Sometimes even the best of us get surprised!
The Carson Elizabeth
Fuji GF670
Now, here is one image that I REALLY like! This is a 6×7 negative from my Fuji GF670, a folding rangefinder camera with a really bright rangefinder and a fixed 80mm Voigtlander lens shot on Rollei IR400 film and processed yesterday in Xtol stock and wet mount scanned today…
Sounds normal right? Well this was a VERY OLD roll of film, and has been sitting in my shop for over a year marked “Stand Develop” ( a special developing process where you use Rodinal 1:100 in the tank for an hour with no agitation that works on all B&W films of different ISO values) because I forgot what ISO I shot it at! I actually got tired of seeing it in my to do can in the fridge and yesterday threw it onto a 2 film reel with a roll of Ilford FP4+ film and set up my Filmomat for the FP4! The FP4+ turned out as expected, but the IR400 was a complete surprise.
Carson Elizabeth, Shrimper in Georgetown, SC on 120 film
There was only one good image from the IR400 but OMG was it ever good! Just looking at it gives me the hot sweats!! As I looked at the processed roll of IR400 I realize that I had changed ISO mid roll and that is why I marked it stand. The other images on the IR400 were not worthy of scanning but this single image still made it a big win for me!
Oh, for the curious, my FIlmomat is a computerized film developing machine that is the tabletop sized and will do 35mm, 120, 4×5 and 5×7 films. For the 120 it will do 2 rolls at a time. Here is a video that shows it in action…
Data: GF670 with 80mm lens and Rollei IR400 with no filter processed as FP4+ yesterday and wet mount scanned today.
Goodness, I had forgotten how difficult the film is to handle with its very thin film base!
No doubt about it; excellent. I am amazed how you capture a huge dynamic range and manage to portray it with excellent shadow detail and no overexposed highlights.
Thanks Mike! I shoot 95% film now with several medium format cameras, My favorite in descending order: Mamiya 645AFDii with several lenses, Fuji GA645zi my travel camera, Fuji GF670 and amazing rangefinder (the others are auto focus with metering)and the Texas Leica the Fuji GW690iii. I spend most of my time with the 645zi and 645AFD. They are a joy to use. I am no longer developing in a hand held tank. I got a Filmomat film processor. It is a automated small tabletop processor with 19 recipe slots. I just load the chemistry and push start. 20 min later it is all done. I can do 35, 120, 4×5 and 5×7 in it. I have used it for B&W and C41 so far but I am going to run E6 next week. I rented a small 500 foot space in a county building where all of the stuff lives including my large format printer system. Keeps me busy!