Polypan, Rodinal and Minolta

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I was recently gifted with a vintage Minolta SRT 101 35mm SLR camera by my friend Nina. A beautiful camera, in very good working condition: while you can’t get the original batteries anymore because they contained mercury, I used a C.R.I.S. MR-9 adapter to allow the use of a silver 386 battery. For a test roll I used PolyPan F, exposed at E.I. 25, developed in Rodinal 1:50 for 11 minutes @ 20/68 degrees. I am still dialing in the film/developer combination  but the two images below hint a what can be done with this fine camera. Thanks again Nina!

Tracks at Base of Pottery Road

By the banks of the Don River, Toronto

Accidental Backgrounds

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In my subway Hipstamatic series, composition is a very quick, furtive process, with not a lot of time to pay too much attention to the background. This fact makes it interesting when background elements such as words add an additional element of meaning to the image. Here are two examples of images where I lucked out with some great accidental backgrounds.

In this image, I like  the fact that to the left of the rider’s eyes the words “Soar there” can be seen.

Looking Up

In this image, seeing the words “Crisis link” in the background made it really interesting for me.

Crisis

Real Character

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Let’s face it; the man in today’s image is not likely to be featured on the cover of GQ any time soon. But what a fascinating face! Textures, interesting lines, the sense of biography and the living of a hard working life are all present. He is no Ken Doll: he is much more interesting. I have worked in the past with a lot of models, but this year I need to expand my horizons and capture more images of people who are not conventionally attractive. (They are my tribe, after all: I am not likely to make GQ anytime soon!) In an age where so much visual imagery is used merely to capture pretty people for shallow marketing purposes, it is important to capture this aspect of humanity.

He may not be pretty. But he is real.

 

Really interesting face

Surprise, Part 3

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It is easy to get spoiled with medium format film when it comes to fine grain: a larger negative means less magnification, and grain is less apparent, even with higher speed films. In 35mm however it is much more of an issue, and in my workflow which ends with a scanned negative, I was just not happy with my results. My friend Mike suggested TMax developer at 1:9, so I gave that a shot with an unlabelled roll of Tri-X I had kicking around. I was pleased with the grain and sharpness, but also pleasantly surprised to find pictures of my good friends Ken and Bryon; it was like opening a present on Christmas morning 🙂

My friend Ken

Surprise Part 2

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Today another image from a forgotten roll of film, which turned out to be from a photowalk in Toronto’s Mount Pleasant Cemetery in 2012. I’m glad I finally got around to developing this roll!

Bench in Cemetery

New Combo

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My good friend Mike gave me a few 35mm rolls of Orwo UN 54 (a German film) quite some time ago, and I never got around to finishing a roll until a few days ago. I finally finished a roll, and developed it using Diafine developer. I love the sharpness and fine grain!!

Orwo Test roll

Surprises

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If one develops his or her own film, eventually you build up a pile of film you just never seem to get around to developing; there is always some other roll that is more pressing. If you leave it long enough, you even forgot what was on these neglected rolls, making for fun surprises when you actually do get around to developing. That is the case with today’s image, from a roll I took during the Transit of Venus event at Varsity Stadium at the University of Toronto last year; I had forgotten I had taken this roll.

Transit of Venus