First successful developed roll of film

If you followed my social media stream the last few weeks you know by know that I’m very active with vintage photography. I’ve been shooting film every since I got the RZ67ProII but not often. The last few weeks I’ve been shooting more and more film, not because it’s better than digital, but because it’s fun and it forces you to think differently. Now the easiest thing to do is of course to bring your roll of film to your local lab and have it developed, but where is the fun in that right? So I decided to do it myself, how hard can it be….

The first roll of film I tested was (what my son called) an Epic fail.
Hummm maybe it was still harder than expected.
Being the person I am I could not wait to test it again, somehow if something works I can wait, but if something goes wrong I have to try it again as soon as possible. So the next day I shot 2 rolls of film during a workshop, one film was a standard 100 ASA film Sensia from Fuji and one Fuji 400H Pro. Now the problem is that the Sensia is a so called E6 film and the 400H pro a so called C41 film. Or in other words, they are NOT compatible and need different chemicals.

However I’m not shooting film to have perfect images, that’s why I asked people to send me film that was over the date, I’m shooting film to find unique looks. One of the things you can do with color film is the so called cross processing, meaning you can develop an E6 film in C41 chemicals and …. well it’s like polaroid you never really know what you’re gonna get, which is right up my alley.

After the first epic fail, it was a bit exciting to test the second time, I did found out what I did wrong by the way, I forgot to turn the tank upside down every 30 seconds (was not in the manual, so before you RTFM first visit YouTube). After I did turn the tank every 30 seconds the images came out great. Today I show you some of my favorite shots from this roll of film. Scanned with the Epson V700.

Now one thing I have to add to this.
A lot of people will be a bit afraid when the start shooting 35mm that the resolution is not enough, with 400ASA film there is “a lot” of noise in the images when scanned on a high resolution etc. however at the moment we have some A2 prints from these images hanging in the studio and everybody that sees the images actually think they were shot with digital medium format because of the look of the images, when I tell them it’s a scan of a 35mm negative that I scanned and developed myself… well let’s say the market for second hand gear will be a little bit better 😀 And it is fun… so go out and start shooting it. That “old” stuff was not as bad as you might think.

Model : Esther