This roll of bulk rolled Fomapan 100 started its life as a wannabe participant to Jason Avery’s last August #Camerachallenge on Twitter. Each day had a theme, and at the end of the roll you were expected to have 31 themed shots and the extra frames were bonus ones to e.g. try again some of the themes if needed.
Unfortunately for this challenge, things turned awry early. After 4 or 5 frames, I noticed that I had forgotten to set the meter of the camera (a Canonet QL17 GIII) from its previous 400 iso setting down to 100 iso. Nevermind, I told myself, I would develop it as a single roll... I had also started a new job a few weeks before, and it left me without much time for shooting, and not always in the right frame of mind when I had some free time. In the end, I barely managed to finish the roll before the deadline, in a frenzy to shoot the last 10 or 15 frames on the last Sunday afternoon. It was September, and with people coming back from vacation (i.e. not me) and the job becoming busier, I never managed to get motivated to heat up some chemistry and develop the roll in time for posting it in September.
The roll ended up with its undeveloped kin in film limbo for months, and once scanned, the pictures stayed almost forgotten on my hard drive after only a perfunctory glance at them. The challenge was far away in the past, and what might have been interesting in context was not looking so good after the fact. It could have stayed that way for ages to come, if not for Hamish asking on Twitter what people thought about a “36 frames” article proposal he had just received. That reminded me of this here roll.
As Jeremy said in the first article, nobody usually shows a full roll, warts and all. I don’t think I post more than 4 or 5 frames out of a 36 exposures roll, when I’m lucky. Nevertheless, this one had been shot precisely with the idea to show at least 31 frames from it, whatever the results. Thank you Hamish for giving it a chance to be shown at last, as intended.
This roll was developed (Rodinal 1+25 for 6 or 8mn) and scanned by me (Canoscan 9000F mk1). Most post-processing performed in LR was for straightening-cropping and dust removal, but attempts were also made to make badly exposed frames slightly more palatable.
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I remember that #camerachallenge. We were decorating at the time and I was working full time. Time truly was a challenge for me as well . However I did complete it using my Olympus 35rc and a roll of Portra 160. I might even put that one forward for full frame Friday if Hamish will allow two similar posts!!
Sounds good to me ????????
I’m looking forward to see your take on the theme(s)
Thanks for sharing AC, I love Fomapan film, and your post has reminded me why. I usually shoot the 400 variant, but these results are so clean (even though its been pushed two stops) that I might buy 100 speed next time to give it another go.
I buy a lot of Fomapan 100 as it’s very cheap (100 feet bulk roll in 35m, 120 and 4×5), even if QC is not excellent. For 400 I prefer to spend a bit more and get HP5+ or Rollei RPX400.