Craigslist is a pretty cheap place to find film. 100 feet of still-sealed Ilford HP5 Plus 400 ISO B&W film, plus 6 reloadable film canisters (5 still loaded with unexposed mystery film) plus one roll of possibly-exposed C-41 for me to try more mystery double-exposures on, plus an AP daylight film loader – all for $35. I seem to be fully vested in this film photography thing.. :D
1980’s Yashica FX-3 Super. The following pics are all shot on this and vintage 2001 C-41 film developed in Caffenol-C for 21 minutes. I’m practicing how to think in black & white.
This one came from a roll that I found in a $2 thrift-store camera. It had 3 exposures on it, so I re-rolled it and shot it again Of the 3 double-exposed mystery frames, this one came out best. Obviously I have no idea who this ghostly child is.
Yessir, you got it bad. Tell me, do you wind the Ilford film onto the reels yourself and then put the canister together?
It’s a daylight loader, so I just need to use the darkroom to get the big 30 meter roll into the loader. once that’s done, you can do the individual cartridge loading in the light. Open the top gate and tape your spool core to the film tab that sticks out of the gate and then slip on the canister and screw the top on to the core. Then shut the gate and wind film into the canister, watching the frame counter to see how much to roll in. Once you have enough, open the top gate and cut the film tab. Wella! newly loaded film cartridge.
That Caffenol-C works so well! To my eye they look just like normally developed black and white photos.
I have a few rolls from a few years ago that need to be developed. (I have no idea what’s on them but I only took fairly important pictures on film back then…) Maybe I should send them to you. ;D
You could, but the whole point of Caffenol-C is to make it easy to DIY. :D
You’re getting great results off that film. Quite beautiful contrasts. Nice!
I’m very amazed at what the scanner can pull off of this film. When you do C-41 in Caffenol, what you end up with is usually a *very* dense negative on a darkened film substrate that is usually very difficult to pick an image out of with the naked eye. That color film substrate I’m certain robs you of roughly 1/6th of the potential tonality range of the image, all at the dark end. A quick jostle of the “levels” graph in Photoshop brings it back, but I think it might be difficult to work with if you were to try and print from the negative.
What a great idea! You did well. And I am sure you reconciled the spirit of the ghost child which must have been caught in the roll for a long time…
That is a super great find. Hopefully you will find some bulk film and be able to put the film loader to use. You r B & W is working out quite nicely. Oh, to have time to do more photography — and typewriters.
That’s a very eerie little tree spirit you have unconcealed.