Jingmin Photography and IT Consulting
Fine Art Landscape Photography, Family & Children Photography, Event Photography, IT Consulting
Thanks to the accurate prediction of Sunrise-Sunset Forecasts Photographic Service by ccnbbc@WeChat, we captured this dramatic scene in Yosemite valley in the morning of November 6, 2021.
As a pre-caution to avoid Covid-19 exposure, we did not go to the now-always-crowded Tunnel View. Moreover, we always feel that Tunnel View does not provide a balanced composition for El Capitan and Half Dome since these two iconic landscape features are separated too far away from each other. In this view, these two giant rocks are much closer. One drawback of this composition is that Bridalveil Fall is blocked by the mountain on the right side of the composition. However, since it was the dry season, Bridalveil Fall was short of water anyway.
National Park Service was conducting controlled fire to reduce the amount of dry plants on the valley floor, a major source of fuel to wild fires across California during the past years. The fire created a thin layer of slightly blueish smoke near the entrance of the valley, adding to the atmosphere that photographers can only dream to have.
Almost a decade ago, we travelled to China to visit our relatives. On that trip, we carried a Hasselblad Xpan camera and several rolls of color slide films. After coming back to the States, we stored the exposed films into the freezer, waiting for an appropriate moment to develop them. The waiting turned out to be near ten years long. Finally, thanks to www.needfilmdeveloped.com, we got these rolls of color slide films developed at an affordable cost. It brought back joys to us with the precious memory of that trip! And the color rendition of Fujifilm Provia 100F film is simply stunning.
We carried our new toy, the Intrepid 4×5 large format camera to Yosemite in the past weekend. With this modern day remake of the old technology, every step of photography leaped back like good old school days.
There’s no WYSIWYG viewfinder but a half-transparent ground glass on the back of the camera — we had to wrap it with a silly black cloth in order to see the scene.
There’s no auto-focus but a nob at the bottom of the camera and a magnifying glass — we turned the nob and peeked through the magnifier on the ground glass to make our best guess of the focus.
There’s no metering system on the camera — we had to hand hold a light meter to measure the exposure readings of different areas of the scene and make our best judgment of the appropriate exposure.
There’s no memory card to store the images — we need to mount a pre-loaded film holder to the back of the camera in order to take one single picture. Taking a second picture requires a new film holder.
There’s no room for errors — we had to adjust the focus, the aperture, the shutter speed on the camera, check and re-check every setting, test fire before taking the actual picture. And there’s always a haunting thought afterwards about forgetting to set everything correct.
With every press of the cable release, a half cup of Starbucks coffee was gone. Thank goodness, we only “drank” one full cup of coffee that morning.
The result is hardly satisfactory. Nevertheless it was a fun experience.
Recently I’ve developed a few rolls of Arista Premium 400 (rebranded Tri-X) that I shot in 2016 and put away on shelf without freezing. The expiration date of the films is 2013 — they had always been frozen before I shot them.
I tried normal development for several rolls and pull development two rolls (just curious) in the past week but the results were just “boring” (a.k.a. normal). So yesterday I decided to experiment stand development with HC-110.
It has been well established that one roll of 36 exp 35mm film requires minimal 3ml HC-110 syrup for one shot development. Typically, I used dilution H and made 480ml developer solution from 7.5ml syrup. This solution allowed me to develop two rolls of 36 exp 35mm film in a 500ml stainless steel tank. It had worked very well in the past.
Call me cheap, I have always been wondering whether it is possible to use even less syrup, which would cut my negligible cost on the developer even further! I know many of you probably are already rolling your eyes at me. That’s OK. Heck, even if it fails, it’s just a small lesson of don’t be cheap!
The true reason to use even less syrup is to make further dilution and still fit into the 500ml stainless steel tank. So after researching a lot online with no conclusive result, I decided to conduct an experiment.
I diluted 5ml syrup into 500ml developer AND soaked two rolls of 36 exp 35mm films. The temperature at the beginning of the development was 70F. After initial agitation of 30 seconds, I put the tank in the refrigerator for 40 minutes. At 20 minutes mark, I gently agitated the tank twice.
The result floors me! The contrast, the well-controlled highlight, the deep shadow, and the grain are among the best I’ve ever got out of Tri-X. The pictures really shine in front of the other rolls developed last week. The only flaw that I can see is some small highlight at the edge of some pictures, which looks like a bit light leak. I got this similar issue a few years ago when I tried stand development with Rodinal. It is due to inadequate agitation. Agitating the development tank for one minute at the beginning of the development process largely eliminated this problem.
At this moment, it is hard to say whether it’s because the subjects of these two rolls were well thought through to make the pictures stand out, or the development method is the magic bullet. But I will definitely try this method again — still have several rolls of Agfa APX 100 and Plus-X to go!
