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Mother's day was coming up and my daughter Ella has been working on a farm at University of California Davis. Ella has been bringing home some wonderful bouquets - and once again she brought home a gorgeous arrangement for her mom. Bouquet of flowers as seen through the cell phone camera Since getting a couple of reels from 20th Century Camera,  I've been itching to shoot more 8x10 and 5x7 film. They have a reel that fits four 8x10 films that fits in my exiting JOBO drum . Since testing on a Unidrum roller, it looks like this reel is real good (punny?!) Closeup of the 3d printed reel from 20th Century Camera My grandfather "Hal" (Milton or M Halberstadt) gave me an (even back then old) Burke & James 8x10 camera, and I broke that out along with a 12" Kodak Commercial Ektar to take one shot of the bouquet.  The camera setup for the shot in our dining room The exposure was 8 seconds wide open (f6.3) on Ilford FP4 Plus (outdated by a couple decades. The B and T

During the Covid Crisis, I'm bunkered down at home unable to use the college lab I manage. So I've been developing film in my films in the laundry room again with my trusty old JOBO tanks. School was wrapping up and a student found a holder with film in them and I offered to process. I can process 12 sheets at a time with my Jobo and I'm lazy, so I try to fill it and use semi-stand. So I took her two  sheets and found a few of mine to process and made a few to at least get close to the capacity of the tank. Also, recently I "repaired" my old Sakai (Toyo) half plate camera that was converted to 4x5. My high school teacher, Vince Bernucci at Independence High School was kind enough to give this to me in the mid 1980's. At some point the ground glass got broken and recently it occurred to me that I had a transplantable one I could replace it with. The bellows was also all squished up, and I sort of managed to partially straighten that out. Unlike some of my camer

If you use an old film camera you may have noticed there's a dial with the abbreviations ASA and right next to it DIN. You likely have already figured out to use ASA where your film says ISO. ISO and ASA are interchangeable. From prehistoric times (ok, since the middle of the 20th century) to the late 1980's ASA was what much of the world used as measure of film sensitivity. The abbreviation stood for American Standards Association. At the same time, the German version of the organization that measured film sensitivity was abbreviated DIN or Deutsches Institut für Normung meaning German institute for Standards. Germany was and to some degree still is an influential player in photographic innovation and manufacture.  DIN wasn't a linear measure. Doubling of sensitivity was shown by adding 3 to the number. For example 21 DIN (=100 ASA/ISO) and 24 DIN (=200 ASA/ISO.) DIN and ASA ISO are equal at 12. So: ISO 12 = DIN 12  ISO 25 = DIN 15 ISO 50 = DIN 18 ISO 10

There are two competing variables in making a properly exposed negative (actually three I guess if you count film speed.) But if you're just getting started with film photography you may have heard of reciprocity as it pertains to exposure. By the way reciprocity should not be mistaken for a shortening of reciprocity failure as I often hear people mis-speak. Reciprocity is the relationship between the length of time of an exposure and the light coming in through the lens controlled by the aperture. In theory, (and usually in practice) doubling the time of an exposure and halfing the light coming in will result the exact same density negative or transparency. For example, if you meter (or using the " Sunny 16" rule ) an exposure as say f16 at 1/125th , your negs would be exposed* exactly the same as if you used: f32 @ 1/30th f22 @ 1/60th f16 @ 1/125th f11 @ 1/250th f8 @ 1/500th f5.6 @ 1/1000th Note I said exposed exactly the same , not look exactly the

When I first started photographing, as a teenager in the early 1980's literally everybody used a film camera. All sorts of films, color and black and white could be purchased from convenience stores, drug stores, supermarkets, by mail order, or most likely at one of the ubiquitous One Hour Photo shops. You could get Disc film , 110 , 127 , 120 , 220 , and sheet film locally in San Jose where I grew up, as well as in most any city of a certain size. For those of you just getting in to photography, you might find the notion of metering light for exposure difficult. Your iPhone's camera not only do a great job of metering and exposing, but you also have the advantage of being able to instantly see the results and correct if needed. But in the century plus of history where film was king, there were a lot of tricks folks came up with to make exposure easy. Back in the 1980's there would typically be a small sheet of paper folded up in the film box with a bunch of information

The use of Rodinal is most common with Semistand Development. I've been playing with Semistand development on and off for a while with the more common Rodinol. Yesterday I gave HC110 a try. And I liked it. Dilution: (from syrup): 1:120 Temperature: unmeasured Prewash: time unrecorded (maybe 5 minutes) Time: 40 minutes Inversion: first 30 seconds or so, then one more time roughly 20 minutes (half way) into development Equipment used: My old trusty JOBO 4x5 drum, Kodak HC-110 (duh!), Lauder fix, lots of water Film(s): these show only Fomapan (Arista.edu) 4x5 samples, but the exact same shots were done with outdated Agfapan 100, Kodak Plus-X Pan, and Tri-X professional (320) Camera: Toyo (Omega) 45d with Fuji Fujinon 250mm f6.3 and Caltar IIn (Rodenstock Sironar N) 150mm f5.6 Scanner: Epson V700 All in all, I was quite happy with the results. Density of negatives was pretty good. I actually shot two of each motif on four different types of films and processed t