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The photographic blog of Sean Wood (aka motionid)

Enoshima, Pan F and Diafine

Click the image to start the slideshow (2 slides)

On my little adventure to Enoshima last weekend at 4am, not only did I manage to get sick but I tried a Film / Developer combination I hadn't seen before.

I've used Ilford Pan F on occasion and, while expensive, have liked the results I've gotten so far. My trip to Enoshima was finally a chance to shoot something at ISO100 (developing with Diafine pushes it a stop to 100) so I thought I'd try it developed in Diafine.

Well, as you can see by the results, it's pretty damn dark. But, looking at the shot of the old man (second slide), I couldn't have really exposed it more or the shirt would have been blown. The background at the time was not at all dark and the day was overcast so there were no shadows so in theory more of the background should be visible.

If you are going to use this combination, make sure you don't have any dark area's in your shot or you're likely to get blacks.

Getting the temperature right

the-poll-red-filter1.jpg

So there I was, packs of ice in hand, Rodinal at the ready and the cold water running at 24c. hmm. I figured I had this problem solved by putting my container of rodinal into a container of ice water to drop the temp. Seems that I was a little off with that theory. Next I tired putting the ice into the water the rodial was to go in. Not sure which batch came out better but I definately got a few dodgy negs out of it. Moral of the story...be super careful in summer when developing and always have ice on hand. The image above might be a bit small but the shot starts to break up in the dark tones towards the top. Bummer.