As mentioned earlier, I didn’t have quite enough chemicals in the tank to cover the top-most roll. Thankfully, there was plenty to develop the bottom roll, so I didn’t make much in the way of developing errors.
The big problem I had with this one (and this is an ongoing problem): Hard Water.
After this incident and some research, I ordered up a bottle of Kodak Photo-Flo. It remains to be seen whether or not it will help, as I haven’t been able to leave negatives alone during the drying phase. I’ll go into this a bit more in future posts, but I’ve tried the finger-squeegee method, a film squeegee, and wiping with lint-free (and lint-covered) cloths, as well as the Photo-Flo and some drops of dishwashing liquid in the Stabilizer bath. The results of all have been less than spectacular.
Some hard water, little specks of it, anyway, are easy to remove with the automatic cloning tools in Lightroom. Big splotches like this, though, are more or less impossible, especially when they occur on areas of widely varied contrast, color, and texture.
Maybe you saw the splotch in the picture above. If not, here it is again:
I tried and tried to get that out in Lightroom: no joy.
Thankfully, I’m pretty sure the spots are (mostly, anyway) on the base side, and so I can fairly easily clean them off. And I should pull that one out and clean it thoroughly: I really like that picture.
I wonder what a whole-house water filtration system costs to install, operate, and maintain? It might be worth it, whatever it is, and not just for this: Hana and I are both losing a bit more hair than we’re accustomed to, and we think it’s due to the water we shower with…
About the negative scanning and processing: I’m not too sure about the color… these look fairly blue to me. It was cloudy, though, so maybe it’s just me. Or maybe it’s down to the haphazardly-stored Lomo film. And maybe it’s my processing technique (or lack thereof) and/or lack of a proper film scanner.
Time will tell.
The majority of this roll was shot during a walk Hana and I took, past the library, through the new subdivision across the street and the abandoned subdivision behind it.
I’m not sure what kind of birds are living in that nest on the telephone pole: they’re big and look a bit like Parakeets… a quick google reveals both Monk and Quaker Parakeets in this part of Texas… I’m quite frankly shocked, and I’ll make a point to take the longest lens I have and try to get a closer shot.
In the coming days/weeks/months (I’m not sure of my 2015 posting schedule just yet), I’ll be sharing several rolls of already-developed and ‘scanned’ film. I’ll include some developing notes, if I have any written down (I started keeping notes with the third developing session). This is an incredibly fun project and process: I can’t wait to finish another roll of film or 3 and get back to experimenting with chemicals! Alhamdulillah.
Pentax Espio 35-70 AF-Zoom, Lomography Color 100 film. Processed at home, and ‘scanned’ with the D7000-28/105 Rig (or whatever I decide to call it… more on that later).
