Colour Conundrum pt. 1: "Kodak 5"

Colour Photography and me, sometimes I just don't know. It isn't that I have issues with it as a creative medium. Sure, black and white is it for me 90% of the time but there are times when colour is an important element. The trouble is more of a practical thing. It's easy enough to carry and extra back loaded with colour film for just those occasions. The problem is what to do with the stuff once it's been shot. Gone are the days when it was a simple matter to find a local business that could handle the processing for you. The answer should be simple enough - I know my way around the darkroom (I can do it with my eyes closed!) and colour chemistry isn't that hard to get my hands on. The trouble is a batch of C-41 chemistry only lasts for a couple of months once mixed. On average over that time span I'll probably not even shoot a single roll of colour. If I were to shoot E-6, which I'd love to, that's even worse. 

A popular option these days is to ship film away to a lab but shipping one roll at a time adds a lot of expense and if I'm going to wait until I have several rolls I might as well just do it at home. I have all the stuff after all. And so it is this is the option that I have gone with. Sounds like a near perfect plan given the circumstances, right?

Well... maybe. I'm no stranger to the C-41 process. It's fixed, predictable if you stick to a few simple guidelines with no adjustments required in time or temperatures to match a particular film, they all get processed the same way. In many ways it's easier and faster than processing a typical black and white film. Still, for reasons I'm sure had little to do with problems or inconsistencies at the development stage, recent results have fallen a little outside what I was expecting.

To begin with I had 6 rolls of film to develop: One roll each of Kodak Portra 400 and Ektar in 120, two rolls of Agfa Optima 400 in 220 that expired some time in the late 90's, a 120 roll of Lomo 100 and a roll of Fuji Superia 800 that went though one of my Nikons though I can't remember which. Together these represented all the colour film that that completed it's journey through my various cameras roughly over the past year, though in many cases they seem to have been sitting in camera for a much longer time than that. All were developed in the same batch of a 1L Unicolor C41 kit that I ordered from the Film Photography Project. It was recently mixed though I had the kit sitting around as dry chemicals for about a year and a half which should be well within expected shelf life for the unmixed chemicals. This is a two part series and here I'll be discussing the results from the Kodak emulsions and I'll follow up next time with some thoughts on all the rest.

Given that these were the most mainstream of the emulsions and, except for the Lomo, the freshest, these films gave me the most surprising results. Both of these went through my RB67. Like the other two medium format SLR systems I own it has interchangeable film magazines allowing me to switch mid-roll from one film to another and I've used this capability in the usual way to switch from the usual black and white to colour film when it seems appropriate. For the record it has always been a consistent performer the black and white images I have made with it come out just fine.

Portra 400

The Portra 400 had been loaded into the camera no more recently than 2015. I know this only because it contains a particular image, the black and white version of which first appeared in my portfolio in that year. There were only 4 (out of a possible 10) shots on the roll but it's been so long since I shot it I can't remember what might have happened that it was never completely shot. That's just how seldom I use that camera to shoot colour. For all the time it's been sitting there it's still surprising that there were such obvious issues with it. All of the images showed some degree of odd mottling. The first image was by far the strangest with a series of discoloured lines running the width of the film. Here's the straight scan:

The remaining exposures weren't nearly so affected but this odd mottling was evident in all of the exposures. Yes it's been sitting around for a while but I've developed film much older than this, including some that I'll discuss in the next instalment that was developed at the same time in the same batch of chemistry without any such issues. It's hard to say what's causing this. It's clearly not any sort of light leak as it seems to be just a variation in colouration and is worse on the first frame that would have been sitting closest to the centre of the exposed roll. One clue might come from the last of the 4 frames in which the otherwise random mottling shows one clear pattern. A cropped in image of this should make it plain enough...

And in case it's not clear where this might have come from here's a portion of the backing paper from that same roll:

I can only guess that this is the result of some sort of chemical reaction with the ink used to print the frame markings on the backing paper though curiously, to me anyway, there are no markings on the backing paper to match the lines seen in the first frame. Maybe the readership has some better suggestion?

I liked this final frame though, so just I decided to take the scan and clean things up as best I could digitally. The "Kodak 5" was gotten rid of easily enough but you don't have to look too closely to see the mottling.  If you can ignore this though I'd say I like the shot

Ektar

The second film that had gone through the RB67 was a roll of Ektar 100. It came out of the camera several months ago. If there were thoughts that the issues with the roll of Portra might have had something to do with whatever the problem must have been that caused me to shoot less than half of it most were dispelled by comparing it with this roll. Though it hadn't been sitting on the shelf nearly as long as the Portra, it also had a random mottling pattern throughout the roll and here the first three frames were plagued with particularly prominent lines that again spanned the width of the film, and again it was the same sort of greenish discolouration. Here is the third frame from that roll.

Image anomalies aside though it seems to me this roll came out much differently than any of the others. Ektar is known for it's reasonably bold colours but these seem punchy beyond reason to me. I mean it's still a fairly standard film not unsuited for standard portraiture. For example, while I'm no geologist I'm sure the rocks in this images are practically identical to the ones in the example Portra image above it that was taken about 30km away along the Lake Erie shore. They certainly don't strike me as being this sort of Mars red when I look at them. Curious indeed.

If Kodak C-41 films were generally problematic like this then I'm sure my experiences here would be old news. On the other hand if something is wrong on my end like I got a bad batch of chemistry or maybe I've just really gotten out of touch with good colour processing practice then you'd expect these problems to carry over to the other rolls I developed in this batch as well. In my best go at creating a cliff hanger then, that's what I'll look at in the next instalment so please stay tuned.

Deathbed Vigil for an Old Favourite

Unless you're brand new to film photography you/ve been witnes to the buzz in the photographic community that comes with the announcement that a new film stock is about to hit the market, or more likely an old one is being re-introduced. Just as surely you've seen the the reverse play out when a film stock disappears from the market. While inevitably these announcements are accompanied by lamentations by some about how this is a sign that choice in the film market is drying up, the wiser among us realize that in the wider picture there is no such trend. Of course things will never be the same as they were when film was the only viable way to do photography, but that's a done deal now. For the most part anyone who was going to give up using film for digital has already done so. What we see today is not a decline. Films come, films go. They always have.

Of course it's a little easier to keep this perspective when the film whose immenent demise has just been announced is not one of the mainstays of your own working method. Sure it was a shame when the Kodachrome process was shut down for good, but honestly I hadn't shot with that particular film in the ten years prior to that. In the past all of these discontinuations came and went with me sad to see another emulsion go, but happily going on with my work no differently than before.

This time though, with Fuji's announcement that they will be discontinuing their Neopan Acros in all formats as of October 2018, five short months from this writing, it finally hits home for me. It has been roughly five years since I returned to shooting film for virtually everything creative that I do. Over that time, though I haven't kept count, I'd say at least half of the rolls that have gone through my cameras have been Acros, and it wouldn't surprise me if I were to learn that it had been a good deal more.

If you're not familiar with it's characteristics, Acros has all the basics covered. It's a 100 ISO black and white negative film with sharpness and grain that put it in roughly the same league as Kodak's T-Max. While it's almost purely a subjective thing, its tonality is something I find pleasing, and at the very least few find it objectionable. Acros has a few other tricks up its sleve though. It is uniquely good at handling highlight detail. This makes it particularly useful in contrasty situations. This also means over exposure is less of a worry, so if you're struggling with shadows you want to see detail in you can usually give it an extra stop and let that lattitude cover the rest. If one were looking to fault Acros you could accuse it of being so forgiving as to invite carelessness.

To me though shooting Acros comes with one over riding delight that beats all the others, and that is that reciprocity failure is something you almost don't have to think about (For those not familiar with reciprocity failure please see the excellent explanation by Mat Marrash on the FPP web site.) Given that I, like many photographers who share a love of the landscape, enjoy experimenting with long exposure techniquest, this makes it a very special film. With many black and white emulsions exposures as short as one second may require an exposure adjustment to compensate for the film's deficiencies with lower light levels. With Acros no adjustment is needed for exposures of up to two minutes.

Now I'm not above bringing along a reciprocity cheat sheet or even doing a bit of math in my head, so why worry too much about having to compensate? It's simply that reciprocity failure can quickly get out of hand, and the more prone to reciprocity failure a film is, the more easily this can happen. With some films for example, if after accounting for reciprocity failure I determine and exposure of 30 seconds at f/8 is appropriate, but feel the scene requires me to stop down to f/16, my new exposure time may become not 2 minutes as we might expect, but 7 or 8 minutes. And if the light may be changing on you over that duration of time the shutter is open any real chance at an accurate exposure may come down to little more than a semi-educated guess. For my money, its' best just to keep things as linear and predictable as possible.

Of course the final factor is simply that Acros is what I'm used to, it's what I've learned to handle. For me it is a known and predicatable commodity. In my case it even has an added bonus in that processing time in my developer of choice, PMK Pyro is exactly the same for Acros as it is for HP5, which is the film I usually turn to when I need a bit more speed, so I can just develop everything together.

Change is inevitable of course, but that doesn't mean we can't fight it. Even though I probably had enough Acros on hand to get me through the summer as it was I immediately put in a panic order as soon as I heard the announcement. Shortly after this Acros was nowhere to be found at any of the online outlets I knew or could find. This was probably due to a rush created by all the other fools who made the same panic buy I did when they heard. When they went out of stock I saw that B&H simply listed Acros as discontinued making me wonder if that was it, so when it was again listed as in stock earlier today, you guessed it, I put in another panic buy. I imagine there will be one or two more in the coming months, as well as the need to buy a larger freezer. I may be in Acros for a few more years yet.

Of course that's only prolonging the inevitable, but so is all of life if you think about it. What happens when it's finally gone? Seems I should have a while to think about it. By then there may be something new.

What's In The Box Is Outside The Box

It's been a while since I've made a good impulse buy, so I was well passed due for one when I ran across this lot at everyone's favourite auction site (or least favourite depending who you talk to, it seems there are no in betweens). I became the proud owner of five rolls of Svema CO-32d colour reversal film, expired just slightly before the Soviet Union itself, at a price I could easily shrug off if the experiment was a total failure.

It might seem like an odd way to go for someone such as myself who prefers good sized negatives made with excellent optics to produce full range black and white prints. At first blush it may strike you as a better choice for a member of the Holga toting, happy accident fostering, low fidelity image crowd. Though it may strike some as the polar opposite of what I usually go for I don't see it that way. One of the qualities I care about most in my images is character, however it's achieved.

Like many impulse buys however there were a few aspects to this one that might have given me pause had I taken more time to consider things. I knew a colour reversal film from what was then the Soviet Union probably wasn't made for the standard E6 process like the Fujichromes and Ektachromes of the same era, but I didn't think this would be a big deal since I intended to cross process in C41 chemistry anyway. It was only once it had arrived that I started to research my options for processing the stuff and what it turned up suggested a change of plan was needed. I found a thread in the APUG forums suggesting a standard C41 process would strip the image from the film, a suggestion that was corroborated by the scraps of information I was able to find elsewhere in my online searches. One commenter was stated this was simply the result of the relatively high temperatures typical of colour processes and that they'd be fine in C41 chemistry with extended development at room temperature. More numerous, and it seems to me authoritative, were claims that it was the bleach employed in C41 chemistry do in the images resulting in a blank strip of film at any temperature and that C22 chemistry was the only viable option if I didn't care to gather all the ingredients needed to reproduce the original ORWO reversal process, It can be hard enough getting my hands on standard chemistry sometimes and the quest (no doubt the expensive quest) to get my hands on the oddball chemistry needed couldn't be justified for the sake of these five rolls of film which might not work out in any case.

What's a guy to do? Improvise! Among the posts in that APUG thread I found was one that listed the recipes to make every step of the C22 process from raw chemistry. The active ingredient for the bleach step appeared to be just Potassium Ferricyanide which I keep around because of its uses in black and white print making. Having most of the other ingredients as well I matched the formula as well as I could to produce half a litre of experimental C22ish bleach.

Bleach is just one step in the colour process though, and it was only through luck that I had materials on hand to create a reasonable facsimile of the one chemical bath. For the rest of the process I'd have to wing it. Stitching together various other nuggets of advice either found through web searches or offered up in discussion forums in response to my own queries I put together the following plan based on a working temperature of 20^oC

1. Water pre-soak: 1 min
2. Unicolor C41 developer: 20 min
3. Stop bath (standard film dilution ): 2 min
4. Water rinse: 2 changes w/ 30 sec agitation each
5. C22ish bleach: 7 min
6. EcoPro Clearfix (1:4): 6 min

Followed by the standard wash I would give to any black and white film. There's nothing special about the choice of fixer, this is just what I use for black and white processes. The only real departure from this plan was necessitated a discovery made when loading the film onto the reel for the daylight developing tank. Over the decades it seems the backing paper had begun to adhere to the back of the film. I suppose I could have dealt with this afterwards but if nothing else I didn't want little bits of black paper floating around the chemistry baths, most of which would be re-used. The pre-soak stage was increased from 1 minute to about 200 minutes with several changes of water supplemented with sessions in full darkness of rubbing little bits of damp paper off the surface of the film. The effort was largely, if not totally, successful.

As I pulled the film back off the reel following all of this it wasn't clear if my efforts had been in vain. Of course there was base fog like nobody's business with plenty of mottling and density variations, but while I could see that there was actual image hiding in there it wasn't clear if it would be usable. Not surprisingly my first attempts to scan them didn't look like much, revealing far more mottling than image, but I managed to find a trick. The messiness was confined to the red and green layers of the scans, but the blue layer was just the opposite, revealing just enough mottling to make it interesting. I wound up making two scans of each image, one a monochrome image weighted almost entirely to the blue channel, and a second scan made just for colour balance. I then pasted the first scan as a luminosity layer over the second colour scan. The results are what you see here.

As you can readily see, especially in the third image, my efforts to remove the adhered backing paper were not entirely successful. Another good soak might just clear away what remains, but I'm still unsure whether this is advisable or even desirable. I bought this film with a mind to achieving some interesting and unusual results and in my estimation at least it was a success. The only question now is whether to stick with what worked reasonably the first time or experiment to see if I can get something even more satisfactory. I metered for an ISO of 8 for most of the roll, going down further, maybe to 4 ISO, seems advisable. Perhaps a bit more time in the developer or perhaps mimicking the original process even further a short soak in a standard black and white developer before moving on to the colour developer might yield negatives that at the very least won't be as hard to work with. I've got some room to experiment at any rate. The Ukrainian seller had one more lot of 5 rolls left and I just claimed it. 

Pinhole Day 2016

It's a darn good thing somebody goes to the trouble of organizing the annual Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day. I wrote about the tribulations I experienced during the 2015 WPPD while I was still shaking out some of the bugs involved in using the 8x10 pinhole camera I had built the previous autumn, the details of which you can also find back in the September 2014 archives of this blog. Consisting of a box with a teeny hole at one end, the camera itself wasn't the real issue so much as the here were no real issues with the camera itself on that day so much as dealing with the resulting exposures, namely the contrasty, highly scratch-prone x-ray sheet film employed. I was trying something new so it was the usual case of learning a few lessons and making a few adjustments. The trouble is that with everything else going on in my photographic life I didn't get around to trying out those new adjustments until WPPD 2016 came along and lit a fire under it.

My choice for entry in the WPPD 2016 on line gallery - image #1234 as it happens.

Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day itself is an event simply to celebrate photography in arguably its simplest form and to raise awareness of the power and expressive potential of photography done with traditional materials and tools. It's also a great educational opportunity. Grade school children can build pinhole cameras from materials as simple as a shoe box, baking foil and a bit of tape, load it up with a sheet of photographic paper then after making an exposure develop the image using a simple darkroom setup, all in the course of an afternoon. It's science and art all rolled into one. For me though it's simply a reminder that pinhole photography is something I have in my photographic repertoire, or it's supposed to be anyway. I shouldn't need the reminder, but there it is.

While WPPD falls on the last Sunday of every April my day job allows little consideration for weekends, so as had been the case with the previous two WPPD's I participated in I did not have the full day to work with. Just as well perhaps as with two 8x10 film holders to my name I was limited to making four exposures. I had a few locations in mind that weren't too far from where I work so it was a cinch to get it all done on the way home.

Making the exposures was the easy part though. I still had to deal with getting those large finicky x-ray negatives developed. I wrote about my results from last year in Pinhole Day Misadventures so I won't reiterate the issues I ran into here.  This year however I had the hangers and tanks at my disposal so I wasn't expecting negative scratches to be an issue and as it turns it wasn't. My second concern was the excessive contrast I have been getting from x-ray film with standard film developers. Though it can be developed by inspection under red darkroom lighting, the Xtol I used last year resulted in empty shadows despite developing until the highlights were as dense as I dared. My current standard, PMK Pyro, is a compensating developer and would probably give much better results. The 8x10 tanks however require a full 5 litres of solution, and while I probably had enough on hand to mix that much it would have left me short in short supply for other purposes. Having raw ingredients on hand I did a bit of research and decided on a particular Caffenol formula called Delta Micro. Formulated for low speed, high resolution micro films which have similar contrast requirements it seemed right for the job, and what do you know, it actually worked as well as I'd hoped.

Developing by inspection again I found that, unlike the Xtol which brought up a clearly visible image in about 15 seconds, it was several minutes in the Delta Micro before I could see anything happening at all on the film resulting in just a little bit of panic, holding the dripping film hanger up to the safelight to satisfy myself I saw some sort of image forming. Though I didn't time anything it seemed about 10 minutes until they appeared ready to move on to the stop bath. The negatives looked good, displaying a nice range of tones similar to those I expect from standard negatives. The only trouble I , could see were some areas, mostly towards the middle of the image, where they seemed to suffer from a sort of hazy fog. Maybe this was the result of having x-ray film, with its notoriously short shelf life, sitting in film holders for the better part of a year, or maybe it was all that close examination holding the developing negatives up to the safelight. Future experimenting will be needed to sort that one out.

It wasn't horrible but the negatives were denser and lower in contrast in these areas, creating a challenge in the darkroom, especially since I was contact printing which made it a little harder to judge exactly where to burn. For the most part they contact printed well on Ilford MG-IV RC with a #3 contrast filter which was replaced with a #5 filter when burning in those denser areas. The results were okay-ish, but I gave in and did a bit of extra work on the image of the railway tracks in Photoshop after scanning in the contact prints to help even things out a little more. There is still a little of the effect visible in the image below of the graffitied overpass pillars as it occurred to me the fogged area just happened to fall on exactly the right area of the image to resemble a slight mist, though no such mist was actually present.

Each participant can submit only one image each year to the WPPD online gallery. It's not a competition, there are no prizes, images are not judged or ranked in any way and there are not sort of minimum standards to be met other than that images must have been taken on the day of the event with a lensless camera of some sort. I would have been happy with either of the images here, but the perspective and foreground details made the railway bridge shot an easy choice. I filled out the online submission form and uploaded the image. In 2014, the first year I entered, my image came up as #888, and I was pleased it was something so easy to remember. This year I have image #1234. If I'm going to be lucky like that, why can't it be the lottery. (Answer: Because I don't play.)

There may be a few kinks left to iron out but with these results I can see the potential for achieving a unique look that is desireable and can't be matched using standard lenses. Yes I have plenty of other pots on the go, so to speak which I'll no doubt be writing about with equal enthusiasm in the weeks and months to come. Still, there's no shortage of things I hope to do and explore with pinholes, and there's still plenty of x-ray film in the freezer. Hopefully it won't take WPPD 2017 to get me out with it again.

A Season for Colour

Here it is October again and, not unlike countless other photographers (at least those who live at similar latitudes), my normally black and white photographic muse begins entertaining thoughts of colour. Simple enough it seems, it's autumn, the leaves take on riotous colours and every photographer wants to capture that. I wonder though if there might not be a little more to it than the changes that occur to leaves. Beyond colour, autumn has its own emotional pallet. It's in the air, in the scents, the crisp silence of still moments, the immediacy of the chill wind, waking us from dreamy days of summer, bringing us back to earth, to the world of our direct experience, carrying its reminder that we are after all as much a part of it as anything else. There are times, even when the flaming yellows, oranges and reds of October have given way to November's dull browns, that something of this sense of presence can be lost to the abstraction of black and white.

An image from the fall of 2014 made with the Mamiya RB67 on Kodak Portra 160.

None of this is to say I'll be putting away the Ilfords, the T-Max's and the Neopans until the snow flies. Some of my most treasured black and white images were made at this time of year. Knowing there will be times when colour is an important part of the feel of an image however it does mean I making plans so I'm not caught unprepared. Two years ago I accomplished this by packing my old Nikon D80 DSLR along with the Mamiya kit. Shooting digital and film side by side like this presented me with an interesting contrast between how I thought and felt about using one photographic technology versus the other (and as a result I haven't taken a digital camera with me for creative purposes since). It did not, however, result in any memorable colour images. Last year I was better prepared with a couple of pro-packs of Kodak Portra, a 1L kit of C-41 chemistry and some thawed rolls of 35mm Fujicolor that have been sitting in the freezer for the past decade or so. To be honest black and white has become such a habit that I didn't reach for it as often as I could have and never felt I really got into the colour photography groove, but I did come away with some reasonably good images that worked where black and white wouldn't have, at least not as well.

That brings us to this year. My hopes were that by now the new Ferrania E-6 film would be on the market. Alas that project has hit more than its fair share of snags that started with the unexpected discovery of asbestos contamination in the factory which set off a small avalanche of delays in its wake. If you haven't been following the project though fear not, they are soldiering on in Italy and the project is starting to get back on track once again. Alas, not in time for there to be hope of having film on the market before it all gets covered over in a frosty white blanket.

Whether or not I'm giving the new Ferrania a go, which I inevitably will, shooting transparencies (or slides if you care to mount them) rather than colour negatives does have a certain attraction for me, especially these days. Back in my late teens and early twenties when my fascination with photography was really starting to take hold I rarely shot anything but. The great thing about this for an "improving" photographer is that since the image you would see is on the actual physical piece of film that went through your camera you saw exactly what you shot as you shot it in it's unadjusted, unadulterated, uninterpreted form. What would be more important to me these days is that having a direct positive provides me with a finished, physical, hold-it-in-your-hand image in a way that a negative doesn't. Back when the term "photo shop" referred to a place rather than an app this wasn't a big deal since when you got your colour negatives developed they came back accompanied by a small stack of prints, but as that sort of service isn't easily available, at least where I live, getting that finished physical image from colour print film has become a challenge and working with just a scan from a negative doesn't seem to be the same thing.

If that was all there was to it though I don't have to wait for Ferrania. Fujichrome is still out there and for a bit more of an adventure there's an interesting selection of transparency film available from the Film Photography Project (henceforth and heretoaft referred to as FPP). An the E-6 chemistry to process it is a little more expensive and a little trickier to use than the C-41 equivalent needed for colour negative film but still well within the threshold of how much of a challenge I'm up to. The real issue is that, once mixed, the chemistry has a shelf life that is measured in weeks. As it was the much longer lived C-41 chemistry I used last year went off as a result of sitting too long on the shelf well before it reached its potential in terms of the number of rolls I might have been able to process. To get full use from a batch of E-6 chemistry I would really need to go on a colour shooting binge. I have heard some E-6 shooters say they will save up exposed film until they have enough to justify mixing a batch of chemistry to make sure none goes to waste but that seems to me to require a special kind of patience that I just don't have.

And so it was decided that for now I was better off sticking with colour negatives. The little snag I had to confront was that at some point since last year my main supplier, B&H in New York, has unfathomably restricted their C-41 kits to in-store sales only. Now B&H is one of several great dealers for those of us who have little choice but to get our photo supplies online, but with punishingly high shipping rates from the U.S. to Canada these days the fact that B&H (at the time this is being written anyway) can offer free shipping to Canada on orders over $100 is hard to ignore. No matter though if I can't get what I need from them, I can still order C-41 kits from the FPP online store. The kits are actually priced lower than at B&H if you ignore the fact that for me that means foregoing the free shipping, and better yet sales go to support the Film Photography Podcast which, if you're not familiar, stop reading now, go to http://filmphotographyproject.com/podcast where you'll find links to listen to each episode, then return when you're ready.

The order was placed, shipped the next day and arrived a few days later. To spread the shipping cost a bit thinner I ordered two C-41 kits along with some 120 Portra 400, some 35mm Ektar and a roll of of FPP's Retrochrome E-6 which I plan to cross process in the C-41 chemistry as soon as the first batch is close to exhaustion. Retrochrome, by the way, is a typical example of the way FPP will repurpose film that was originally made for specialty applications such as motion picture duplication or traffic cameras for use by photography enthusiasts who may enjoy the unique characteristics some of these stocks offer. Retrochrome itself is from an expired surplus stock of Ektachrome 2239, a film that was produced for industrial use but with characteristics that were probably not unlike the Ektachromes available to consumers and professional photographers at the time. The unique look it offers today is likely solely due to its having mellowed over the years resulting in a warm nostalgic look as the name suggests. Who knows what if anything that will mean to me when I cross-process it in C-41 chemistry, but stay tuned and I'll let you know.

For now though I have the day free and a roll of Portra in the Bronica. I also have a mind to load a roll of the 35mm Ektar into an RB67 back with a set of home made adapters I put together for panoramas "sprocket hole" style. Autumn has hardly just begun (I can tell because the stores are only now putting out the Christmas/Hanukkah/Saturnalia merchandise) but as always will present only so many opportunities to photograph what it offers before once again I'll find myself challenged to write convincingly about the joys of photographing the ice and snow.

Feet First 4x5

In our last episode I managed to find a plan to shoe-horn large format darkroom capability back into my life without too much disruption to the rest of the household. There's still a bit of work to be done on that front, getting the door fully light sealed and whatnot. It could have been done some time ago but after years of staring at 4x5 camera equipment there seemed little point in using I couldn't put off the urge to get shooting with it any longer. That situation only became more acute when I managed to pick up a 150mm Schneider Symmar-S lens for just under $150 US.

You may recall the post "Success at the Tinker Table" in which I detailed the unlikely triumph of my efforts to get the shutter to my 135mm Wollensak Raptar working again. That was fine for what I intended at the time, but now that large format may begin representing a significant portion of my work again some serious glass is called for. I have fond recollections of the 210mm Symmar-S I owned back in photography school. Whatever else I may have achieved photographically in the intervening years the most luscious prints I have ever made are from negatives made through that lens. Of course the more regular darkroom practice and toned fibre based prints I was making back then may also have contributed, but to me there is no doubt that the Schneider was the best I've ever owned. When finally some eighteen years ago changing life circumstances forced me to admit there was faint hope I'd ever have much occasion to use it again I regretfully sold it. While the Symmar-S series has been superseded in the Schneider line by Apo-Symmars and Super-Symars, it feels like a small, reassuring sort of home coming to see the name back in my photo backpack. 

The images here are from a quick little shakedown outing in the field. It was a simple jaunt out to the stretch of beach I've shown you images from countless times before, but as so often happens things were just a little different than they've ever been before. The inukshuks were the first surprise. Some ambitious individual or individuals had built half a dozen of these structures within about a thirty metre radius along the beach. The shot at the top was of the only one of these that both allowed me enough room to shoot and didn't have some horribly distracting element in the background. It was was just good fortune that I decided to go out that day as when I returned the next day hoping to get additional compositions using the greater selection of lenses I have with the Bronica outfit someone had toppled all but one of these.

The other surprise was the water level. While images of the Great Lakes can appear effectively ocean-like, they lack a proper tide.and the photographic variations that may present themselves as they go in and out. That said wind and weather do combine to alter water levels, and while in my experience it seems as though on average the shoreline has on average been creeping back a bit year to year, this year it has surged forward so that sections of beach I used to walk accompanied by shore birds have been reclaimed by fish. Though it's been a few years since I told myself I had photographed the concrete structure in the above image to death I keep finding new ways, and on this day I saw it for the first time in my own memory not as something 10 metres or more from the water, but as something coming out of the water. It was evening and light levels were getting low enough that combining the light lost through a red contrast filter with a small aperture setting allowed a 15 second exposure, enough to get a nice blur effect with the water to contrast the rough surface of the disintegrating concrete.

While I imagined my lack of a scanner that's built to handle large format negatives would bring the forced discipline that at the very least would compel me to make contact prints I must confess that I've become fairly proficient at scanning both halves of a 4x5 negative and stitching them together with software. While it feels like cheating it has brought a few issues to light. One is that the traditional 4x5 hangers I have been using to develop the negatives have resulted in a few issues that need to be dealt with. The first is that I have gotten some rather nasty scratches that appear to have resulted from the sharp corners of one of the metal hangers contacting the surface of the negative in one of the other hanger during processing. It's difficult, especially in the dark, to keep all the hangers together as a group when agitating or transferring to another tank and I assume this the problem. Another is that on some images I've seen density streaks, similar to those sometimes seen with 35mm film that line up with the sprocket holes, except these seem to match up with the holes in the sides of the film hangers that exist to let the chemistry drain away. If I don't find a solution I'll probably abandon the hangers and get myself a MOD54 unit and process in my disused Paterson tank, with the added benefit of being able to keep the lights on through most of the process. I'm sure there are many more lessons to come as well. In a way it's part of what keeps us all going.

Large Format Once More

  I recall seeing the little room off the dining room for the first time while touring the house where I have lived for the past fifteen plus years with the real estate agent. At the time it evidently served as a sort of basic man cave. Lacking the bay window sized video screen one might associate with the more ideal sort of man cave it never the had been designed to be a place where one would want to go to take a load off at the end of a day, a Three Stooges poster on the wall dispelling any notion that this was the domain of the lady of the house. On taking ownership this became a sort of junk room, a place to put things there seemed no other place for a few years, but when I started a small photography out of the house and needed a base of operations this room was cleared out and spruced up, whereupon it became know as "The Office". Though it retained that title years after I moved on to other things professionally its role had, in reality, reverted to the same sort of man cave it was the first time I saw it, excepting for the general character of the images hanging on the wall. 

When I started giving serious thought to setting up a darkroom in which I could finally do real enlargements again I considered a few possibilities - there's the dungeon-like basement but it's far too dank, an attic but it's like a sauna in summer, and so it was that I settled on the little bathroom off the kitchen. My working space would be the area over the bathtub (that no on had used as a bathtub since we moved in). I figured I could use the tub below for print and negative washing though in practice this has become storage for larger items there seems no alternative for.. The Durst enlarger I picked up from a local ad was just about the best compromise I could come up with - as large as I could possibly make work though it does make things cramped, and though 6x6 is supposed to be its maximum it can just barely handle negatives from the RB67 with the custom carrier I made if I don\t mind losing just a smidge off the sides. With the enlarger and timer in place there's just enough room to the sides for three 8x10 trays though this is cramped at best, especially as there are a growing number of chemistry bottles competing for the space that have no other home. It can all be made to work, but it's not pleasant which to be frank is a major reason I haven't done as much printing as I had hoped by this point. 

The office never got considered in any of this because... well, it was the office. Not only that but the design of the room didn't lend itself to darkroom use, built in work surfaces were too narrow for enlargers, there is no ready access to plumbing and as if that weren't enough it had a louvred door. I would just have to find a way to make do with the space I had, perhaps by finding a way to stack trays or putting in extra shelves somewhere. 

Then came the day I stumbled across a local Kijiji ad for a well seasoned but perfectly functional Beseler 4x5 enlarger along with an array of film carriers and lenses at an affordable price. Aside from having to put up with the cramped quarters, the idea of accepting my lot and making the best of things with my tiny makeshift darkroom came with another cost - it meant that getting back to large format photography would forever be an impracticality for me. Sure my 8x10 pinhole camera should be workable since contact prints would be as large as the biggest enlargements I could do anyway, but that's a bit of a sideline for me. Meanwhile I had 4x5 equipment languishing on the shelf - a working camera and a lens which, thanks to an unexpectedly successful DIY repair once again had a working shutter, along with a full compliment of 4x5 film holders. Now here was this ad to remind me of that whole region of the photographic world, one I used to enjoy, that I was for all practical purposes excluded from for the foreseeable future. 

Then I began to think. Was there a way to section off a part of the basement that could be kept dry, clean and dark? (Answer- not without great effort... and even then.) What about a window mounted air conditioner to keep the attic cool? (Answer- not without a significant increase to my carbon footprint and electric bill.) Could I encourage my teenage son to get a place of his own so I could use his room? (Answer- legally, not for a few more years.) A week went by without a definite answer coming to me, but I could stand it no more and finally I called about the Beseler.

Too late it seemed. The seller informed me that someone had called from out of province expressing an interest. They would be through town in a couple of weeks and the seller had agreed to hold it for them. I left my contact information with them in case their potential buyer didn't go for it. I suppose I could have just shrugged it off and continued with the status quo but the seed had been sown. Maybe it would take a while but it was now set I was going to get back to large format in the darkroom.

Now if you've been following along for a while you might be asking yourself what the big deal is. After all, I must seem positively giddy at times over the medium format kit I own so why not stick with that? The truth is it's not so much the format, meaning the actual physical dimensions of the negatives, that is the big attraction for me. Don't get me wrong, I'll take the bigger negs thank ye very much, but it's really the cameras themselves that are the attraction. Like their smaller 35mm cousins, medium format cameras such as the Mamiyas and Bronicas I have are hard bodied cameras, essentially consisting of a rigid box with a lens attached to the front and film in the back so that film and lens are permanently held square on to each other. With the typical large format camera film and lens are separated by bellows which, due to their flexible nature, permits the two to be shifted and tilted with respect to each other. The whys and where-to-fores of all of this go beyond what I'm willing to delve into today, but in the end this gives the photographer controls that can be used to manipulate perspective and the plane of focus.

One example of a time I really wish I had this kind of control was when I took this shot...

This was taken with a Mamiya RB67 and to be fair it's one of my most successful images from last winter. Scale is a bit ambiguous here and I suppose one could imagine reaching that hill would require an ambitious hike but in truth I could have cleared it and then some by throwing a snowball. The nearest of those windblown dune features then is less than a metre away from the lens. Luckily the lens I used stopped all the way down to f/45 because I needed all the depth of field I could get and the foreground is still not as crisply sharp as I would have liked. That's because with a rigid bodied camera critically sharp focus occurs at a fixed distance from the lens. Imagine everything at that distance forming an imaginary wall, and this wall becomes the plane of focus. A 4x5 camera with even the most basic movements would have allowed me instead to tilt the lens and alter this plane of focus to match the lay of the land rather than that imaginary wall fixed at a certain distance from the lens. I could have stopped down less (stopping down too much actually results in less sharpness due to diffraction effects which is why selecting a middle of the road aperture setting is usually ideal) and achieved better sharpness in the foreground than what I got. 

My bedroom/darkroom circa 1993

Back to our story though it was long about this point when it occurred to me that the office was a viable alternative to the unworkable ideas I had been mulling around with. The idea wouldn't be, at least for the time being, to turn it into a complete darkroom. What I had in mind rather was returning to an idea I had used for my first bachelor pad darkroom, a separate dry room and wet room. Back then I fully blacked out the window of my bedroom (the dry room) where the ancient 4x5 enlarger I owned at the time was permanently set up. There prints were exposed, placed into a dark bag so they could be transferred to the windowless bathroom (the wet room) to be developed in trays. Not ideal to be sure but far superior to my current situation. Converting the office as the dry room and the current darkroom as only a wet room would not only allow me to devote the whole space to develop prints, it would also give me the extra storage space to clear out the bathtub underneath and use it as intended. The whole thing could be a go if I could just get my hands on the enlarger I needed.

I imagined I might have to wait some time before another suitable enlarger became available locally but even finding a bargain online could quickly turn into an expensive proposition when it came time to pay shipping on something as bulky as a 4x5 enlarger, but my luck took a turn for the better when the owner of the Beseler contacted me to say the other buyer was no longer interested. The next evening I was bringing it home. It now sits in its own space in the (former) office where it could be used as is though I'll probably need to build a proper stand for it. Today I blacked out the window and I'm about three quarters of the way to completing the installation of a solid door. I have a little way to go yet but no sense waiting, there are fresh exposures sitting in film holders even as I write, waiting to be developed.

A Bridge Too Far

This image of the Peace Bridge is a scan from a print on Ilford MG IV RC after both sepia and selenium tonering. The first bath of the sepia process went to work too quickly for my purposes, leading to a stronger than intended effect.

If this image of the Peace Bridge connecting Buffalo NY to Fort Erie Canada made one misty morning this spring looks familiar it may be because it was featured only last week in Simple Alchemy. If it looks different know that its earlier appearance was a scan from the negative whereas this is a scanned from a darkroom print on Ilford MG IV. If it looks really different it's because this print was the subject of some of my first experiments with print toning since the days of my bachelor pad darkroom. Back then it was mostly about using selenium toner, a simple bath finished prints can be put through that gives the silver grains that make up the image a coating of more stable selenium that not only helps to protect the image against the ravages of time, it affects the colour, altering the tone of the silver image with a modest but noticeable purple/blue while deepening the darkest tones giving the image a richer appearance. Selenium toning typically results in a higher D-max, the density of the darkest possible black, than can otherwise be achieved with the same photo paper untoned. While the name toning implies the object is to achieve a colour shift, with selenium toner this sometimes seems almost secondary to the benefits of increased tonal depth and archival permanence.

Since the process of reclaiming my old wet darkroom capabilities began less than a year ago it's been a given that I would resume the practice of selenium toning sooner or later. I imagined that it would coincide roughly with the return to printing on fibre based stock once I was ready to deal with its extra demands, but although that remains in the works I have been inspired recently with the notion of taking print toning a little further. The inspiration comes from numerous photographers I admire whose work often departs noticeably from the modest tonal shifts typical of results seen selenium toner alone. A leading figure the movement, if it can be called such, is the photographer Tim Rudman whose book "The Master Photographer's Toning Book" has managed to become a classic of traditional darkroom work even though it only first appeared in 2002 at the onset of the digital age. Tim is well spoken, an acknowledged authority on toning as well as many other areas of darkroom craft and a highly regarded writer and instructor. I can't imagine that I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone looking to take their print making skills to the next level... if only I could get my hands on it! This book is in such high demand and, being out of print, such short supply that on the used market this slightly over 200 page softcover book has been known command prices in the $1000 neighbourhood. A quick peek on Amazon while writing this showed 3 copies available through various sellers with prices starting at $400. That's more than can be justified for a guy working out of what is little better than a makeshift closet darkroom. Sadly the obvious demand these prices represent has not been enough to convince publishers that another printing is in order. From the account on Tim's web page one can surmise that this clear objective evidence has not been enough to trump the common "knowledge" that film photography is dead and therefore there's no demand for such a book.

For me at least this means trudging on without this authoritative reference, making the best of my existing experience along with whatever I can glean from the internet or the less comprehensive coverage given to the subject in other books. So be it.

 If there is a saving grace in all of this it's that the effect I'm after is a bit more subtle than the typically more dramatic tones that seem to be popular with so many photographers these days. For the majority of my work I'd want to see a definite departure from the usual scale of neutral greys you get with standard papers straight out of the usual develop stop fix process, but nothing that screams out that toning effects were used. I still want my prints to look black and white, but I would like to see a depth enhancing variation of warm to cool going from highlight to shadow that can be achieved with split toning. Because it works by clinging to the molecules of silver in the print, the rich cool purple effect achieved with selenium toner affects the silver rich shadows most, leaving the highlights untouched. While it's a nice effect in general I like my prints to be on the warm side overall, requiring a different toner. The plan is to combine the cool dark tones of selenium with warm browns that come from sepia toner for a split toned effect.

The word sepia evokes notions of those old timey brown toned images from photography's early days and many are those who regard sepia toner's purpose is to render an effect that evokes a sense of those old days. In truth it can be used to achieve a variety of warming effects and here's how. Sepia toning is a two bath process. The first bath is a bleach based on potassium ferricyanide, which sounds worse than it is though you still want to be careful when mixing it not to inhale any of the dry powder that may become airborne. Immersed in this bleach the print will, to the alarm of many first timers, begin to disappear from the paper, starting with the highlights and progressing towards the darker tones as it is left in the bath for longer periods. The image is still there but invisible, like the latent image on an exposed but undeveloped roll of film. Once bleached to the desired degree the print is rinsed thoroughly in running water then placed into a sodium sulfide bath (which is nastier than it sounds - even when mixing it outdoors I got complaints about the rotten egg smell that managed to waft indoors.) Within about 10 seconds the image that had bleached away is redeveloped, taking on the warm sepia tint as it reappears. The effect can thus be controlled by altering how far into the darker tones the image is bleached.

The Photographers Formulary Sepia Toner kit and my
bottle of Kodak Rapid Selenium Toner

I hadn't really played with sepia toner since photography school days. Back then I was using Kodak's sepia toner kit and trying to achieve the strongest effect I could manage. Bleaching down into the shadows seemed to take forever and I remember wishing Kodak had made this solution stronger. I was never really happy with the effect back then, toning to that degree made the print seem dull and the old fashioned look never seemed particularly genuine to me. Until my recent notions of using it in conjunction with selenium toner for split toning I hadn't given sepia much thought since.

In the intervening years Kodak has discontinued their sepia toner but there is a kit available from Photographer's Formulary which I duly ordered. Like many other Formulary kits of this kind the box contained individual packets containing each individual raw chemical ingredient. Unlike in my photo school days however I was going for just a whiff of warmth in the highlights, meaning I only wanted a slight bleaching. The Formulary bleach solution was a deeper yellow than I remembered and I should have taken a clue from this.

The bleaching started almost immediately and by the time it had a chance to even out across the print it had already gone further than I had wanted. For the second print I diluted the bleach 1_1 but it was still much too fast. As I only made a couple of good prints I experimented a bit with the seconds, the ones I had made prior to figuring out how to get the burning and dodging just right, but ran out of those before concluding there was just no way to keep from going too far without diluting even further. In fact I believe it will need to much further, perhaps 10 to 1 or more. It seems keeping a stock solution and diluting for use may be the thing here and obviously more experimentation is needed. That, unfortunately, will have to wait until next time I have a few prints to work with.

Simple Alchemy Supplemental - Beutler's Day Off

While the original article Simple Alchemy was intended as a small expose on the practice of mixing your own darkroom chemistry from raw ingredients a good deal was said about my favourite home-brewed concoction Beutler's developer. From the feedback I have received so far it seems a lot of the interest many of you had in it was about this formula itself. And so, even as the arrival of enough PMK Pyro developer to last me at least a year may see my stock of Beutler put into semi-retirement it seems a good time to add a few things that might be of practical value to anyone inclined to try it for themselves.

Willi Beutler published the formula for his namesake developer during the 1950s in response to the new fine grained, thin emulsion films that were beginning to appear on the market at the time. The idea was to create a reasonably dilute one shot developer that would exhaust in the regions around dense highlight areas while remaining more active in the thinner shadow portions of the negative, creating a compensating effect to counteract these newer film's higher contrast. At the same time the finer grain of these films made it unnecessary to create a solvency effect which reduces the appearance of grain but also has the effect of giving a mushier appearance to fine details. By avoiding this Beutler formulated his developer to favour high definition, or acutance, over reducing grain. As a bonus, by favouring development in the shadows where the telling signs of underexposure appear, while avoiding the density reducing solvency effect of fine-grain developers, the formula makes the most of true film speed, which is to say the natural ideal speed at which to shoot without "pushing".

The plan is just as valid with today's moderate to slow speed black and white films as it was sixty years ago. Beutler is used to maximum advantage with films of 125 ISO and below. This is not to say that its virtues are completely lost on faster films, but you're less likely to need the compensating effect at higher speeds and more likely to miss the grain reducing effect that even middle of the road developers like D76 give you.

While we're on the subject I should say here that it isn't really fair to call Beutler, or any other formula for that matter, a "high grain" developer. Grain is an inherent part of the film and a developer can only mask its appearance, making it less obvious. Developers that have a reputation for yielding grainy results (Rodinal is another one you may hear this about) simply don't incorporate any measures to do this. This isn't oversight, grain reduction typically comes at a price in terms of acutance and film speed. They don't boost the appearance of grain so much as show it to you like it is.

There is one small word of caution in order before we get into details on using Beutler. If you use this or any other developer containing Metol (this includes a host of common film and paper developers including D76 and Dektol) in such a way that your are in prolonged contact with the solution (such as tray developing sheet film) wearing gloves or other protective measures to prevent direct contact with the skin is recommended as develop an adverse skin reaction with prolonged and repeated contact with Metol, also known by its Kodak trade name Elon.

Beutler is prepared as two separate concentrates that are combined and diluted just prior to use, after which the used developer is discarded. Part A contains the sole developing agent Metol, and enough Sodium Sulfite to act as a preservative, In higher concentrations Sodium Sulfite acts as a solvent that can begin to dissolve the metallic silver that make up the image grain which is precisely the strategy employed by nearly all grain reducing developers. I'll also note that it is important not to confuse Sodium Sulfite with Sodium Sulfide, a nastier substance also used in photo chemistry. Part B contains Sodium Carbonate to create the alkali environment needed by every photographic developer I've ever heard of. The alkali causes the developer to oxidize much more rapidly once combined so keeping the two parts separate until just prior to use increases the shelf life dramatically. You may find Sodium Carbonate at the local supermarket, sold under its common name Washing Soda. There are plenty of photographers use supermarket Washing Soda when mixing up their developers, just be careful not to get the scented stuff. The final chemical used in both parts is water. (I wish it weren't the case that so many people are surprised to hear water referred to as a chemical, which it most certainly is.) Water quality can vary greatly depending on where you live, and hard water is always bad news in photo chemistry, so if in doubt distilled water is always a good choice and usually very cheap.

That said, here is the recipe for Beutler:

Solution A:
750ml Water (40-50^oC)
10g Metol
50g Sodium Sulfite
Cold water to make 1L

Solution B:
750ml Water (40-50^oC)
50g Sodium Carbonate (anhydrous)
Cold water to make 1L

Notes on preparation:

• To make different quantities adjust all quantities in proportion equally
• If using the monohydrate form of Sodium Carbonate multiply the quantity by 1.17
• To prevent Sodium Carbonate from clumping into hard to dissolve crystals stir while adding it to water and do so gradually in a steady stream.

Usage

You may prepare any quantity of Beutler needed by combining and diluting the parts in any of the following proportions:

"Official" dilution: 1 part Solⁿ A + 1 part Solⁿ B + 8 parts water
Popular dilution: 1 part Solⁿ A + 1 part Solⁿ B + 10 parts water
The dilution I use: 1 part Solⁿ A + 1 part Solⁿ B + 12 parts water

The official dilution is what was recommended when the formula was first published though the popular dilution seems to be what is more commonly used these days. If you look up recommendations for using Beutler with your film on The Massive Dev Chart or elsewhere you may find recommendations for either or both of these dilutions. Do not use time/temperature recommendations for Neofin Blue assuming it's the same thing. While The Photographer's Formulary sells Beutler under the alternate name Neofin Blue, Neofin Blue proper is actually a completely different formula sold by Tetenal and the Massive Dev Chart's listings are for this product, Beutler is listed separately. I began using the higher 1+1+12 dilution because it's my completely arbitrary opinion that a compensating developer needs a good ten minutes in contact with the film to work properly and lesser dilutions weren't giving this to me with my favourite film. This works fine, makes it even cheaper to use and divides nice and evenly into the 420ml of solution I need for a 120 film in my stainless tanks. One of the rare online flame-wars I have seen break out in film photography forums has been over which dilution of Beutler's is "proper". Proper is why you rent a tux to go to a black-tie event. Use what works and makes sense to you.

As Beutler is hardly the best known developer out there finding recommendations for developing the film you use in it may be difficult, especially if the film is also less common. if The Massive Dev Chart doesn't have what you need, a web search may turn up something you use, otherwise a little experimentation may be needed. If you have no clue try 8 minutes if using the official dilution, 10 minutes for the popular dilution and 12 minutes for my dilution.

Lastly here are links to a few North American suppliers from whom you can order the raw chemical ingredients needed to make Beutler and any number of other photo chemical formulations. If you live elsewhere and know of a good supplier in your part of the world I'd welcome you to post references that others may find useful in the comments.

The Photographers Formulary - As the name implies the Formulary is built on supplying the photographic specialty market. They carry a comprehensive list of raw chemical ingredients as well as prepared developers, fixers and other concoctions today's analog photographers are likely to need or want.

Bostick & Sullivan - Known primarily as suppliers to those involved in alternative photographic processes such as Platinum/Palladium printing, they do carry the substances we lowly Silver using types need as well, including all you need to make Beutler (save for the water.)

Artcraft Chemicals - An extensive list of raw ingredients, some harder to find. Reputedly they will ship items to Canada and elsewhere that other suppliers will restrict to customers in the Lower 48, but shipping for any non-US order must be arranged by contacting them directly

B&H Photo - This photo big-box store carries a respectable inventory of photo chemistry, both raw and prepared, from several brands like Kodak and Photographer's Formulary. A good choice if you need one or two ingredients and want to combine it with your order for film and other supplies at the same time to save shipping.

Simple Alchemy

My working supply of Beutler film developer, along with some of the supplies I use to mix it up. I made up the commercialesque labels for fun, printed them out and stuck them on with clear packing tape. 

One of the things that may have received passing mention in previous episodes is that I mix many of my own darkroom chemistry from scratch using raw ingredients. It's a practice I thought not all of you may be familiar with, but even you are it seems a ripe subject to share and perhaps exchange a few thoughts about.

While most of the chemistry used in the darkroom lends itself to the home-brew approach, the majority of attention falls quite naturally on developers for film. While arguably print developers and toners have a greater influence on the look of the final result, you only get one shot at developing the original image on film and the characteristics imparted by the particular concoction you chose for this are indelible. This is of course just as true for commercially available formulae as it is for the DIY variety I'm focusing on here, but mixing your own offers a level of selection and control you can't get by simply choosing from what the market has to offer, not to mention the incomparable amount of latitude it allows for experimentation.

I can't remember what triggered my interest in the alchemy of photochemistry in my younger days, but once I got my hands on a copy of Steve Anchell's "The Darkroom Cookbook" there was no going back. Prior to that my attitude had always been that any developer formula that was offered commercially must have earned that honour by being better than the other possibilities. In reality there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of possible good recipes for making photographic developers in a market that can only profitably produce a fraction of these. The ones that are most commercially viable are often the good compromises, the ones offering a balance of the characteristics most often pegged as desirable - the ability to produce images with fine grain, high sharpness, and maximize the effective film speed. Often excellent and highly useful developers exist on the margins of the photographic market because they are the proprietary formula of a lesser known manufacturer. Anyone who is familiar with Diafine will know what I'm talking about here. Other factors unrelated to desirable image characteristics also come into play - how well does a formula lend itself to the manufacturing process, what are its keeping characteristics on the shelf and so on. The bottom line is that there is a world of photochemistry, interesting worth-while and infinitely explorable photochemistry, lying in wait outside the confines of what is on offer from Kodak, Ilford and their rivals.

Recent results using my current standard combination of Fuji Acros developed in Beutler

So why bother? Fair question. I won't deny for a second that there are prepared commercial film developers out there that are just excellent. I could pick just one of these, say Xtol or HC110, and go on with my photography as before quite contentedly. A few years back when I returned to my analog roots that's exactly what I intended to do. The bottle of HC110 that had seen me through the roll of film I still shot here and there through my digital years was only half used and still going strong after at least fifteen years since I purchased it, and the results left me nothing to complain about really. Why make things complicated.

Such was the enthusiasm with which I returned to film however that it was only a few months before the second half of the bottle began to run dry, bringing to a head the decision as to whether to renew my supply of HC110 and press on as before, or whether some other choice might be more suitable. I found that when it comes to the characteristics I considered most desirable in a developer my thinking had changed over the years. Back then fine grain had been high on the list but grain isn't the enemy it once was. Not that I've gone the other way mind you, I don't intentionally emphasize grain, I just don't consider it a defect. Looking at the kind of work I had been doing I was after a high definition (or acutance) developer with a compensating effect so there would be printable detail in highlight areas (like clouds).

A bit of research allowed me to narrow the field to a few choices. One idea was to go with one of the pyro developers I had experimented with many years ago. This would mean throwing simplicity right out the window however as not only do the potential health hazards of working with pyro require extra precautions, they make it difficult to obtain from the US based suppliers who are often unwilling to ship to Canada, at least at a reasonable rate. There was another intriguing choice I found however, something called Beutler's formula. Though Photographer's Formulary sells this as Neofin Blue (perpetuating an historical error of equating Beutler's formula with another developer formula entirely, but that's a story unto itself), but it's such a simple formula and so much cheaper to whip up myself.

Beutler's formula (aka Beutler's developer or simply Beutler, and often mis-spelled as Buetler) is really just a published recipe. It consists of four ingredients including water (I have no idea where this notion came from that water doesn't count as a chemical.) The other three are Metol, one of the most common developer agents out there, Sodium Sulfite which is cheap and used in just about everything in photochemistry, and Sodium Carbonate which if it isn't sold in the local supermarket as washing soda can easily be made from baking soda. It's a high acutance compensating developer with characteristics I see compared to they pyro developers more often than any other formula that uses conventional agents. It's a one-shot developer, a virtual must for me both for consistency and the simplicity of not having to keep track to know when it's nearing exhaustion. It's prepared in two concentrated parts which are combined and diluted just prior to use, all of which helps ensure maximum shelf life. As a bonus Beutler makes the most of true film speed (which should in no way be confused with pushing film.) So while many photographers find they get better results by shooting a 100 ISO film at 50 when they use a standard developer like D76, they would probably find this unnecessary with Beutler.

To keep a long story from getting even longer, with the last of the old HC110 used up I found myself back in the game of mixing up photochemistry from raw ingredients. This did more than just allow me to use one particular non-commercial formula however. Having those few ingredients and the little electronic scale came in handy in other ways. When I found a few bottles of powdered Vitamin C on clearance at my pharmacists I was easily able to try Caffenol which, I hasten to mention, is interesting for far more than the simple novelty of developing film in instant coffee. And when I found myself wanting to do a few darkroom prints but didn't have any paper developer on hand I was able to make enough to get me using ingredients that were on hand. And there are other benefits to brewing your own photochemicals as well:

• Manufacturers are free to alter the recipe of their developers and other photochemical products without any change to the name or other indicator to let you know the developer you bought today is not the same as the one you had been using even though it was sold under the same name in the same package. Make your own and you'll never be surprised when what had been a favorite developer suddenly isn't the same.
• From a modest inventory of raw chemicals you can often experiment with many different formulae that seem interesting to you.
• You get a better understanding of the characteristics of the chemistry you use, how they're derived and often what tradeoffs may be involved than you ever would by simply choosing from whatever preparations the market offers.
• You can play with the recipes of an existing formula or even come up with your own to suit your needs, even if the need is just curiosity.
• Since you are the manufacturer you are immune from the possibility that a favourite developer will be discontinued.
• It can be a stepping stone into other interesting areas of photography such as alternative processes.

This certainly won't be for everyone, and none of this is to say I am committed solely to the use of home-brewed photochemicals. Even back when I was experimenting with home brewed pyro concoctions for film, my paper developer and most other chemicals were off the shelf preparations and there was always HC110 on hand. More recently the modest supply of Pycrocat HD I got my hands on when I wrote The Road to Pyro last fall came as a kit from Photographer's Formulary. I was able to get it without extravagant shipping charges because B&H had it in stock (if only other US suppliers made shipping to Canada as simple) though in such a small quantity it was hardly the bargain getting the raw chemistry would be. Because pyro fomulae like Pyrocat and PMK are highly diluted for use I could get a near lifetime supply or the raw chemicals for a few hundred dollars shipped, but when my small supply ran out I wasn't ready to pull the trigger on that. Not a problem, another batch of Beutler kept me in business without any interruption. More recently I discovered B&H has larger quantities of prepared PMK Pyro in stock, and again no special shipping restrictions to Canada. The package arrived yesterday. I don't know if it will become my new favourite developer or if it will continue to be as readily available. If not, there's always Beutler, and there always will be.