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Categories: all aviation bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater Sun, 31 Jan 2010My friend Melanie and I finally went out today, and shot some pictures with the 5x7 camera. I've only been getting ready and geared up for this moment since, oh, last summer. Tonight I spent a couple of hours prepping the darkroom area (my bathroom, with light-tight covers on the window and door). I located and washed out all the old chemical bottles and trays from the last time I did this -- 1999 or so. The chemicals contained in those bottles were... impressively full of crud. Lots of rinsing. Finally, it was time, and I turned out all the lights and processed my first sheet of 5x7 film in over a decade. It went pretty smoothly, but I clearly have some work to do. 
That's the first look at the negative (hanging in my shower stall, still drying, why do you ask?). I inverted the colors, dramatically upped the contrast, and that's the result. Obviously I'll be doing more with it than just photographing it hanging in the shower stall, but as it's still wet, that's all I can offer for the moment. The contrast is so low that I suspect my development time was way too short. This was 11 minutes with Microdol-X (itself about 10 years old, but freshly mixed), and it clearly needs more like 14-15. Fortunately, I took two exactly identical exposures, so I've got another one to play with. Working with 10 year old film and developer is a bit of a crapshoot, but it's a good way to do some initial checks, and make sure that I don't have light leaks in the camera, or any other really obvious operational problems before I go blow money on fresh film and chemicals. In any case, hooray for progress! Posted at 21:56 permanent link category: /misc Categories: all aviation gadgets misc motorcycle theater Written by Ian Johnston. Software is Blosxom. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net. |