Sometimes even the best of us get surprised!
The Carson Elizabeth
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.
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!