Going Old Skool, kinda

It has been a while since I posted last on this blog. Having been busy giving classes and clinics, which do in fact take some time to prepare, I was running short on time.

In the course of this blog, you have seen me liking Fuji cameras, e.g. the X100S, but also slowly getting the hang of mirror-less systems. A few weeks ago, I decided to take the plunge and bought a Fuji X-Pro1 'special edition' kit with 2 lenses and a camera case. I figure, the 'special' offer just intends to sell the stock off, so that the X-Pro2, which is announced for fall 2015, wont have a competitor.
Personally, I hesitated, the EVF of the X-Pro1 is considered being not really good, however, the hybrid-viewfinder, which I love so much on the X100S, is brilliant!
One thing speaks for the X-Pro1: the possibility to adapt lenses of various kinds to the camera. This fact finally bought me into the system.

Adapters
Before even thinking of adapting lenses, one need to obtain adapters... In my case, those where 2 different ones:

1. M42 - FX
2. EF - FX

The first option is somewhat obvious. You may know that I own a decent amount of good M42 glass, e.g.:

• 55mm f/1.4 Cosinon
• 85mm f/2 Jupiter-9
• 135mm f/2.8 Pentacon

With the 1.5 crop factor the the APS-C sensor, the Jupiter-9 and the Cosinon make brilliant portrait lenses.

Now you may ask, why EOS EF lenses? Most of the EF lenses are 'by wire', hence, a cheap passive adapter would not be any good. And, I cannot agree more with your doubts. However, I actually own some more wacky lenses for the Canon system, i.e.:

• LensBabies' system
• Samyang 24mm T-S lens

all of which are entirely manually controlled lenses.
So, while the M42 adapter takes care of all my prime lenses, the EF adapter enables me to use my creative lenses on the Fuji camera system.

Chardonnol - Chardonnay as Developer

What gave me that idea?!
Well, very simple, Dirk posted a very interesting article (and video) about developing photo-sensitive paper with red wine and some other stuff.
Have a look: http://www.caffenol.org/2012/06/20/wineol-red-wine-developer/

This inspired me to research a bit myself, which brought me to this page:
http://www.phenol-explorer.eu/contents/graph?compound_id=457&experimental_method_group_id=2&food_id=137&unit_type=weight
Interesting! It seem that chardonnay actually produces the most caffeic acid. Now you know why this white wine always caused you problems!
Don't drink it! Use it as developer!
Some more interesting reading on the topic can be found here:
http://www.skinandallergynews.com/views/cosmeceutical-critique-by-leslie-s-baumann/blog/caffeic-acid/5be431eb4418c47d008ed4d6a9534421.html

Right, let's go to my first ever experiment using chardonnay as developer:

Chardonnol

Recipe:

• 0.5l cheap Chardonnay
• 3/4 tea spoon ascorbic acid => measured pH 4
• 2 tea spoons washing soda => measure pH > 11 (maybe 1.5 tea spoons washing soda will be better)

The soup was brown by now.

X-pro development

I developed a regularly exposed Agfa vista plus ISO 200 (C41 color negative film) for 16 minutes in a Jobo Universaltank 160 Mod.4.
Agitation during the initial 30 secs, than every first 10 secs of a minute.
The result was very very faint, somewhat like the experiment I did with Caffenol-STD and a 10 minutes development (see previous post).
Here is a high contrast frame (dust in the darkroom, dust on the scanner, I even seemed to have managed to scratch the film). One image reflects the file that my Epson V370 produced, the other image was a result of playing with curves in the GIMP.

scan as created by the scanning

curves adjusted using the GIMP

Unlike with the under-developed example shown in the previous post, I was unable to recover any color information from the negative. Maybe the development was even too short for this.


I figure, Chardonnol would be a very good developer for stand development, in particular seen the fine grain it produces. Will try 45min with this recipe next.

Here is another example, low contrast now:

as scanned

curves, brightness and contrast adjusted

This time, I operated at the very limits of image reconstruction. I guess, the vertical lines are actually inside the film material, now visible due to the enormous push by the scanning software and my GIMPing.

Printing those frames (by means of an enlarger) could be a challenge. Asks for grade 5 paper, I guess.

Goin' Chemical Again!

Yep, that's write, I am all over with digital (well, sort of) and getting back to photography as I learned it: nasty smells in the darkroom!

Returning from my home-leave, I brought my good old dark-room stuff to my expat-home. Meaning, not only my very own enlarger made the trip, also the developer tank my father used in his youth.

You may ask yourself what is going on! The guy just bought tons of digital gear and now he's talking chemical?!
Right! I caught myself in some sort of nebula myself.

Digital is OK... you take the shot, and process it by means of a software of your liking.
However, were is the soul? The soul of photography, which lives somewhere between the hope of having the shot and the hope of actually getting it (by developing and printing your exposure).

Maybe I am all romantic, dreaming the past... Never the less, having my darkroom stuff around me triggered some experiments.

I bought a couple of disposable cameras. It seems that both came from a "bad" batch, since the base side was badly scratched, as you will see in a sec.

To experiment, I exposed the ISO 400 C41 color films under various situations.  At the end, I developed 1 film for 16min and the other one for 10min.

Cross-processing C41 film in a B&W manner should be done in about 15min, according to the interwebs. My 16min development results is usable negatives (although I have not yet tried to print any of those with my enlarger.
The interesting part comes along with the under-developed C41-film.

This film was developed in Caffenol and later scanned with an Epson V370. From the cross-processed neg, the scanner recovered the color green...

caffenol x-processed color neg

Today I tried to X-develop a film in a mixture of Chardonnay, Vit-C and Soda... One thing is for sure, the negs are not as dark... however, I am not sure if the film developed enough... It's drying now, lets hope for the best,