My first trip to the land of film photography

I was introduced to the world of B/W film photography by a friend, and I’ve decided to try it, including developing the film myself. This is how it went down.

For quite some time I’ve had in my possesion several old cameras. I wasn’t using them until now. The oldest one I have is Flexaret III, more than 65 years old. It is a Twin Lens Reflex camera manufactured by Meopta in Czechoslovakia. The camera is fully mechanical, equipped with Mirar II 80/3.5 and Prontor-SVS (B, 1-1/300s) shutter. It uses 120 roll film.

I wondered whether the camera still works, and was given two films, Fomapan 100 and Fomapan 200. After destroying the Fomapan 100 film by rewinding it too much ( :( ) I’ve sucessfully loaded Fomapan 200, and with tutoring of a friend took first photos.

After exposing the film it was time to pay a visit to the dark room. For this was the first time I was developing a film on my own I’ve written a simple checklist and had it checked by a responsible person. I’ve used Rodinal developer and Fomafix fixer at 24° C. At this temperature processing time went down from 9 minutes to about 6. This was my process (disclaimer: This is not necessarily correct, nor are these instructions for the general public, it is just a log of what I’ve done):

• Check all chemicals
  • Tempered water
  • Developer
  • Fixer
    • Check whether the fixer is still good
  • Wetting agent
• Check all tools
  • Developing tank
  • Chemical glass
  • Thermometer
  • Scissors, pen
  • Timer
• Cut the film
• Check whether the room is really dark and secure
• Wind the film onto developing reels, seal the developing tank
• Turn on the lights (my developing tank is completely opaque and doesn’t need to be used in darkness)
• Dilute the developer (I’ve used 1+50 dilution of Rodinal, meaning 1 unit of Rodinal for 50 units of water)
• Find how long you should be developing the film (Fomapan 200 + 1+50 Rodinal was 9 minutes @ 20°C)
• Compensate for the developer temperature by adjusting development time (from 9 minutes @ 20°C it went down to 6 minutes @ 24°C)
• Start the countdown and pour in the developer
• Agitate (turn upside down at moderate speeds) the developing tank
  • Continuously for the first 30 seconds
  • oFr 10 seconds at the beginning of every minute
• Immediately after the timer finishes, pour out the developer and pour in the stop bath quickly
  • I’ve used water as a stop bath
• Pour in the fixer, start the countdown (3 minutes for the Fomafix)
  • The Fomafix can be reused, so pour it back to the bottle afterwards
• Wash the film
  • Pour the water to the development dose, turn N times, change the water
    • Where N is 5, 10, 20, 20
• Sink the film in wetting agent and hang it to dry

Using this process I was able to sucessfully develop the film on the first try.

The end of the film is destroyed, along with 2 pictures, because the film was not wound tightly enough on the takeup reel and the end was exposed to daylight. One frame is skipped at the beginning of the film, again, due to an error in rewinding it, but the remaining 8 pictures are looking good :).

The next step is to make prints out of these, but it will be a different story sometime later.