Robin Guymer
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My first foray into MF has not been without issues, not that I am too surprised. The camera is an old Konishiroku Pearl II with a 75mm Hexar 1.4:5 and a Konirapid-S 1/500th shutter. I replaced the light seals and thoroughly checked the bellows for leaks which I found a couple of pinholes and repaired these with recommended pliable black fabric paint. The shutter feels and sounds okay and the lens is pretty clear but not crystal perfect.
I did a test roll of TMax 400 using a Leicaflex for metering which is itself not completely accurate due to the hearing aid battery. But the negatives were good (bit over exposed) and the proof sheet had some good images so I felt it okay to take on a trip to central Australia.
The Konishiroku Pearl is a great travel camera as it fits in a jacket pocket so it’s more portable than a 35mm SLR. I mostly used it when hiking and for the 5 rolls I put through it I was taking meter readings off the SLR I had with me which was either the Nikon F2 or FE2.
I tried out a mixture of 5 films just for fun comparisons. These were Delta 100 & 400, Fomapan 200 & 400 and Rollei RPX 400. Upon processing the negatives in Xtol 1+1 they all looked a bit flat. They were all processed at the box recommendation for Xtol 1+1 @ 20°. So my first query here is should 120 film be processed for a bit longer than the recommended box times or should I have adjusted my exposures for the film being used to say ISO320 when using 400 film?
The proof sheet photos attached are of different films. You can see on the portrait pictures that there is a dark band across near the top of one and across near the bottom of another. Now a Konishiroku Pearl takes a portrait photo in the normal position so it had me mystified for a while as I was thinking it was a camera fault but then I never inverted the camera to take shots so how could it be. Then I thought maybe my loading technique was letting light onto the film somehow. My final assessment is that maybe the band is caused in the Patterson tank and has to do with the developer not being agitated enough in the early stages. I usually agitate for the first 45 to 60 seconds and then 5 inversions every 30 seconds for the first 10 min then every 60 seconds till completion. Could it be I needed to do more rigorous agitation in the first 60 seconds? I kept the temperature at 20° as I always check it during processing and had presoaked all the films. Now that I have looked closely the only film I did not get any banding on was the Rollei RPX 400 and all the others had a mix of banding on top or on the bottom.
Sorry for the long winded explanation but looking forward to your thoughts on this issue before I put any more film into this camera.
I did a test roll of TMax 400 using a Leicaflex for metering which is itself not completely accurate due to the hearing aid battery. But the negatives were good (bit over exposed) and the proof sheet had some good images so I felt it okay to take on a trip to central Australia.
The Konishiroku Pearl is a great travel camera as it fits in a jacket pocket so it’s more portable than a 35mm SLR. I mostly used it when hiking and for the 5 rolls I put through it I was taking meter readings off the SLR I had with me which was either the Nikon F2 or FE2.
I tried out a mixture of 5 films just for fun comparisons. These were Delta 100 & 400, Fomapan 200 & 400 and Rollei RPX 400. Upon processing the negatives in Xtol 1+1 they all looked a bit flat. They were all processed at the box recommendation for Xtol 1+1 @ 20°. So my first query here is should 120 film be processed for a bit longer than the recommended box times or should I have adjusted my exposures for the film being used to say ISO320 when using 400 film?
The proof sheet photos attached are of different films. You can see on the portrait pictures that there is a dark band across near the top of one and across near the bottom of another. Now a Konishiroku Pearl takes a portrait photo in the normal position so it had me mystified for a while as I was thinking it was a camera fault but then I never inverted the camera to take shots so how could it be. Then I thought maybe my loading technique was letting light onto the film somehow. My final assessment is that maybe the band is caused in the Patterson tank and has to do with the developer not being agitated enough in the early stages. I usually agitate for the first 45 to 60 seconds and then 5 inversions every 30 seconds for the first 10 min then every 60 seconds till completion. Could it be I needed to do more rigorous agitation in the first 60 seconds? I kept the temperature at 20° as I always check it during processing and had presoaked all the films. Now that I have looked closely the only film I did not get any banding on was the Rollei RPX 400 and all the others had a mix of banding on top or on the bottom.
Sorry for the long winded explanation but looking forward to your thoughts on this issue before I put any more film into this camera.