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. 

Old Film

There was a time when it was considered just a general shame if film went past it expiry date. It could still be used of course, but you normally wouldn't take chances by using it for the good family shots during the holidays or on a once in a lifetime vacation. These days there are those who consider a well aged film the photographic equivalent of a well aged wine. I think I can safely assume it hasn't escaped your notice that taking photos that have some sort of vintage look to them is quite a thing these days. There are countless apps and software plug-ins out there made to turn the clean output from DSLRs or the ubiquitous smartphone cameras and transform them into something that, at least on the display screen will look like anything from an 1870s tintype to a 1970s Land camera, complete with simulated peel marks like you get around the edges of pack-film photos.

There are those for whom nothing but the real-deal will do, and while getting the vintage look is hardly a hard-core pursuit of mine that's certainly something that resonates with my way of thinking. Shy of turning to something like a historic wet-plate process (though for the hard-core this has grown into quite a phenomenon itself) the general wisdom out there states that the best way to get this look is to use expired film, a vintage camera, or ideally both together.

Now I own a vintage camera in the Iskra, but as unmistakably vintage as it looks, the vintage look it imparts on images is at best subtle, though I'm sure something like an old box camera would do it. Likewise many a time have I used expired black and white film, some of it decades beyond its best before date, and have found that however fogged and curled the negatives may look, once all is adjusted for in the printing or scanning process there's nothing particularly nostalgia inducing about the final result.

My recent dabblings in home C-41 processing made this the perfect time to finally try something else however. There had been a roll of 120 Kodak Vericolor 160 floating around my freezer since I can't remember when. I last shot Vericolor about eight year ago just before selling the Mamiya 645 system but I'm not sure if this was from that same batch. I don't think it was though and if not it's probably even older. Whatever the case it was separated from its box, and thereby the expiry date, long ago. There is absolutely no doubt however that this roll went beyond its "process before" date long ago.

The question was whether the images shot on this roll would naturally take on any sort of nostalgia inducing look ago all on their own. I have never made a science of understanding what characteristics of an image lend themselves to this. One that I point to happens when the deepest blacks in the photo appear no darker than a light charcoal grey though there is not the loss of shadow detail that would suggest this is due to underexposure. This, or any of the other things that might happen with expired film such as colour shifts or lack of contrast, were entirely within my control. I don't have and have no intention of acquiring the capacity to do traditional colour prints so all of these things should be adjusted for as they are scanned in.

Once processed and dried the negatives did have the expected slightly olive cast to them compared to the Portra negatives I developed the week before, the kind of thing I figured would get corrected out more or less automatically with the usual exposure and colour balance tweaks during scanning. This had worked with the Portra after all without any effort to characterize the film first. I had no intention of treating these negatives any differently.

And yet they were different. To me it there's a nostalgic sense about it, like I'm looking at an image that was taken decades ago. At first blush I'd say it may be the colour saturation is lower than what I'm used to, yet the impression doesn't change when the saturation slider is moved up until the colours start looking unmistakably clownish. It must have something to do with colour though because when I view it as a black and white that vintage feel pretty much disappears, at least to my eye. There does seem to be an earthy quality to the colour rendition that, despite the obviously autumn pallet in the scene. The first shot at the top makes it even harder to say. It's moody, monochromatic and due to the extremes in contrast inherent in the scene the foreground was underexposed to retain detail in as much of the sky as possible near where the sun is trying to burst through. I can't say what this would look like if it were shot on fresher stock. Still, if I hadn't taken it myself and somebody told me it was taken in 1979 I'd see no reason to question that.

Now I know Vericolor enough to say it didn't come out of the factory like this. My wedding photos were shot on it and they haven't (I'm happy to report) taken on a vintage feel, at least not yet. I still have prints I shot on Vericolor in the late 80's or early 90's and they don't strike me as looking vintage. And yes I have to keep in mind that these are scans and I'd dearly love to see what the prints would look like if there was still a lab I could take them to that I know would print them optically, but I somehow doubt the conclusion would be any different. It does seem though that you can get to the vintage stage faster by aging unexposed film stock than aging prints shot when the film was fresh.

I'm sure there are people who have put in a lot of time and effort into figuring out exactly what ways and to what degree a clean fresh image needs to be changed to match the look of a shot that (depending on your age) your parents or grandparents might have taken when they were dating. Luckily we have a short cut available to us, and the results are sure to be far more authentic.

Vintage Bonanza

I've mentioned a time or two that the one gaping hole in my partially functional darkroom has been an enlarger I lacked. Online auctions may be great for cameras and lenses and such, but shipping charges alone would exceed the budget I could allow for an enlarger no matter what sort of bargain I might be able to find. A search through the local online classifieds turned up slim pickings, usually a lot here and there of unspecified darkroom "stuff" that might include a rickety entry-level 35mm enlarger, but I figured if I waited long enough something would eventually turn up. A few days ago it did. 

The ad seemed much like all the others, just a complete darkroom setup, no photos, no list, contact for details. I don't even know what prompted me to inquire, but the next day the news from the seller arrived in my inbox that the lot included a Durst M601 enlarger, a model that would afford the near perfect balance between capability (it won't quite handle the full 6x7 frame of my RB, but heck, I usually crop square anyway) and size in the teeny darkroom space I have. That was all I needed to know. Apparently some other stuff was included too.

My primary target, The Durst M601, in its new still very unfinished home.  

The lot had been kept in a blue storage trunk (included) of sufficient size to contain a medium sized adult provided they were willing to endure physical discomforts exceeding those experienced by coach passengers. Inside was the enlarger which was in fine condition excepting for a portion of the gear teeth on column rail which create a dead spot at a certain height when cranking the head up and down. It included a 50mm and a 75mm Schneider lens which I'd say is at the high end of reasonable expectations. Then there was the expected - the obligatory trio of 8x10 developing trays, safe-light (though there were two of these), film tanks (though there were three of these), printing easel and a packet of D-76 powder. 

Then a few unexpected items began to emerge. First was the print dryer, not the most common darkroom item to be found but a sweet bonus for any printer who, like me, loves the look of a print on premium fiber based paper but the tendency to curl up into a cylinder not so much. 

Even before the digital age I wonder how many photographers would have known what this thing even is.

Then the film started to appear. At first it was the four bright yellow boxes, rolls of Kodak Plus X, a film that perhaps I didn't show enough appreciation for before it was discontinued a few years ago and had been hoping for one last chance to use. These rolls were hardly end of the line though; the freshest of the four had expired int 1982. This was followed by a larger yellow box, a 100ft bulk roll of the same stuff (develop by 09/79), a round metal tin bearing the old Ilford sunburst logo containing 100ft of FP4. (FP4 Plus is one of the films I use today, but this stuff is the nonplussed version.) Finally there was an even larger round metal tin of the sort that looks like it contains a movie reel. (And I suspect it well might, we'll find out when we get it open in the dark.) This contains 1000' of Ilford Mark V, a cinematic film I've never heard of. It's 35mm like all the rest of it though, we'll just have to experiment a bit to figure out how to use it to best advantage. All told then that's 1200 feet of film not including the bit that's in one of the bulk film loaders. (Did I mention there were also two bulk film loaders? Sorry. There were also two bulk film loaders.) That's over 1/3 of a kilometre of 35mm film. If it's any good after all those decades my Nikons just might feel loved again. 

Large format isn't totally neglected though. There was also a box, apparently of similar vintage, of FP4 in 4-3/4" x 6-1/2" sheets, so now I just need to pick up a few 4-3/4" x 6-1/2" film holders and I'm off to the races. They carry those at Walmart I think.

Just the perfect size to fall right out of a 5x7 film holder.

Along the way there had been paper. Ilfobrom paper, Panalure F paper, Kentmere paper, pretty much all of it 8x10. Down at the bottom though, the very bottom there was a garbage bag of something resting in what turned out to be three 16.x20 trays nested togther. In the garbage bag was of course 16x20 paper. 

This isn't even all of it. The question is what am I going to do with it? How am I supposed to print on this stuff? My darkroom is a glorified closet.