A few frames #1 / by Emil Widstrand

Hot wheels of Hägersten. A 24x65 crop from a 6x7 photo. Pentax 67II, 105mm f/2.4 HP5+ pushed 2 stops

Over the recent holidays I finally found some time to develop a few rolls of film. And that my friends is quite rare. Since I don’t have enough space at home I´ve put all my developing stuff in boxes at my parents house.

My go to black and white developer since I started doing my own developing has been Ilfords Ilfotec DD-X (Apart from some tests with Cinestill df96 to get the feel for the whole develop at home thing) but since it is a relatively big part developer compared to water and the mixed dilution shouldn’t be used after 24 hours I tried another developer this time…

…D-rrr-rrr-rrr-rumroll…

Adox Rodinal. Famous for its beautiful grain and conveniently a one shot solution for me. Perfect for developing a roll or two from time to time and not waste a lot of chemicals.

I developed 5 different films during this time. Let’s see what we have:

  • Kodak TMax 400+1

  • Ilford HP5 Plus 400 +1

  • Ilford HP5 Plus 400 +2

  • Ilford Delta 100 +2

  • Kodak TMax 100+1

Due to different brands, ISO speeds and different pushing of each film I had to develop them all separately which is quite tedious and very time consuming.

The Ilford Delta 100+2 and Kodak Tax 100+1 wasn't compatible with the Rodinal developer according to the “Massive Dev Chart” so I developed them another day in Ilford DD-X just for safety. If you know how to develop those slow speed ISO pushed films feel free to leave a comment and I will try it some time.

Back to the grain again. I’m one of those who love the appearance of grain. I think almost every photo benefit from it. Except maybe some clean landscape photos but that is another story for another day. I haven’t really compared this grain to that grain but I don’t really need to as long as I have found what appeals to me aesthetically. And Rodinal do, big time! I mean look at the detail here

I will do a post trying to better show how it looks but that’s also for another day. Probably not until next Christmas holiday but sometime this spring/summer when we have moved to our big enough apartment to house my scanner.

Speaking about moving. the weeks preceding our apartment purchase we roamed the area we´re about to move in to quite a lot. And what is roaming without a camera? I brought the good ol´Pentax 67 and the 105mm lens along my family and scouted our future neighborhood, Midsommarkransen, to find photogenic subjects and I think some frames per roll got something to it. Date of photography 2021-10-09

Roll 1/3

Pentax 67II 105mm f/2.4 Ilford HP5 Plus 400+1 (pushed to 800)

Roll 2/3

Pentax 67II 105mm f/2.4 Ilford HP5 Plus 400+2 (pushed to 1600)

Roll 3/3

Pentax 67II 105mm f/2.4 Kodak TMax 400+1 (pushed to 800)

That is it for this time.

Wait! What about the TMax 100+1 and the Delta 100+2 you might ask? Those two rolls didn’t fit the story so I leave you with a cliffhanger. Sorry about that but I promise it won’t take too long to post the next story. You have my word.

/Emil