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Dread Head posted:I would love to get into using b/w film, I have a old pentax k1000 with a few lenses but my question is more about where or how to get b/w film processed. If you like black and white, it only takes a few rolls before buying the equipment and learning to do it pays for itself. Processing B&W film demands pretty much no space and only minimal time and money. Learn to do it and you save a ton of money on processing, plus you get complete control over your results.
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Jun 1, 2008 21:45
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A couple tips for processing: 1. If you're a cheapskate or just want fewer chemicals, you can skip the wash aid/hypoclear if you're using a non-hardening fixer. Outside of Kodakland, any fixer you buy is likely to be non-hardening since pretty much nothing requires hardener anymore. Of Kodak's options, Kodak Rapid Fix is non-hardening while Kodafix is hardening. 2. If you're in a hard water area, buy some distilled water. It's much better for mixing chemistry (especially if you're starting from powders), it's dirt cheap, and it can even take the place of Photoflo. Do your final rinse in distilled water and voila, no spots.
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Jun 2, 2008 00:59
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hybr1d posted:What's the process for dealing with light leaks on a large format's bellows? Patch it up somehow, assuming it's due to damage rather than wear. Could be tape, could be gluing patches on, could be paint. What will work best depends on the bellows material and the nature of the light leak. Pretty much anything you can cook up to block light without causing further damage will do the trick. There's a point at which fighting worn bellows becomes a losing battle, since it's just going to spring more and more leaks. If you're dealing with wear (or really horrible damage), the best solution is to suck it up and buy replacement bellows.
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Jun 2, 2008 06:23
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Krispy Kareem posted:I'm trying to compile all the necessary pieces and parts to develop my own 120 negatives and haven't seen this answered anywhere - can I use ANY kind of light while loading my film rolls onto their spools? Like a red light? Pitch black only. Modern films are panchromatic, i.e., sensitive to all wavelengths of light. It's actually much easier to load film onto developing reels than you'd think, though. Especially if you're using a Paterson system, where it loads itself once you get an inch or two on, barring you really loving things up down the line. Get yourself a sacrificial roll and practice, practice, practice. Do it in the light with your eyes open, do it with your eyes closed, do it in the dark... A little practice goes a long way. Learn to see with your fingers, grasshoppa. And if you get in the dark and can't get the film loaded, just stuff the drat film in the empty tank and come back to it later to try again. It's when people have a failure or two they tend to psych themselves out and not be able to load it.
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Jun 2, 2008 16:39
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kewlpc posted:Do you still photography guys actually under- and over-develop your film? Hell yes we do, particularly in black-and-white, where it gives you total control over the placement of tones and the tonal curve. You know that crazy dead guy with the beard, Ansel Adams? He helped develop a whole brain-melting obsessive system of under- and over-exposure and push and pull that some people live by. Color negative's a slightly different matter, as neither C-41 as a process nor the films are designed for push/pull, and most manufacturers and labs warn you off it. (The labs here actually make you sign a waiver.) C-41 films also usually have a huge window of acceptable exposure, making pushing and pulling generally unnecessary unless you're doing something absolutely insane. Most transparency films push well at least one stop, though, so it's not too uncommon there to fudge it if you're running low on light and can't stand a longer exposure. quote:Of course, again, do still photographers actually pull their film on purpose? I give you the axiom of black and white negative shooting: Expose for the shadows, develop for the highlights. Develop too much and kiss your highlights goodbye as they will have blocked up into a mess of inky black (and thus empty white when printed). Pull it, even a little, in development as necessary and you keep all your detail. Molten Llama fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Jun 3, 2008 |
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Jun 3, 2008 18:22
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Back_From_Termina posted:On topic though, does anyone know if it's still possible to find 120 Kodachrome? It's been discontinued for over a decade, so finding back stock that isn't trashed is your only hope. Last I was aware, even Dwayne's isn't able to process it anymore, though, so unless you've got a K-14 processor hanging out in your living room...
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Jun 9, 2008 00:46
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Jahoodie posted:Also, is home E6 processing amazingly toxic? I did some slides back in HS and it was kinda fun, even if a bit anal what with water baths and temperature watching. I mentioned it once in the darkroom, and I could feel the oozing snobbery lasers from the lab managers when they said that's a horrible idea. Color processes in general are considerably more toxic than B&W, but looking at the MSDSes for Kodak's E-6 chemistry, wear gloves and work somewhere with best ventilation available. It's nowhere near as bad as the RA-4 chemistry my university lab used with a kickin' rad 5 mg/kg LD50. Unless your local prices are absolutely crazy, it's probably much cheaper per-roll (and more consistent) to have it professionally developed, though.
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Jun 10, 2008 17:00
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Arista.EDU is currently Foma and Arista II is Agfa, and neither one is crappy film—but they're not the Ilford films Arista was, if you specifically liked the original. Buy a couple rolls of each and see if you like them. Beyond Freestyle's house brand, you've got a ton of choices out there, with Kodak, Fuji, and Ilford being the biggies, and a bunch of smaller brands. Once you find something you like, it's sometimes cheaper to buy a whole box (usually 5 rolls) of it than singles.
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Jun 25, 2008 00:57
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Pompous Rhombus posted:Cool... is refrigerating/unrefrigerating like that okay for the film? It'd be over two months, so I'm not sure if it'd create wear and tear on the chemicals or not (if that's even possible). I've never seen a problem from doing this. Rolls that were in and out of refrigeration have printed the same way as rolls that went straight from fridge to camera to processing, but I also haven't done it on a near-constant basis for two months straight. If you're shooting Kodak film, call 1-800-242-2424, extension 19 during business hours and ask 'em. They love answering crazy technical questions. Fuji's at, uh, 800-800-FUJI, and I'd assume they're equally eager to assist. quote:Another question about storage: is it okay to store 35mm film without a cannister if it's in an opaque container? I was loading the cannisters into a cylindrical tupperware I had around the apartment, seems the space savings would add up. You don't need the can, really, as long as you're not getting too wild and crazy with it: 35mm's coated to not act as a light pipe, and the cartridge has that handy felt-lined light trap. Doesn't mean I'd want to leave it laying around in the sun, but under normal (and clean—crud will either get in through the light trap or get stuck in the felt and cause scratches) conditions you're not going to hurt anything.
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Jun 29, 2008 16:59
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Yes, IR film is damaged unless it's loaded and removed in perfect darkness—infrared light isn't nearly as picky as visible light, and the requirements of the film mean it (for Kodak, anyway) doesn't have the same fogging prevention properties as standard 35mm film. The HIE will probably be fogged at least partway through. The Konica might be better off if they did things differently than Kodak. As far as filters, use one. Red 25 will work if you want to be able to see something through the viewfinder, more opaque will get you more characteristically "infrared" exposures. Infrared films are sensitive enough to the visible wavelengths that the results are often pretty boring without a filter. If you're using the Elan, it has an infrared frame counter, so you're going to get fogging through part of the frame anyway. (Not much of it, but you'll lose some of the image.)
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Jun 29, 2008 18:12
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Snaily posted:Oh crap. I have to mix up my D76 then, and do all that difficult temperature matching for my first rolls. Difficulty is overrated. Developer to an ideal temp, use ideal box times, done. The internet likes to bitch and moan about reticulation, but everything from the big names has been reformulated not to reticulate under all but the most ridiculous conditions. (Which the internet also likes to bitch about, because now it's much, much harder to get it on purpose.) If room temperature is way off from your dev, throw the other chemistry in a water bath to get it closer if you like (easy as pie if you're not using stop). Pragmatically, though, it's not a big deal.
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Jul 9, 2008 17:49
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Back_From_Termina posted:How necessary is permawash? Back in my old photo class, we went straight from fixer to wash with no step in between. A lot of people say it's not needed, but then there's others who who swear it's the most important step of the process. If you're not using a hardening fixer, archival wash/hypoclear/permawash is totally optional as long as you wash the film adequately. (Ilford method ahoy!) Most fixers today are non-hardening, though Kodak for some inexplicable reason continues to have a hard-on for hardener. If you're using a hardening fixer, you need to use a wash solution if you want your negs to last; the hardener has the side effect of retaining fixer and making it pretty much impossible to wash out with water alone.
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Aug 13, 2008 19:28
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killabyte posted:Does anyone have any tips for cleaning up black and white negatives for scanning? Do any of these anti stat cloths or solutions work? Some are quite expensive. Eclipse isn't really meant for cleaning film, but if that's not getting the dirt off used properly, there's no way in hell an anti-static cloth is going to. Are you sure the dirt didn't fuse to the wet emulsion or something? How exactly are you using the Eclipse?
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Aug 31, 2008 17:54
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If you're having trouble finding washing soda: 1. Make sure you're in the laundry aisle of the grocery store. 2. Try local swimming pool and hardware stores. Sodium carbonate is sold for managing pH balance. 3. Bust out the yellow pages and locate a chemical supplier. If you're in the U.S., you'll probably have to sign their log book in case you decide to go blow up a federal building with a U-Haul truck. Failing any of those, there's always Photographer's Formulary, but the shipping makes such a cheap chemical pretty expensive. (On the other hand, if you can only find it in enormous bottles at the pool store and have an aversion to the G-men...)
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Oct 12, 2008 17:42
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Plastic pipes are your friend! With around $20 and a trip to your friendly local hardware store, you can make a tube developing system for sheet film (assuming you've got some basic hand tools or a friend to mooch off of). There's a video here that illustrates the basics of the system. If you've got $130, you can buy that system premade and process up to 4x5. But the system Fred's using is just a mass-produced, nicer version of a project that started out DIY. ABS pipes, couplers, and caps will get you just as far if you have more time than money. There should still be a couple writeups floating around the internet, but if you need more detail I can throw something together.
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Oct 19, 2008 04:41
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I'm sure Diafine will be offered as an answer at least once, but... If you're shooting 35mm (guessing yes since you're retrieving the leader), you pray. If you know ahead of time you're splitting the roll, it's easy to throw in two or three blank frames somewhere obvious like the middle. And then you pray you're actually finding the middle in the dark. One frame can be done—I knew someone who shot every roll that way and rarely mis-cut—but it's much more forgiving to have another frame width or two. The in-camera method you mentioned also works (and also benefits from an extra margin of error). For 120/220, unless you're shooting particularly fast film, you can use a sufficiently weak light to read the backer. Speaking from experience, glow-in-the-dark tchotchkes work without fogging.
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May 16, 2009 17:13
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And that's why roll film is superior. You throw away the foil wrapper and don't have to smell onions and Chinese food. 
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Oct 8, 2009 17:27
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Gnomad posted:Has anybody tried developing C41 film in regular developer/fix? The contrast will be low, it may be grainy, and it'll obviously be black and white, but it can be done. Good enough to satisfy your perverse curiosity? Most likely. And I loving love that shot of the leaves on the grass.
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Oct 10, 2009 03:12
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fronkpies posted:Only a couple of hours until I develop my first couple of rolls. Checked my chemicals and there at 70 degrees, guessing the easiest wat to cool them is putting them in a tray of cold water? If you're using developer 1+1, you can use cool water or even ice as needed for the water portion. 70's close enough it should be fine for the rest of the chemistry, but if you want to cool it down, you've got it figured out.
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Oct 10, 2009 19:46
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Mickey Eye posted:The camera doesn't have a 400 mark so I just try and sit it between 250 and 500 where 400 might be, but it seems to be closer to 250 now than it should be. Would that give me underexposure? That'd give you overexposure. 250 is less sensitive than 500, so the meter will want more light.
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Oct 13, 2009 16:06
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If you're concerned about the tank warming up, put it in a water bath and adjust as required using ice or cold water. You may find it insulates better than you expect, though, and for such a short period I don't think any potential temperature increase will be a major issue. Fill the tank with 68° water, seal it up, let it sit for 15 minutes, and check it at the end... That'll give you a good idea how it's going to warm up. The other chemicals you can use at more or less any warm enough temperature as far as functioning, but it's better for the emulsion if you keep the whole process within a several-degree range (Ilford says 9F, Kodak says 7F). On modern emulsions it's not nearly as big of a deal, but if you're shooting Foma/Forte/Lucky or something you can get nasty reticulation from too much temperature variation. Molten Llama fucked around with this message at 00:29 on Oct 27, 2009 |
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Oct 27, 2009 00:26
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Pompous Rhombus posted:Also, if it's an ISO 400 film (like Tri-X), does it "count" if you're pushing it to 1600? TSA specifically says if you're pushing (or going through more than... 3? carry-on machines), have it hand-checked. I've had slower film fogged going through two machines, so it's all hand-check now for me. Edit: TSA: Traveling with Film The U.S. Government posted:At the passenger security checkpoint, you should remove the following types of film from your carry-on baggage and ask for a hand inspection:
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Dec 22, 2009 17:29
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HPL posted:I hate how every time I spill film chemicals, it's never the stop bath or developer or water, oh no. It's always that stinky fixer, god dammit. You haven't lived until you have bathed in five gallons of fixer. And had to soak it up off your person and floor with nothing but a roll of the cheapest industrial paper towels. That was an awful, awful night in the university film lab. Awful week, actually, as it continued to reek for several days afterward.
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Jan 11, 2010 02:40
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Reichstag posted:One of these days I'm gonna shell out the $45 to get a single 35mm frame drum-scanned, and I'll be even more mad at home scanning solutions. If you're feeling adventurous, old drum scanners pop up for cheap all the time. Most of them will only work with a computer of similar vintage, though, and half the time they don't include the manufacturer's software. But if babysitting OS 8 or Win95 installs on 10-year-old hardware sounds like fun, you're in luck!
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Mar 3, 2010 17:01
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krnhotwings posted:Anybody hear the news that Fujifilm is supposedly phasing out 160S, 160C, 800Z, and T64 for all sizes and Neopan 400 for 120? If I had a penny for every time someone on APUG claimed to have a meeting with Executive X and Product Y is getting killed off, I'd live on a moon base and have laser sharks for pets. Stranger things have happened, but APUG is chicken little central. It's a little odd to think Fuji's spending money on a "Fuji's committed to film! Our films are awesome!" campaign and launching a new medium format camera... and then turning around and axing anything that isn't chrome. Especially when so much of the positive press and their ads have revolved around how well 160S/160C/800Z work in mixed light (which definitely isn't true of Fujichrome, blech). "Here's a camera, now buy Kodak?" I don't know. I hope it's an early April Fool's prank. 
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Mar 12, 2010 17:34
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Moist von Lipwig posted:EDIT: I also wanted to ask if you can get colour infrared film anymore. Anyone know? None that I'm aware of. Old stock of Kodak EIR shows up occasionally but it'll usually cost your firstborn. (Not that it didn't originally originally cost an arm and a leg.) Looking at the tech pub for EIR, you could probably generate your own false color infrared images with a roll of infrared B&W film, a roll of color film, and a little channel swapping in Photoshop. It won't be the same false color as EIR (it had both infrared sensitivity like nothing today and crazy curves on its two color layers), and it's definitely less convenient, but it should fit the requirements of "color" and "infrared."
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Oct 18, 2010 16:53
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Portra was already scanner friendly.  Hell, by Kodak's own statements it scans and prints like the existing Portra 3 stock. (Saturation differences notwithstanding.) Putting the pieces together, it sounds like the "OMG scanning" is just taking the finer grain and running with it. I don't blame Kodak for marketing the hell out of that angle and Wired.com writing like Wired.com, though. At any rate, I'm waiting for my local stores to get some in. Split the difference in saturation and sharpness while keeping NC's contrast and shrinking the grain? Sign me up! I'll probably stockpile some NC, but I always wanted something in between NC's nice but understated colors and VC's terrible colors.
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Oct 26, 2010 02:24
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Moist von Lipwig posted:Does Vuescan's Multi-Exposure feature make a scanners DMax irrelevant? Unfortunately not. You can get a better overall tonal range than with a single scan, but the (inflated) DMax is a hardware limit. Are you in the US? If you're not already looking at refurbs, keep an eye out for them. They pop up in the Epson online store occasionally. Huge markdown compared to new.
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Oct 26, 2010 17:32
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atomicthumbs posted:what the gently caress is this poo poo and why does it think it has the right to come and sit in my skies? It looks like Fuji pepper grain, but I haven't previously heard of that happening on anything but their transparency films. If it is pepper grain, it should go away scanned at a lower resolution or wet scanned. ICE would also clean it up if it weren't silver halide. e: vvv Yeah, thus "if it weren't silver halide." Molten Llama fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Nov 23, 2011 |
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Nov 23, 2011 16:45
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Nilson posted:Hey, does anyone have any idea how long a roll of b&w is "okay" for if it's been exposed, and not developed? I've got a few rolls A long time, and you can stretch it out farther if you know it's going to be awhile and toss it in cold storage. This year, I've developed a five-year-old roll I left sitting at room temp and an 10-year-old roll I had in the fridge for around five years. They both turned out fine. I just ran them for normal times because I didn't want to lose anything to a clip test. T-Grain films may be a different situation; in my case it was boring old HP5 and FP4.
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Dec 7, 2011 16:59
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Elite Taco posted:Wait, can someone explain more about how to use portra400 outside its normal range? Shoot as required, develop normally, done. Per Kodak, Portra has a fudge factor of -2 to +3 stops. Processed C-41, in that range you'll get what Kodak describes (not entirely euphemistically) as "usable" negatives. You may like them, you may hate them, they may or may not suit the particular subject matter, but they'll be usable for printing or scanning.
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Dec 15, 2011 18:50
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QPZIL posted:Ran the last of my 120 Fomapan 400 (okay so it's Arista.EDU 400, but same thing) through my RB67 tonight. I don't blame you. My brother gave me a couple of his leftover rolls to use and a couple shot rolls to develop. I had never actively disliked a film before, but I hated Fomapan. The base was crappy, it was grainy as hell (though that's less of a problem at 6x7), and the response curve was just... weird. Horrifying, even, for the portraiture both of us tried shooting with it. Ugh. If it were the only film the Czech people had access to, I would be very sad for them.
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Jan 8, 2012 17:02
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Mr. Despair posted:Is it ok to use empty 1 gallon water jugs (I've got a good supply of these), or is it worth while to pick up some bottles like this to store things in http://www.freestylephoto.biz/7893-Kalt-Air-Evac-Bottle-1-gallon?cat_id=1603 Pick up some bottles like those. Water/milk jugs are not designed to hold angry chemicals, and won't hold angry chemicals (for long). Delta Datatainers are another good option (and cheap).
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Jan 15, 2012 02:55
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Bioshuffle posted:Is that what they really do? I was under the impression they'd do it the old school way, before they had scanners and such. Has the quality from digital printing caught up? I remember when digital prints looked like absolute junk but I guess things have changed a lot in the past years. Unless you're at a pro lab, prints are being made from scanned film. The major minilab equipment all ingests film, scans it, digitally adjusts crop/scale/color/tone/scratches/dust/grain, and then either exposes or prints onto paper. Once the quality got there and everyone realized it was teenage-employee-proof, it was all downhill. If you're at a pro lab, prints are probably being made from scanned film unless you're specifically paying for custom optical printing.
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Feb 17, 2012 02:36
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Mannequin posted:My impression of incident metering is that you have to be fairly close to your subject. You don't; you just have to have access to the same light as your subject. Let's say you have a model a mile down the road and a supertelephoto lens. That's way too far to walk—but you don't need to. You pop off a meter reading over your shoulder. Bang, perfect exposure. As someone else said, you're effectively incident metering in a very roundabout way with your gray card now. The reason you most often see people right up on the subject is because (1) a lot of people don't know how to use their meter, and (2) often if someone's whipped out a Sekonic, they're using strobes. In that case, the only way to be in the same light as the subject is to be at the subject's position.
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Feb 28, 2012 06:15
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Oh dear sweet Jesus, if you ever look at a jug of D-76 and think "When the hell did I mix that up?", just throw the whole drat thing away.  I thought slightly expired D-76 was bad. I was wrong. Very expired D-76 is horrifying. What a terrible, terrible way to start the weekend.
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Apr 14, 2012 18:31
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Yeah, I should be clearer: I knew it was no good to use. Year-old stock solution ain't gonna cut it. The problem was the smell. Eau de mass grave. Yick. And the three shades of dark orange ooze didn't help things either.
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Apr 14, 2012 19:21
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Mest0r posted:
If you want to be super lazy you can just clean the part closest the to hinge. You know that notch on the film holders? That's the calibration area.
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May 15, 2012 16:55
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LargeHadron posted:I picked up an old Minolta film camera and bought a roll of 400TX. I read (on page 1) that if I take it to a photo lab for processing then my photos will look lovely. So two questions, really. What is so lovely about the way a lab processes the B&W film? Also, is it more risky for me to try to develop my first roll of film ever myself? The only lab that can process true B&W film is a real lab, and they won't (can't) just chuck it in a machine with a dozen other rolls. It has to custom-developed, almost always by hand, and you will be charged accordingly. Minilabs—drugstores, Costco, Sams, Ritz/Wolf/Kits—can only process C-41 color film. If their attendants are paying attention, your film will be returned unopened and unharmed. If they're not, you'll get back several feet of blank acetate. B&W film retains a permanent image composed of silver. Dye, not silver, is the permanent part of a color negative, so all the silver is removed during processing. If you can follow instructions, developing it yourself is easy and far, far cheaper (assuming you're going to do more than one roll within the next six months or so). Molten Llama fucked around with this message at 15:16 on Jun 8, 2012 |
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Jun 8, 2012 15:14
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Changing bags suck. Especially in the sweaty summer. If you've got a darkroom, just use the darkroom. Or any dark room. Obviously if this is a gang darkroom and not your darkroom, that may not work, but otherwise don't bother with the light-tight sweat factory. Don't be afraid to take a break, either. If you absolutely can't get it, sometimes tossing the film in the tank and coming back to it later makes all the difference in the world. The curl gets a little bit of a chance to lose some set, the film dries out, and you aren't trying to work while covered in sweat. Molten Llama fucked around with this message at 03:54 on Jun 18, 2012 |
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Jun 18, 2012 03:51
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