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I've used a few feet of the Ferrania B&W negative film I bought last month, but only on short experiments to try to work out the ASA and the best developer to use etc, but this is the first attempt with a "full" 25 feet of film in the charger. I shot it in my Pathe B camera in Stamford, Lincolnshire in the low, afternoon sunshine last week. The camera worked fine, I was pleased with the shots, and was hoping for great things, but it all wrong in the developing stage.
I've been experimenting with Rodinal but it produces a very grainy negative. It's supposed to be much better if you dilute it 1:100 and use Stand or Semi-Stand development. I don't have one of those Lomo spiral film holders, so I bucket develop. This has worked well with Caffenol and Kodachrome 16mm film but it didn't go at all well with the 9.5mm. There is still an unacceptable level of grain, and the 1 hour semi-stand developing process (agitation for first 30s, then gentle moving around of the film at 2 mins, 4 mins and 30mins) led to a lack of contrast and a lot of uneven development.
Add to that the suboptimal telecine process (advance each frame by hand with a piece of wire) and you get something that isn't very good at all.
I wasn't going to post it at all but having spent so much time on it, I have to do something with it! Also it may help others trying trying to do something similar, and someone might have advice on how to improve the developing process.
On the positive side, I learned a lot doing it, and at least it's a benchmark for future improvement. And it's not all bad. I like the section where the camera is moved across the entrance to a narrow walled walkway to a church. And at least it's short! Just under a minute.
Here are a few of the individual frames, showing the quality of the film, before compression (see Edit below)
EDIT: Sadly putting it on youtube has degraded the film even further. The compression has removed a lot of the grain but replaced it with a lower quality low resolution look. Perhaps it improves over time as it's processed on youtube, or maybe it's my laptop which can't show it properly.
EDIT 2: Interestingly, it's much sharper on my screen if I click on the youtube icon to open in within youtube itself rather than view it embedded here. If anyone wants to try this for themselves to test it out , here's the link to open it in a new window
https://youtu.be/oeoqKlx44JA
Thanks.
I've been experimenting with Rodinal but it produces a very grainy negative. It's supposed to be much better if you dilute it 1:100 and use Stand or Semi-Stand development. I don't have one of those Lomo spiral film holders, so I bucket develop. This has worked well with Caffenol and Kodachrome 16mm film but it didn't go at all well with the 9.5mm. There is still an unacceptable level of grain, and the 1 hour semi-stand developing process (agitation for first 30s, then gentle moving around of the film at 2 mins, 4 mins and 30mins) led to a lack of contrast and a lot of uneven development.
Add to that the suboptimal telecine process (advance each frame by hand with a piece of wire) and you get something that isn't very good at all.
I wasn't going to post it at all but having spent so much time on it, I have to do something with it! Also it may help others trying trying to do something similar, and someone might have advice on how to improve the developing process.
On the positive side, I learned a lot doing it, and at least it's a benchmark for future improvement. And it's not all bad. I like the section where the camera is moved across the entrance to a narrow walled walkway to a church. And at least it's short! Just under a minute.
Here are a few of the individual frames, showing the quality of the film, before compression (see Edit below)
EDIT: Sadly putting it on youtube has degraded the film even further. The compression has removed a lot of the grain but replaced it with a lower quality low resolution look. Perhaps it improves over time as it's processed on youtube, or maybe it's my laptop which can't show it properly.
EDIT 2: Interestingly, it's much sharper on my screen if I click on the youtube icon to open in within youtube itself rather than view it embedded here. If anyone wants to try this for themselves to test it out , here's the link to open it in a new window
https://youtu.be/oeoqKlx44JA
Thanks.
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