First film since 2002

I realize that digital processing is not really welcome here but this is not about the digital side of what I did, but about the fact that I actually took the next step and developed film for the first time ever and I have no way of printing yet so I had to use digital manipulation to convert the film negative to something I could show online. I'll eventually get to enlarging and printing but right now it's baby steps for me.

Anyway, I actually shot this roll back in September I think but I have been so busy buying gear that I didn't have the budget to purchase the chemicals to develop the film I have shot. I've actually still got three more rolls of 35mm to develop and one roll of 220.

So these are some shots from a roll of Fujifilm Superia 400 color film that I shot in an MX that I bought but found in testing was not in the condition it was advertised to be in so I ended up returning it. I developed it in D76 for 15 minutes with a 6 minute fix in TF4. I threw it on a cheap light table and shot it wit my 5D3 and a reversed Tokina 28-70 zoom lens. I brought it into LR6 for inversion and some quick adjustments, then Photoshop for auto contrast. I realize that they are not very sharp because of my hasty post processing but I'm super excited about my first ever self-developed film.
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I get it. There is a kind of magic I've always felt with analogue photography, I've never gotten over it-- even 50 years later. Have fun and enjoy the magic.

Superia is color film which should be developed with the C-41 process, but D-76 is for traditional black-and-white films. This cross-processing combo will work, but negatives will be dense and grainy. If that's what you did, your results are quite good.

Mark Overton

Welcome to the film world - surprising that you decided to develop the C41 film in B&W dev. But certainly a good result, taking into account your post-processing as well.

I must admit the one thing that still fascinates me is the smell of film, the moment you open the plastic can or the foil wrapper, film's got a special smell that's ingrained on my mind. I do digital as well but SD cards don't smell, how boring.

For those who are confused about my choice to cross process, it's like this, Wal Mart doesn't sell black and white film and in our small town, if they don't sell it, you have to drive 100 miles round trip to get it. My plan was to buy a couple of rolls of film to test my new 35mm purchase and have them developed to ensure that everything was working well. When I took the film in to get it processed and found out that they give you back a disk and dispose of the negatives, I decided that I would rather learn to process it myself. I really have no desire at this point to get involved in color processing and read that color film can be processed with a B&W developer and since this was just a test roll anyway, I decided what the heck?

I have a few more rolls of color film that I will be developing in D76 including another roll of this Fuji Superia and a roll of expired Portra 160 220 that was given to me with a bunch of other 35mm and 120/220 film. There are other rolls of color film in that batch and all of it is expired. It was frozen when I got it so I'm hoping that means it was well kept. Either way, once I'm confident in my abilities to produce decent or better images using the film process, I'll start buying the correct B&W film and taking greater care to make the final images more than just fuzzy test shots.

Read more at: https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums...1-first-film-over-decade-2.html#ixzz4gD07TXJu

I have an old 500 ft roll of Kodak movie film (200T, I think) that I spool off onto 35mm cassettes to use. Because of it's age and apparent storage condition (I doubt it was ever refrigerated prior to me getting it) the colors are really bad....'strange' would be a good adjective for it.
I shoot as B&W and process it as B&W to get images that I am pleased with. What I get from C-41 processing of it is unusable and a waste of time, chemicals, and money.

I'll just leave this here http://www.mfphotography.ca/michael...-guide-to-scanning-film-with-a-digital-camera my fellow digital duper. I find scanning with DSLR to be superior to a flatbed. Get a manual 50mm with some extension tubes, a tracing pad from amazon and a copy stand and you're gold.

Thanks for that. I have considered just refining my DSLR scanning process and doing it that way but I always wonder if other options might be more efficient (less hassle, easier) and worth the slight sacrifice in quality. After all, I don't consider an online digital image as the lasting final rendering of the artistic vision I may have had when I tripped the shutter. That's what prints are for.

So why not scan the prints? A simple office scanner is sufficient and there is no hazzle with sharpness etc.

Lars

nice to see you getting back in action. I cant wait to see some pix from the RB. She'll go blind if you keep her in the dark too long.

enjoy!

ctrout said:

Thanks for that. I have considered just refining my DSLR scanning process and doing it that way but I always wonder if other options might be more efficient (less hassle, easier) and worth the slight sacrifice in quality. After all, I don't consider an online digital image as the lasting final rendering of the artistic vision I may have had when I tripped the shutter. That's what prints are for.

Click to expand...

I've done start to finish a roll of 24 C-41 in less than a half hour. Scanning, spotting, levels and export. Granted it was an old roll that I did not feel like putting much time into, it can be done fairly quick.