Charlotte Makes Photos

Usually I think it’s me.

…and it often enough is.

That’s the nature of the explorer’s spirit in film development: I’m not always going to be successful going off script, trying something for the first time, or playing with faulty cameras, expired film, or chemistry that has been sitting around for too long. Unfortunately, this makes it harder to determine when, no, it’s actually the film or chemistry that has failed.¹

So when I pulled another roll of recently-purchased Lomography film from the tank and saw another underdeveloped roll, I began to wonder. At first I wondered whether ORWO’s cinema films are somehow agnostic to the temperature of one’s developer — D-96 specifically — but also couldn’t help but notice that this roll was very very curly. Like rolls itself back up on my desk when removing the clips curly.

Just like the two underdeveloped rolls of Berlin before it.² And like I did with those rolls, I’ve teased out the absolute best I could in scanning and editing, but it was all quite disappointing.

I’ll write more about it in a few days to accompany another underdeveloped roll from that batch, but it has caused me to rethink a little how I will make my film photos going forward.

1. A failing camera usually lets you know pretty clearly, which allows me to feel badly for entirely different reasons. Usually something about wasting money. ↩︎
2. A subsequent roll of Berlin turning out very thin yesterday, but developed in HC-110b confirmed for me that it’s the film and not me. ↩︎