Scanner Has Arrived

I'm very very happy now, because yesterday, I went and picked up my new Epson Perfection 4490 Scanner, which means all those little silly images that I uploaded to flickr as poor-quality contact sheets, can now be seen in their full glory. It makes me happy!

I scanned my first roll of 35mm last night, which was kinda nice. Thankfully it was one of the rolls I'd made a bit better a job of in the developing stages, so the scans all came out pretty nicely. I think the plan for tonight is to try and get another roll scanned, and just keep gradually builing up a nice wee archive. At the moment, I'm only scanning at half the maximum resolution to keep times and file sizes down for scanning everything, but I reckon I'll just crank it to max for anything where I need that wee bit extra quality.

The developing's been going mostly OK so far, I had a wee bit of a worry when I changed developers from Ilfosol to Ilfotec HC - the methods of mixing are a bit different, but thankfully the Ilford data sheet came in very handy. I'm just hoping my Ilfotec "stock" mix keeps OK in its current container. I'll also have to get my backside in gear and develop the backlog that's currently building up of films that I need to process. And to think when I first got my developing gear, I actually rushed out the house and shot off a roll just for the sake of having something to develop!

Next challenge is to see about maybe moving outside my HP5 comfort zone. So far I've decided to shoot nothing but HP5, due to it being very widely available and a lot of people saying it's quite a "forgiving" film to work with. Last night I was shooting a gig, so I decided to pop a roll of Fuji Neopan 1600 through, so we'll see how that turns out. Also very tempted to try experimenting with pushing HP5, although I've heard it's pretty bad at 1600.

I'm sure there'll be plenty of photos on my Flickr Page (www.flickr.com/photos/twentyhertz) coming soon for anyone who cares to read this to see how I'm doing :)

DIY SOS!

As much of a fan of Nick Knowles and his team of merry workmen as I am, I'm focusing more on the photographic rather than home improvement side of DIY! Recently, I've been growing ever discontent with the service from photo processing labs - having to spend the best part of £10 every time I finish a roll, just for the lab to give me the wrong prints, not scan all of the pictures, and in the worst case, even completely ruin a set of negatives.

• (Name and shame corner: Jessops on Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow managed to put a deep scratch through an entire roll of film that effectively rendered it unusable after the first set of prints.)

I decided I'd be a lot better off taking matters into my own hands. Seeing how I love shooting on XP2 monochrome film most of the time anyway, I decided it'd be quite cool fun just to shoot on proper black and white film, and develop it myself.

The grand plan as it stands runs in two stages: firstly, learn to process the black and white film, then scan it into my PC for the full joy of digital working. So far, I'm in the process of working with the film, and hopefully by next pay day, I'll be able to afford a decent scanner. My reasoning for thinking like this was that when I get a film processed, I usually flick through the prints a few times then stash them in a box under my bed, and use the negative scans on supplied CD on my PC for any future printing/publishing to Flickr etc. Rather than get bogged down in the extra hassle involved in making my own prints, I decided a decent film scanner would be the easiest way to go for creating a "finished product" so to speak.

So I took the plunge and invested in a developing tank and some basic chemistry to get me started. I'm currently using the following:

• Paterson 600ml Developer Tank (2x35mm or 1x120 film)
• Ilfosol Developer
• Ilfostop Stop Bath
• Ilford Rapid Fixer
• Jessops thermometer

I've been a big fan of stuff shot on Ilford HP5 film, so that's been my main material for practicing with. My choosing Ilford stuff through and through isn't due to some big brand loyalty by the way - it's just a simple case of it being the most commonly available b/w stuff in shops in Glasgow. I'm just sticking with HP5 at the moment, as it's a reasonably decent all-round performer, and sticking with one type of film makes it a lot easier for practicing my developing skills.

My setup at the moment is somewhat primitive - my chemicals are all mixed/stored/poured from 750ml Irn Bru glass bottles, and my darkroom is the bathroom with the light off! My biggest challenge has been trying to keep everything at the required 20degrees C.

The first attempt at processing film was a bit of a disaster - with passable, but not great results. I think I was in too much of a rush and got too shaken up by the whole experience, not to mention shaking my tank up a bit too much in the process! After taking my results and going back on the web, I managed to find some sites telling me exactly what I'd done wrong.

Since this roll, I've processed another three rolls, the following all having been done using 120 film rather than 35mm due to both of my 35mm cameras dying on me. They've all turned out pretty well as far as I can tell. Sadly one of them is mostly ruined due to a shutter failure on my Seagull. The last one I did, I'm not entirely sure what went wrong with it, whether it was overdeveloped or whether it was overexposed - I thought it had all been shot at 1/125 sec, but the motion blur on a lot of the pictures would suggest it had been much slower than this, and my Seagull had been having shutter difficulties that day.

Anyways, that's it so far. Hopefully the other OM-10 I bought from ebay should arrive soon and allow me to keep shooting 35mm stuff, and hopefully next month I'll have a shiny new scanner to allow me to put proper big pictures on Flickr for the world to look at!