flying

Since I finished my Masters degree a few years ago I hadn’t written a line of code, because I didn’t really feel like it. However, I decided to put my education to some use and build a little agitation gadget for film development. The coding part was really quite simple, a few lines of code to control one servo with an arduino. I had the components lying around anyway, and arduinos are really quite practical for quickly putting together small circuits. The physical part of the project is actually much more involved. All day I was trying to find something in the house to mount the servo on the tank and keep it in place. In the end I found a metal bit that was roughly the right size and bent it into shape. Now I just need to find a way to keep the arduino dry and maybe integrate a switch into the design. I actually wanted to do other things this weekend, but my health was acting up, so I decided to do something different that doesn’t involve doing “serious things”.

And speaking of experiments: This roll was actually developed in 16°C Caffenol, something I’ve been wanting to experiment with for a while. Other people noticed a grain reduction with this method and I think I agree with them. Especially the square picture shows how little grain there was in this batch. It’s not as fine grain as XP2, but this is actually good. I don’t particularly like fine grain films and and prefer classic grain films in fine grain developer when I want fine grain. I really quite like the result. A shame that I’m almost out of Double-X because not every film seems to respond like this to the cold treatment. The next attempt will involve RPX400, but experiments of others have already shown that the effect probably won’t be as pronounced.

All pictures taken with: Leica M6 + Zeiss ZM C-Biogon 35mm f/2.8.
Double-X @400 stand-developed in cold Caffenol.

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

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