With the first attempt at at-home c-41 development, I made the error of failing to fill the tank all the way, with some interesting-ish and potential-filled results.
With the second attempt, though, my errors were somewhat more severe, and with somewhat less-interesting resultsThe errors were not in the developing… that I got more or less correct.
Instead, I made errors in my film-drying techniques.
Error 1: little hooks for dangling the film from were stuck to the inside of the shower door.
Any idea what happens when the emulsion side sticks to and partially dries against the smooth side of a plexiglass door?If you guessed “the emulsion gets partially removed” you guessed correctly.
I have since moved the little hangers to the top crossbar of the shower door frame so the negatives can hang free.
Who knew that emulsion was so sticky?
Well, I did, for one… methods for extracting film from a canister (without popping the top in a dark bag) often include sticking a dampened strip of un-developed film, emulsion side down, into the canister, twisting a bit and pulling out swiftly. This works (theoretically, anyway… I was never successful) by sticking the bit of film to the leader inside the can and drawing it out. But I digress…
So Error #1, about half of the roll stuck fast to the shower door during drying, and I left part of the image stuck to the door when I unstuck the film.
I made two further errors in my second attempt at at-home development… for those you’ll just have to stay tuned.
In the interim, here are a couple of other examples of stuck-to-the-door shots:
Lomo LC-A, Lomography Cine 200 film.
