Efke 25 - half the roll shot at 250...

Ok, stupid me. Because of misreading some notes I shoot the second half of a roll of Efke 25 at about 200 through one of my Rolleiflexes. Best thing I imagine would be to write off the second half and develop properly for the correctly exposed first half but on the other hand would somehow like to preserve if possible some kind of working negs of the second half. Thoughts/ideas?

You know, never mind. This is silly. Some attempt to develop for somewhere in between I'll probably end up with likely all bad negs. I'll develop for the normal first half at 25....

That's all you can do. 25 to 250 is totally hopeless. No way.

Why not cut the roll right in two in the dark? sure you'd mess up 1-2 frames. Might work??

^my thought too.

Rich - If you've conceded the end of the roll is dead, try to save a couple'a frames at the end and pull dev in another batch??

My vote is to pick the group of pictures that are most important and develop to get the best results for that group.

Consider, also, the results you are likely to get. Place your bet on the horse that's more likely to win.
The way I see it, a three stop push is a long shot. Unless the pictures on that section of film are really, really important, I'd put my money on the sure thing.

The only time I would do something funky like "split-the-difference" development or cutting the film would be if ALL the images are important. By "important," I mean that they are something like crime scene photos, photos of evidence or of a major, newsworthy event.

Otherwise, I vote for what you said. Develop for the majority of the frames that were exposed at the normal ASA of 25 and let the chips fall where they may on the rest.

Would stand development work, say Rodinal 1:200. I have seen were you can mix film speeds when developing this way.

I'd do it in a two-bath developer. I guess it's the best way to treat those cases. Tetenal Emofin works ok for my films. Don't expect too much from the 250 EI exposed frames, though.

I like the idea of cutting the film in half and develop each half according to how it was exposed.

The only way to lift shadow values on the EI 250 'half' is going to be to develop the film longer. Much longer. It's in these situations that I consider standing development to be a very good choice - an extreme technique for a pretty extreme situation. Use Rodinal at 1+100 dilution. Make sure you have at least 3ml of Rodinal concentrate in the mix. Prewet the film. Agitate for the first full minute, and then let the film develop for about two hours with such underexposure. If it were me I'd probably agitate every 30 minutes. It's a long shot to get it to work, but if you develop those frames normally, you aren't likely to get anything on them anyway. What have you got to lose? If you really want to experiment, expose another roll at 250 and develop it first.

Thomas Bertilsson said:

I like the idea of cutting the film in half and develop each half according to how it was exposed.

The only way to lift shadow values on the EI 250 'half' is going to be to develop the film longer. Much longer. It's in these situations that I consider standing development to be a very good choice - an extreme technique for a pretty extreme situation. Use Rodinal at 1+100 dilution. Make sure you have at least 3ml of Rodinal concentrate in the mix. Prewet the film. Agitate for the first full minute, and then let the film develop for about two hours with such underexposure. If it were me I'd probably agitate every 30 minutes. It's a long shot to get it to work, but if you develop those frames normally, you aren't likely to get anything on them anyway. What have you got to lose?

Click to expand...

This is what I'll likely do. Thanks all for your thoughts. I'll share results later.