So I've finally done it...

[danic]

...here are some photo's from my first roll I've ever developed.

I'm stoked with how they have turned out considering the troubles I had when developing them. Firstly, I pulled the film off the roll when I finished shooting the roll, so I had to open the camera in a dark bag and roll the film back onto the roll and into the cassette. Then it took me 4 go's to get the film onto the SS reel.

Once I'd gotten past all of that, I'd managed to process it with ID11, at (roughly) the recommended temp, used water as a stop bath x2, and ilfocol as a wetting agent. I don't think I used enough as there are some water streaks on the negatives, but still that's nothing PS can't fix.

Here are some of the better photo's from the day. All the photo's were under exposed by 1 stop, as they were taken in bright harsh light and my camera doesn't have a high enough shutter speed to deal with the harsh light.

[jgredline]

Wow, thats pretty good. I am running out of excuses here on my side.

[danic]

Just do it, you won't regret it.

It's a steep learning curve, but rewarding.

[photophorous]

Congratulations! Looking good! :thumbsup:

[Xia_Ke]

Congrats danic Easy isn't it? Getting to your streaks, how quickly did you dry the film? Even if you use WA, you can still get streaks if the film is dried slow enough, allowing enough time for the water to fully run off. Try hanging your film to dry in the bathroom. When you hang it to dry, run a hot shower for a few minutes to build up some moisture in the room, then close the door. This should make it humid enough so you won't have any streaking.

[jgredline]

Aaron,
Good to see you. I have been wondering where you are..
That lens I got from you is ''amazing'' sharp...Has not left my me super since I have put it on.

[Xia_Ke]

Aaron,
Good to see you. I have been wondering where you are..
That lens I got from you is ''amazing'' sharp...Has not left my me super since I have put it on.

Check you pm's

[Wild Wassa]

Good one, ... but I see some easily corrected errors. It would pay to knock them on the head before they become bad habits. If this advice is not appropriate, or not needed danic? I'll remove my post ... no problemos there and I hope I'm not duplicating Aaron's note to you.

To aid loading the film onto the spool, after cutting the leader off, just ever so slightly snip both the corners of the film off, before you crack the film cassette. Cutting off no more than a mil or two off each corner will allow the film to slide onto the spool with no worries.

If it is a metal spiral, just squeeze the edges of the film ever so slightly and hold the position to wind on. If it is a plastic spool, cutting the corners will allow an easy sliding loadup before cranking.

Use the 'Kinderman' method of agitation to develope your film, this technique should be on the web, (if not I'll detail it, if you like). The Kinderman technique will give a better wet out and a more uniform development. Which of the 3 agitation techniques did you use? ... (thrill me and say the Still Bath technique) but I see you didn't because of the density buildup on the edge of the frame.

Your processing is too rebate heavy, I can see. This is causing the build up of density close to the rebate, you are a bit heavy handed so slow down.

The temperature being "close enough" is not good enough for film development. The whole idea is to produce accurate repeatable results, whenever you develope film, you want results that you can rely on. Accurate repeatable results.

Set up a water bath to heat up the beaker or dev tank in, or to cool it down. As long as it is a good volume of water it will hold the temperature. If the ambient room temperature isn't 20C then keep placing the dev tank back into the water bath, to help stabilize the temperature.

With b/w film be +/- a 3rd of a degree C from optimum, at the worst, with your developer. If you can be spot on, even better. All of the baths should be exactly the same temperature as your developer so as not to cause temperature shock to the film.

After having read your exposure conditions. Reduce your ISO on the camera by (approaching) a 3rd of a stop to ahalf astop maximum.. ISO 400 becomes 320. ISO125 becomes ISO80.

Increasing you original exposure by a 3rd of a stop by changing the film's ISO initially will give an exposure that if processed to the 'low contrast index', (the C.I. details on the data sheet) the negative will have adequate shadow detail, without a build up of contrast. Most important.

Shooting on b/w film is not like shooting on digital. The two are poles apart, not even shooting/exposing for transparencies is smlilar to digital. You must make the film work for you.

If the lighting conditions are flat when you are shooting, then you should shoot the film at the normal normal ISO and develope the film to the 'higher contrast index' on the data sheet. This will extend the film's gamma and give you a negative displaying a full range of tones.

Great job by the way Mate. Good to see film still valued. Processing film is a fine technical excersise. A lot of what you may have seen from me is from film. I only purchased a real digimon type camera three weeks ago.

Warren.

[danic]

Hi all,

I hung my film to dry in the bathroom, but I used a sponge to wipe excess water away. Perhaps my problem lies in there.

Thanks for all of the advice, I'll be processing another 3 rolls this weekend, so I'll give these new techniques a shot. I'm also testing a Pentax Spotmatic this weekend so I'll let you all know how that goes.

[Xia_Ke]

...but I used a sponge to wipe excess water away. Perhaps my problem lies in there...

Yep, that'd be it. Using the sponge defeats the whole purpose of using a wetting agent. Just give the reel a good shake to get rid of the excess water, then hang to drop dry. Also, using a sponge increases the chance of scratching your negatives.

Wild Wassa is right. "Close enough" doesn't work when it comes to developer temperature. It's fine when with the other stages but, you should really try to be as spot on as possible with your developer temp. Here's a link to the data sheet for ID-11. If you go to page 3, there will be a couple graphs showing adjusted development times depending on your developer temperature. I hope this helps and don't be afraid to ask if you have any questions.

Aaron