I Second That Emulsion (a film thread)

fuji superia, at under $3 a roll:

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8177/8045008886_e09a90b2c7_z.jpg

i heard really good things in the past about agfa, generally, that their film was really good to cross-process (idk which stock exactly, though i know the vista 200 isn't only processable in c-41), but could never really find any, & then a while ago it was for sale in pound-shops in the UK, so i had a bunch. their (discontinued) B&W scala film is the bomb, also, if you ever see any expired kicking around.

kinda comforted to know you had some difficulties w/superia also; i think i'm maybe thinking about when i've used it quickly, or in motion? i think the stuff it worked best on for me was for the well-lit, outdoor, taking-photos-of-stuff-on-the-ground shots i take. it's interesting you mentioning it enabling the aperture/shutter speed combos you prefer - i don't really think that way but it's v true, & having 400 speed b&w film (especially pushed to 800) feels very freeing to me, like i'm pretty casual about shooting anything without too much fussing. low grain isn't super exciting to me, but, since we are arguing, if it is a plus it is super-pronounced w/ektar (check the threads, here). i am scanning a roll of ektar while typing this & it really knocks me out, the colours are just so pretty and measured & - & i guess this is a grain thing - pure & bold.

re: portra idk i just haven't seen it looking saturated & juicy. someone on a forum mentioned a street photographer who shoots the 400 @ 1600, which was kinda zingy. actually this guy has it pretty nice. but i feel like it's way more subdued whenever i see it, like its tonal detail comes at the expense of richness or something. gonna wait til i need to impress someone before i pick some up.

oh without a doubt ektar is super low-grain. the king of smoothness. and I kinda like it and it's not even really that expensive.
I just always have to remind myself that I will be taking pictures in a different way than I normally do.

switching up is really fun for me. i am going to adorama at the end of the month, to load up on stock, & i am just gonna get a little of everything. using the bunch of agfa i had i was pretty much varying something every time - pushing it one or two stops or shooting at night/shooting in the day, &c.

were you getting the agfa at adorama?

a nice sounding question

isn't it. but nuh-uh. i was getting it at poundland. they were selling colorplus & vista. i am going to try routinely hitting dollar stores here to see if any of them do that kinda thing.

but re: adorama i just can't believe how cheap it is, like tri-x is a few bucks or whatever (maybe pre-tax, i forget). so i'm gonna buy a whole bunch.

btw the hivemind of flickr discussion boards mentions, re: agfa 200, "It's Fuji C200 by another name", which who knows but there we go

also (sorry i am just in a film rabbit hole online, now) apparently all of kodak's extra color slide film has been discontinued. it is maybe my fav. so sad.

so p3200 is gone, I have a few rolls in the freezer, have never really had an occasion to shoot it tho

also kentmere 400 has been out of stock for months

kentmere's the cheap kinda-ilford thing, right?
3200 speed b&w is a slightly less harrowing discontinuation to me, because there are a couple of other really nice alternatives. though i've never used any & if it's as singular as tri-x then it sucks bad.

end times.

am going to continue to use this thread as a liveblog of my inner monologue; i feel like this wouldn't have real authentic Photography Internet Forum credentials if a guy wasn't dryly, methodically chronicling his process with supporting examples demonstrating grain textures:

i was looking around some more, re: portra, & the few things i've found that i really like the look of seem to all be things that were shot w/portra 400, rated at 800 or higher but not pushed (a bunch of examples). quite often when i shoot slide film i feel like it's best at the very limit of its latitude, the edge of its range or w/e, like shooting it with just enough light for it to work yields the best stuff. i'm kinda nervous about basically underexposing & not treating a whole roll of film, though, so. maybe even nicer still is the guy who's shooting 800 at 400, which i can't even do the math for. i guess it's a flexible film but i feel like i am gonna overexposed and somehow wildly underexposed for two of the 12 shots. gonna go experiment.

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2012/10/how-to-shoot-ilford-xp2-super.html

probably applies to bw400cn as well

thanks for that, looking forward to reading
i almost kinda like the leeway cn-41 BW film gives you, in getting the film back & being able to blame it for not being as perfect as it could be were it the real thing

i was looking around some more, re: portra, & the few things i've found that i really like the look of seem to all be things that were shot w/portra 400, rated at 800 or higher but not pushed (a bunch of examples). quite often when i shoot slide film i feel like it's best at the very limit of its latitude, the edge of its range or w/e, like shooting it with just enough light for it to work yields the best stuff. i'm kinda nervous about basically underexposing & not treating a whole roll of film, though, so. maybe even nicer still is the guy who's shooting 800 at 400, which i can't even do the math for. i guess it's a flexible film but i feel like i am gonna overexposed and somehow wildly underexposed for two of the 12 shots. gonna go experiment.

i thought about all of this stuff as soon as i loaded the film i bought & felt so goofy; it's like whenever i am shooting black & white when it's bright out: i feel like i would have to do a lot wrong to screw it up. over- or under-exposing 800 speed film a stop in either direction doesn't seem so dramatic, but, fwiw, & w/the confusing caveat that obv some of this is indoors & some outdoors:

800 rated at 400: 1, 2
800 rated at 1600: 1, 2

the science in the c-41 B&W article is really illuminating, btw: knowing about how grain sorta 'accumulates' at the other end of the spectrum from trad B&W is really interesting.

http://i.imgur.com/FqsKp.png

uh oh

i know that bluish cast is fucked

I got super bummed out because I thought I had lost a roll of film because I only had 9 rolls of arista shot instead of 10, and I always shoot in multiples of 5 rolls, but then I ralized I traded a roll for agfa! so all is well

got my agfa back from the "lost batch" last weekend, and just uploaded a photo from it:

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8197/8227682489_268c9bd9b7_c.jpg

I'm going to shoot more film in 2013, particular medium format. I had such a reaction to this shot on Facebook recently, especially from my film-toting friends, that I should dust the Bronica off and start working through the rolls of 120...

(This is from April 2011; Bronica SQ-A, Zenzanon-S 150mm f/3.5, Fuji Provia 400F)

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6135/6012022920_396ca3a884_z.jpg

(Weirdly-framed light leak and all).

(It's just occurred to me that the Provia 400F was depicted in my original post on this thread! Part of my free haul of expired film).

I'm getting frustrated with my terrible film developing technique, but still tempted to get a proper medium format camera (i have a Holga).

i am still thinking about a membership to the mpls photo center, but i kinda just want these 20+ rolls developed and developed NOW

are they color or B+W

bout 50/50

also i lied, it's only about 16 rolls

let me develop your films

gonna give a shoutout also to my hometown comp http://www.philadelphiaphotographics.com/

they do a really professional job and they take mail order. think returnin shipping is $9 but if it's spread out over so many rolls shouldn't make that much of a diff

color is all superia (except for some weird old agfa 200 thing that i extracted from my SL35 and must be 10+ yrs old?), BW is a mix of stuff---ilford, tri-x, kentmere

i also need to get organized, and start putting these negs in a binder or something---i've got several rolls i haven't scanned/looked at, and i think they're likely to be lost to my desk's horrible clutter if i don't act soon

trying not to think about organising negs. feel like i'll just wait til i have like a hundred swirled plastic coils of film & then just turn them into some kind of artistic commentary on media redundancy.

i just revived this grousy old thread How has getting photos developed become such a racket? but maybe it's better suited to ILP really - - - in NYC, rolling my eyes at prices and terrible service/confusion from the places I've called so far. How would YOU go about clearing the decks of around 90 rolls of color 35mm stuff? (Short of setting them on fire.) Realistically, what am I looking at $-wise to get them all develop+scanned (in non-bullshit quality) from a place (local, mail order, road trip, pony express) that I can have some confidence isn't going to feed my film to their dog?

correction, 88 rolls of film. I wonder what all of this stuff is. 47 are on Kodak Gold, 31 on Fuji, 10 on Kodacolor. Do these correspond to different trips I was on, or was I buying emergency stock-up film while traveling? I actually have a large-ish digital backlog to deal with before I even practically should be worrying about this, but the Christmas present mystery factor is just so alluring. What treasures there might be in these rolls!

gonna give a shoutout also to my hometown comp http://www.philadelphiaphotographics.com/

they do a really professional job and they take mail order. think returnin shipping is $9 but if it's spread out over so many rolls shouldn't make that much of a diff

― 乒乓, Saturday, February 16, 2013 12:40 PM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark

Hmmmmm, price is a little steep but I believe you that they do good work...what's the size/resolution of the scans? Some places really seem to hem and haw around this and then it boils down to 4x6 at 300dpi which is fine as far as it goes, I guess.

These people http://photoplaceonline.com/film-developing.html claim to do 8x12 300dpi for $10 a roll - and knock 20% off bulk orders which could be a huge deal. But I haven't been able to find much in the way of reviews, and obviously "8x12 300 dpi" means nothing if they're using, like, a flatbed scanner or something.

I never got anything scanned by them, but the processing is 1st rate

you should call htem and ask about their scanning equipment

I've been to the physical location and they've def got some pro equipment at least for printing

people on RFF have used this (forum sponsor) before and have reported on the results: http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=98700

Oh nice! Those are nice looking samples in that thread. Bookmarked! Thanks.

kentmere 400 is nice

I've been using Lucky 100, it's ok. Only developed one roll so far, survived being pushed a couple of stops in D76.

pro tip for lucky 100 is to not use an acid stop, rinse with only water between dev and fix

Ok. Any reason?

My method, rightly or wrongly, is currently dev > quick rinse in water > stop > quick rinse > fix > full rinse.

the emulsion on lucky (or was it shanghai gp3? either wya) is p fragile... acid stop mottled my emulsion and gave me bad results

if youre using stop you prob dont need to rinse w/ water first, stop is p impervious to dev iirc

i can't recall what you can replace the stop bath with, something like 30 seconds of water, or maybe 2 changes of water with a few inversions, or something

May try that. Had thrown in the quick rinses just to try and avoid cross contamination of the solutions i re-use, though it likely makes little difference.

you reuse dev?

it's okay to get a lil stop bath into your fixer iirc, i don't think fixer is too ph-sensitive

i just re-use stop and fix. Though i have re-used dev once or twice when experimenting with developing colour films in b&w chems, though the re-use was straight after initial use.

Like i say, no real reason i do the extra water washes.