Here are the results of my darkroom experiments with OLD and NEW Shanghai. The pictures are lousy - no art here, just snapshots to test film and cameras.
Both rolls were developed in D76 1:1 for 12 minutes. I'll cut that back down to 10.
Both rolls, unfortunately, are subject to my printing them on Grade #3 Aristo 5x7 paper, all I had left. Papers not bad, but it's too contrasty - there is definitely washed out highlights, but the detail is in the negatives. My normal procedure is to print on 5x7 glossy, scan, spot and adjust minimally. If the picture is worth it, then I'll enlarge on Ilford Galerie or Kentmere RC.
Okay, here's the first shot, taken with Old Shanghai, with a Seagull 4 TLR. The day was bright, no clouds in the sky, and I was attempting here to create an "old fashioned" family pose with harsh lighting and lots of contrast. I imagined also, that this is the kind of shot the folks in China would take with their Seagulls and Shanghai, and hoped I came close to "the spirit of the thing." This is a family I know I ran into at a hiking trail parking lot. I did cut the contrast a bit in curves, spotted some dust specks, and added .20 unsharp mask. This is a 5x7 print taken from a 7x7 area on the enlarger easel. ie pretty much full frame
Here is the new Shanghai, also Developed in D76 1:1 for 12 minutes. The negatives are a touch contrasty, I'll cut the development back to 10 minutes here, also. The grade 3 paper is also too harsh, but you can see some thing here with respect to tonality. This was taken from a 6"x6" image on the easel, so the 5x5+ area here is pretty much the entire negative. Outside of the excessive contrast and lack of time to do anything but snapshot photo and darkroom work, (Camera was a Mamiya C220, resting on a sawhorse in my front yard), you can see the nice tonality and fine grain of the film. YES, THERE IS DETAIL ON THE NEGS that is not present in the washed-out highlights of this photo.
Here is a detail of the above photo, and the image was 16x16 on my enlarger easel/baseboard, so this is the equivalent of about a 10x16 enlargement. I did NO spotting or adjusting of any type on this detail - this is a straight scan of the print. Any lack of sharpness is due to the sloppy tripod work (a sawhorse). I was using a 135mm Mamiya Sekor lens, at f4.5 (wide open) and 1/60th second . . . it was fairly late afternoon and the sun was low. So this is hardly a legitimate test.
I'm pleased with the grain, the tonality and the overall look of the film. I don't really know the film, but I'll use it for sure. I can work with it and develop better technique with it. The new emulsion is thicker than the old, and yes, it does curl a bit, but not to the same extent of the old stuff. And, it's readily available and cheap. I had NO trouble with the backing, on either the Seagull 4 or the Mamiya C220
Thanks for looking in and contributing to this post.
