If you want to tame the contrast some in Lomography’s Fantôme, here’s my recipe for success: first off, follow Lomography’s instructions…
For my first roll, shot in July 2020 and developed later, in September, I felt lazy and developed it semi-stand in Rodinal, with, well, less than desired results, and I was hesitant to go with Rodinal again.
But Lomo’s Rodinal examples looked better to me than the HC-110 examples, and I didn’t have any of the other developers they have times for (or recommend), so I did a bit of reading on how to tame contrast and hit upon an idea to develop at somewhat lower temperature and provide gentler agitation. Hummm…
Check it! Midtones! Woot!
How did I do it? Well: Rodinal, 1:50, 8 minutes, at 63℉/17℃, and with 1 or 2 inversions per minute instead of 4. With that, there are no severely blown highlights nor any horribly crushed shadows, and there’s some decent room to massage in post.
So for the best results with Lomography Fantôme 8, I recommend a lens with a very wide aperture… f/1.8 or f/2 is ok; f/1.4 or f/1.2 is better; f/2.5 is too narrow (or it was for me, anyway), and for lower contrast, lower the temperature a bit. 63° was easy for me to hit, so that’s what I went with… something around there should work for you too.
And with that, I finally scored against the Phantom…
Fantôme: 2 / James: 1
And Hana and I then took a walk along the north shore of Grapevine lake, content in our knowledge that the Fantôme was under control…
