Film photography

[Kayos]

Thought I'd put a post up of what I'm up to while the garage is out of use (leaky roof) and the van shelter is still en route.

I found an exposed black and white film in the fridge so I got my developing stuff setup.

It's a basic water bath setup, but as I like to limit the variables I disabled the stats in the heaters and built this

It's a Chinese temp controller built into a double socket, it can switch 2.4kw without a relay, I went for the thermistor type to simplify the wiring but replaced the sensor with one from RS

It can also easily get to temp to develop colour film, but haven't done any for a while.

For those interested its a roll of Rollei Retro 400s I will develop in Rodinol (1+25) for 10:50, 20 seconds over recommended but without it I get bits of black on the sprocket holes. Was shot on a canon EF with a 50mm f1.8 lens (the one on the left)

If there's anything decent on the roll I will post them up tomorrow

 

[ben8vgte]

Very nice
I need to get round to using up some stock in fridge in my OM2 and ETRsi, more so now that I have a colour medium format enlarger and heated paper tanks.

 

[Kayos]

I've never done enlarging or paper developing, my dark room isn't that dark.

I do have a Rolleicord for medium format fun but haven't put a roll through it in over a year

 

[AdrianH]

Film Cameras yea.

Have two Pentax ME supers 35 mm gear, and a Bronica ETRS Have a Patterson enlarger some where that has the variable filters and 3 light sources. Mostly did B/W stuff with the Ilford variable contrast stuff, oh happy days. not used the gear for years.

Adrian

 

[Kayos]

I scratched the film a bit loading it, I will put that down to lack of practice and a warped real from a failed colour experiment, however if it was an important roll it wouldn't have been in the fridge 9 months........

I am quite jealous the other posters BOTH have Bronica's however I'm lucky that we still have a camera shop who sells decent second hand gear.

I've loaded one of my A1's and my 500n (£6 from ebay, usually with £600 worth of lens on it) with film and plan a jaunt tomorrow, I've also ordered a Patterson tank for black and white, should be better than a warped AP one that was a bit rubbish even when new

 

[ajlelectronics]

You would be surprised what you can get away with, darkroom wise. For film development, you don't need one at all, as a changing bag will do to get the film in the tank. You might not want to do it in company though, due to the strange looks you get fiddling inside a black bag in your lap. ;-)

 

[zx9]

I lost the use of my darkroom when we had the loft conversion done two years ago.
Rodinal can be quite nice and lasts almost for ever undiluted, for a bit more contrast and finer grain I used Ilfosol LT39 not so good shelf life though.

 

[Kayos]

You would be surprised what you can get away with, darkroom wise. For film development, you don't need one at all, as a changing bag will do to get the film in the tank. You might not want to do it in company though, due to the strange looks you get fiddling inside a black bag in your lap. ;-)

I load all my films in a bag, the wife is used to my hands fumbling around inside it

I just don't have the space/time to setup for paper developing, but I do have a decent film scanner so can print any I like

 

[slim_boy_fat]

I had to give up on my darkroom when I moved house due to lack of space. Also sold/traded-in all my 35mm, Bronica and darkroom stuff and went fully digital; great what you can do in P/Shop but there's nothing to beat the smell of chemicals......

I dealt it all in with this crowd http://www.ffordes.com/, they carry an excellent range of quality gear and I found them very fair to deal with - the bonus being they're just down the road from me.

 

[Robotstar5]

Haven't touched roll film for a few years, still got a bag full of Pentax bodies & lenses in the loft, probably worthless today . Just to see if it worked I put a roll of 120 or 620? into an old box Brownie, I was amazed it actually worked.

 

[zx9]

........

I am quite jealous the other posters BOTH have Bronica's however I'm lucky that we still have a camera shop who sells decent second hand gear.

...........

I've got a couple of Bronies as well, SQ kit which I bought in the late 80's cost a lot back then and a supposed faulty SQAi which I got free with a 120 RFH, new battery in the camera and re set the mirror camera 'fixed' it was actually a faulty RFH which was cured by tightening a couple of grub screws.

There's my B&W film album on Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/zx9/sets/72157603300220450/ most scanned on an Epson V700 the rest on a PlusTec
Most have notes on film / developer used.

 

[cumbriasteve]

I have several suitcases in the loft full of old cameras, everything from Eastman Kodaks to TLR's, folding and sliding bellows and box, nothing of any great value now though.

I used to have a lot more, probably close to 300, including several big wooden plate cameras and some mini spy cameras but they were awkward to display as a collection, a sod to dust (her view) and a house purchase was on the horizon so the valuable one's got sold.

 

[brightspark]

sois there still a good market for old cameras ??

 

[cumbriasteve]

sois there still a good market for old cameras ??

There is for the right one but ebay has ruined the market, everyone that finds one in the loft bangs it on and they are easier to find.

They were probably worth more about 20 years ago.

 

[gordon stephenson]

I still have a Canon A1 with Canon motor drive and 1.4-50mm lens, Plus a slack handful of mainly Tamron zooms, Used to enjoy developing black and white film and printing particularly, An old doctor friend bought a load of new Durst colour developing gear and let me have it on extended loan, Got some really good results once i got the hang of adjusting the colour filters in the enlarger, Even had a Phillips analyser in the set up.

 

[Farside]

I'm still a semi-active user of film, having let it lie for a decade I got back into it in 2006 or so, when all that marvellous kit was approaching rock-bottom in ebay value. I was like a kid in a sweet shop, buying left right and centre some of the lenses I used to dream of owning and nobody wanted any more because they "weren't digital". BS - the used market has woken up to that and with the prices lens makers charge for something half decent, more people started to realise the old kit of any good grade was still as good as the day it was made - and their cameras had manual modes they could use it in.
Ironically, it was the acquisition of a used Canon 10D that woke me up to film again, via manual lenses and the bodies they fitted.
Things reached a buying peak a couple of years ago when I started rooking myself to buy Linhofs - I knew it had gone far enough, then.

 

[Robotstar5]

A workmate paid many hundreds of ponds for a used Leica R4 and Summicron lense in the early 80's, I like the way it's described as an Analogue camera

 

[CKJDJK]

As a boy, I used to develop and print b&w films and prints in the garden shed using Patinsons chemical and a Russian enlarger. The enlarger had a home made extension to the column allowing bigger prints. Had to reset the auto focus to compensate. results were decent but not professional quality. Had to line the shed walls with old blankets as in the summer the sun used to bleed through the wood cladding. Best part was as the image started to appear and getting impatient to put the photo into the fixer so I could look at it properly. Never did get into colour. All digital now, its just not the same.

 

[Robotstar5]

...more people started to realise the old kit of any good grade was still as good as the day it was made - and their cameras had manual modes they could use it in.

That's a thought, I wonder if my "analogue" KA mount lenses will work on my digital K-x?

 

[zx9]

sois there still a good market for old cameras ??

For the right camera yes the old lenses have more value if you can use them on an adapter with current digital cameras, most lenses can be made to work with the small formats of Compact System Cameras.