Three, nearly four hours, a freshly mowed lawn, and a quick shower later, there are two 4×5 negatives, mostly dry, awaiting scanning (InshaAllah tomorrow), and a nicely dried, recently-used SP-445 4×5 processing tank chilling in the developing cabinet.
How did it go?
In a word? Easy. In fact, just as easy, or maybe easier, as with the Patterson tank and 35mm.
I did make one error, well, 2, but the first one led to the second, so maybe just one, and I found one issue/not an issue with the tank, but it went well.
Before I get too deep into it, I snapped a couple of pics with the iPhone, and stuck one up on my twitter, but I’ll wait to share here until I get them properly scanned.
So the not-an-issue… the tank leaked a tiny bit, like the O-ring doesn’t quite seal. It only leaks near the fill port, but just dripdripdrip if you tilt the tank over on its side. This doesn’t seem to lead to light leaks or have any effect on development, so no worries.
And my error(s)… seems like I misloaded one of the sheets of film. When I went to slip the darkslide back in, it hung up, and when I forced it, the negative went shooting into the body of the camera. I had to take the camera into the closet and open it up, retrieve the negative, put the negative back into the holder, and then go into the dark bag. Well, when I loaded the negative back into the holder, I put it in backwards and then when I loaded it into the tank’s holders, I loaded it in backwards. So it has a bunch of lines running vertically down it.
InshaAllah I’ll get the negatives scanned and processed after work tomorrow, and write up a proper review in a few days.
But the SP-445 makes it so easy to develop a couple of sheets of film at home, and if you shoot a reasonable amount of 4×5 film, it’s a worthwhile investment.
