From time to time, it’s fun to jump into live-action film development, writing about the process in real time.
The last time I did that was in August 2023; half a year and 40 rolls of film passed since. So, it’s time for the new thread.
My social network of choice is Mastodon – here’s a link to the thread. This post is a slightly redacted version.
Preparing the stuff
The film is already loaded, it’s a custom, short roll of AgfaPhoto APX 400; I’ll be using Rodinal (yeah yeah, I know the bottle says Adonal), 1+50 dilution, at 22°C to speed up the process a bit and get more acutance.
Mixing the developer
Did Adox change the formula? I remember Adonal was much darker and less pink the last time. 🤔
Yup, it’s slightly more than 8ml.
Getting the right temperature
My development dilution is at 23°C, that’s a bit too much for my liking. In the fridge, it went, a few minutes should be enough.
The development
Now the development. 17 minutes 11 seconds, and I’m on a short clock – agitation every 30 seconds.
Three more minutes, yay! Next: a stop bath.
Stop bath
Ok, now I have the film developed, the process has been stopped – Kodak Max Stop for 30 seconds did the trick, and water would do the same job as well.
What’s next? Fixing with Adofix. It’s reasonably fresh, 5 min should be enough.
Fixing
The end
Fixing is done, now it’s the moment of truth!
Let’s open the tank and see what I did today.
The results
Finalizing
Finally, after the film has been washed with water and Adoflo, it’s time for drying. It’s already 23 hours here, scanning will have to wait for tomorrow.
(missing post – I forgot to post it, oops)
Scanning
Is a photo taken if nobody gets to see it? Photos taken on a film are cool, but I’d like to see them on my computer and I need to scan them first.
Here’s my scanning rig – Plustek OpticFilm 8100 dedicated film scanner, doing its job.
I’m using VueScan scanning software, it’s scanning the green channel (the sharpest one) to 16-bit grayscale TIFF files, at 3600 dpi. I get ~42 MB, ~5000×3400 pixels per frame – about 17 megapixels.
The colour film would be scanned at the same resolution, but full-colour data needs a bit more storage – ~120 MB per frame.
Finalizing the scans
The film is scanned and sleeved, EXIF tags are added to the files, and development data is added to my database. At this time I’d usually run through the photos and mark those I’d like to clean, edit, and upload, maybe even print. Usually, I upload a few photos to Flickr and forget about the roll, and in a few months’ time wonder where the rest of the photos are. 🤔
Contact sheet
Here’s the contact sheet, take a look – that’s a used car fair here in Zagreb!
It’s AgfaPhoto APX400, taken with aperture-priority only Pentax MV camera and smc Pentax-M 40mm F2.8 pancake lens set mostly at Æ’/6.7. It’s half of the standard 36-frame roll, I lost a few frames at the beginning, and one at the end. But at least I managed to finish the roll.
Example photo
You’ve reached the end of this developing and scanning thread. I hope the next one will be sooner than later!
Links
- Mastodon thread from August 2023,
- Thread on Mastodon.
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