls this time, Fomapan 100 shot recently and HP5+ from last autumn. I kept the process more or less the same, just moved to bathroom because I still use the leaky developing tank. And i still had to go back and forth to the kitchen, because even the coldest tap water in the bathroom was a bit over 20 degrees. Which was weird considering temperature outside that day.

I'd call the results moderately successful, as the negatives turned out to be okay, yet again I've noticed some issues on the scans. This time I'd been focusing manually throughout the entire roll and still half of the pictures came out blurry. Yikes. I suppose something is wrong with the mirror, which makes the focus a bit shifted between the viewfinder, the AF sensor and film.

Also noticed a light leak on the HP5 roll, which is weird as I've stored the roll in a black container in complete darkness. Maybe it got messed up in development, but that would be even weirder. But my probably biggest gripe is dust on the scans. Tried to clean the negs as well as I could before giving them to the lab, but apparently didn't manage to do it well enough. I think that I need to handle them somewhere else than my room next time. Even after drying.

Neverthless I'm pretty happy with the few pictures that I actually really like. I expanded the gallery with them.

I've recieved the scans. Some of the pictures aren't that bad. I've made a makeshift gallery to display a few of them. I'm not entirely satisfied, some of the pictures I thought will be great didn't come out well, most of them because of the messed up autofocus I wrote about before. Been to a camera shop today and they said they can't fix it. So I'm gonna need to focus manually or get a new body. Maybe I will, they aren't that expensive after all.

I wanted to put some nice photo on top of this page but all of the good ones are vertical :(

Developed succesfully! You can have a look at my negatives here and here. For me, they look promising, but today I took them to the lab to make scans, so I'm gonna know for sure when I see them.

I used Rodinal as developer, Adofix Plus as fixer and Foma Fotonal as wetting agent. Decided to get a fresh set of chemicals as I didn't really have trust in the questionable powders from the attic. I've mostly been following instructions from Ramsey Kiefer's video. As I don't own a dark tent nor a dark bag, and because it's arguably more comfortable I've opened the film canister in a windowless room in my attic. I also don't own a film canister opener but a bottle opener did the job. After loading the developing tank I've noticed that there's some appliance with LEDs on it, but they were so dim that not only I didn't notice them, but the film didn't either ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I was behind some shelves, maybe that's why.

Then I proceeded to figuring out water temperature and pouring in the chemicals. According to the Massive Dev Chart entry for Fomapan 100 at ISO 100 and Rodinal I developed for "8-9 minutes", so like 8:30 plus time of pouring the developer in. And then my biggest problem appeared - the developing container leaks. As in leaks water outside, while agitating. And it's not because I closed it incorrectly, I've checked. But apparently it didn't leak enough chemicals outside to mess up the process, and it wouldn't leak any light inside either. No wonder, it's been used for the first time in 30 years. I could get a new one, but developing tanks aren't that cheap and this one actally works, so maybe I'll just move from kitchen to the bathroom for the next time.

Developing is fun. Can recommend to everyone.

During this roll I also noticed that my camera's autofocus is off :( I didn't know whether the problem is in the AF itself or if the viewfinder shifts focus somehow but I took two test photos and it appears to be the former. I'm gonna dust the AF sensor today, maybe it will help, but my quick research doesn't leave too much hope. We'll see. [Update: it didn't help. Gonna call a repair shop on Monday.]

I'll probably post some pictures next week when I receive the scans.

When I received my tilde.town invitation email I thought to myself 'What I'm gonna do here, actually?' and then idea for this page came to my mind, almost immediately.

I'm in the process of shooting my first (actually second, but more on that later) roll of black and white analog film and I'm looking forward to developing it myself. I thought that it would be a cool project to document my journey with b&w photography and developing on this website. So here we go.

About a year ago, I got into analog photography. I've shoot a few rolls and really enjoyed it, but the costs of film and developing would stop me from enjoying this hobby as much as I'd like to. So I've been thinking about getting into b&w and developing. Actually I already have one exposed roll of Ilford HP5 that I've shoot with the intention of developing at home but never actually got down to doing it. Recently I got a few rolls of respooled Fomapan 100, which happened to be the cheapest film available for me, and I'm going to develop as soon as I finish the first one, so hopefully in a few days. We'll see if the film survives developing in soviet era chemistry from my attic (dad says it's fine). And if I don't mess anything up.

I'm shooting with my Canon EOS 300. I really like this camera, It's lightweight, has all the useful features while not being overly complicated and the 50mm I have on it is just fine.

Should've probably started like this but idk. So hi, my name is Kajtek and I'm a 19 year old living in Poland. I'm starting my last year of ICT course in high school this year. I take photos, mess around with computers and do variety of random things.