I will start with something about Foma Fomapan Retro 200 Black & White that I said in a blog post about another film. What is that you say? Lower price and acceptable results? Yes, please. As a part of my Father’s Day/Birthday film haul I picked up a roll. Developed at home with Cinestll df96. For a …
5 Frames with Foma Fomapan Retro 200 Black and White, Pentax 645N and FA 75mm f/2.8 Read More
The email from the lab came in two days before my long-planned holiday:
“We are contacting you to let you know that your film has been processed, but unfortunately it has come out blank. We’ve inspected your negatives and it seems that the film was not loaded properly in the camera, or there may be some issues with your camera which may need investigating!” ^
“Issues with your camera which may need investigating” – that is a stressful thought just before you go away for a break when you’re hoping to get some good images with the camera. With no time to take the camera to a technician and wait for an investigation and repair, I didn’t have many options. The only answer, as far as I could see, was to work out the answer myself. Since I’m not a technician, all I could do was load up a roll of black and white film which I could develop at home, and then shoot and develop it to check for problems. In no more than 48 hours.
One of my more recent projects in the darkroom has been to explore further options on how to process my black and white film. I would in the past just follow the normal method of a 30 second agitation and then 4 inversions of the developing tank every minute. This over the normal timing of somewhere between 8 to 16 seconds depending on film and ISO rating.
A couple of years ago I treated myself to a very tidy Yashicamat that was made in May 1965. I wrote about the camera here. I discovered recently that the shutter speeds had become faulty, finally succumbing to age (57 years) and making the camera unusable. Fortunately Newton Ellis & Co in Liverpool will service TLR’s. They get a full strip down and repair.
A few weeks ago, I was in Paris enjoying a long week end under a very sunny sky. So I decided to load a roll of Fomapan 200 in this new camera that I just got: a near mint Yashica AW-Mini. I wanted to test this impressively featured kind of cheap version of the T3 that I own already and love so much. So here we go! 5 pics with Fomapan 200 in a Yashica AW-Mini point and shoot camera.
