Celebrating my 1000th roll of film

Just before the pandemic reached us I was looking at my rather obsessive Excel spread sheet with which I keep track of the many rolls of film I have shot over the years. I kept track of every roll I shot since 2012 and with the help of this fancy spread sheet I can tell you pretty exactly which roll was developed with which developer and where it was taken. There are also some analytics in there that show how many rolls I have shot of certain film stocks or how many rolls I have developed in a certain developer and even in what way they were developed (stand development, rotary processing, etc.). If you had a peek at these stats, you wouldn’t learn anything truly shocking about me though! My most used emulsion is HP5+ – unsurprisingly, I have mentioned many times that it is my favourite emulsion. Most of my rolls are developed in my Jobo rotary processor and most black and white rolls are processed in HC-110, that’s pretty standard for me. However, would you imagine that a third of the rolls I shot were actually colour rolls? It definitely surprised me when I first started compiling these stats!

Now, while I was looking at the spread sheet back in February 2020 I realised that quite a milestone was coming up and it was my 1000th roll of film! Yes, I have shot 1000 rolls of film! It’s probably the most shocking fact my spreadsheet has to offer. And please, don’t do the maths of how much I spent on all that film or I might have a heart attack after all 😂 Since this was over the span of 8 years it wasn’t actually too bad though!

Of course I decided that this milestone was the perfect opportunity to do something special for this roll and a plan started forming in my head. I wanted to go to some amazing cliffs that are near here and shoot a roll of film that was gifted to me – a roll of Plus-X – in a camera that a dear friend gave to me – the Mamiya C220 of her late husband which she didn’t want to go unused. This 1000th roll was supposed to be a celebration of the generosity of the film photography community and all the ways in which we support each other. Luckily I managed to put this plan into action just before the pandemic hit Europe, but then things got really difficult, so the video I wanted to make about it actually took forever and this is also why I’m only posting these pictures now, long after this roll was shot. For ages I couldn’t develop the roll because we needed my film development gloves for other things in this pandemic madness, since I’m risk group and need to be extra careful. Then I couldn’t find the E6 chemicals that I needed to develop the second roll I shot that day. And then sadly my friend who gave me the camera passed away before I could finish the video. Although she didn’t get to see the video in the end I’d like to think that she would have enjoyed it, because there were dogs and cats and pretty landscapes and she was fond of all of these things. RIP.

And even after that more stuff happened that prevented me from finishing the video and this blog post. It’s a long story and if you’d like to hear the rest, there are a couple videos on my YouTube channel that tell you everything and also show all the behind the scenes footage of the trip to those amazing cliffs. There is quite a lot of spectacular landscape involved in these two videos, so the point of view footage is quite interesting too. In the second video I also share my experiences with the Tetenal Magic Box slide film kit that develops just 1 roll of colour film, since these were the only E6 chemicals I could find in stock at the time. So, if you’re interested in those chemicals, make sure to watch the second video too!

I would also like to use this opportunity to thank you guys for all your support! If you enjoy what I do here on this blog and on YouTube, you can always support me on Ko-fi. Any support will go right back into what I do here on this blog and the behind the scenes videos I make on my YouTube channel. Your support allows me to buy film for my cameras and all the equipment I need for making videos, as well as some bigger projects that have become a lot more complicated to finance with this whole pandemic situation and its fallout. Your generosity is what makes this blog and my YouTube channel possible and with this I don’t only mean those of you who support me directly with film, cameras or via Ko-fi, I mean all of you who have been reading my blog over all these years, commenting, liking, sharing, subscribing and all the other nice things you do! Thank you, I really appreciate it!

But enough said, let’s get on with the pictures!

Pictures taken with: Leica M6, Zeiss C-Biogon 35mm f/2.8 and Mamiya C220, Mamiya Sekor 80mm f/2.8 S.

Starting off with: Leica + Ektachrome 100.

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Mamiya C220, Kodak Plus-X (expired), HC-110.

The infamous 1000th roll of film!

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And this was it, my 1000th roll of film! I think it turned out great, especially since the place is just spectacular. It didn’t really make much of a difference that the Plus-X was expired. I compensated a little in development, but that didn’t really do much except increase density and add a little more grain. Next time I shoot expired black and white I’ll just shoot and develop at box speed!

Back to the Leica and that roll of Ektachrome. I learned from my YouTube comments section that Ektachrome was one of the tinting emulsions used to give things a little more of a blue cast. Definitely how I experienced it too! Interesting emulsion and I will be shooting more of it in the future! If you want to hear some more thoughts on it, check out the second video for that!

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Let’s get back to my beloved: HP5+ / HC-110.

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This guy was posing for me, he really wanted to have his whole head photographed!

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Last one! And after this shot the pandemic started and I had to self-isolate …! Even looking at this gives me anxiety because the person with the pram was way too close to me!

Comments

  • Nice to see some new photos from you! My favourites are the ones you’ve taken with Plus-X in the Mamiya. And all the ones with animals in them. 🙂 Oh, and the house on the cliff is very nice as well.

    I have a quick HC-110 + HP5 question: what’s the development times you use? Ilford’s recommended times seem way too short for me (e.g. 1+31 HP5@400 for 5 minutes), as I get pretty thin negatives. The Ilfotec HC times (e.g. 1+31 @400 for 6:30 minutes) seem to be better, but I’m tempted to develop even longer than that. But maybe I’m just too used to how my negs look with XTOL!? Or user error!? (I’m trying out my first ever bottle of HC-110 right now.)

    • I’m so glad you liked the pictures! I’m also really happy with how the Mamiya pictures turned out, what a place!

      As for your HC-110 question: I actually use dilution D because 5 minutes in B always seems too short in rotary development. B gets overly dense too quickly, so for me I don’t really have problems with thin negs. D is 1:39 and 5.50min works really well for me. Make sure you have the right version of HC-110 though! There is a liquid like version and a syrup and I think the dilutions are different. I use the syrup kind which sort of behaves like liquid honey? If yours isn’t slow running you might have the other version of it! To make things even more confusing: they also changed it recently, but I’m not sure whether that’s only in the US or in Europe too. The development times are supposed to be the same though? I still have a bottle from like 2 or 3 years ago so I haven’t had any opportunity to compare what the current bottles are like. If you prefer your negs more dense, you can always just leave it longer. I try to keep them on the medium side because too dense negatives are a pain to print in the darkroom!

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