Friday and Saturday called for clouds and that is by-and-large what we received. Although I am very much in a mood for slide film, it ends up looking like a sad blue mess on overcast days, so I decided that I would give some Lomography Berlin a try.

As is the case with all of Lomography’s films, they’re not manufacturing them, but rather purchasing (or contracting bulk amounts of slightly customized) existing film and packaging them to make them more accessible and, in many cases, with a more effective branding. Like most companies who engage in this practice, they aren’t entirely forthcoming as to what the film “actually” is.

One of my favourite films is ORWO UN54, a traditional cinema film manufactured in Germany by Fimotec using the much older ORWO brand. After an unsuccessful foray into selling film directly to consumers, the ORWO brand is likely dormant once again, but Lomography has long sold this film as Lomography Potsdam Kino. This is how I get it in 120 format. UN54/Potsdam just hits all the right notes for me, especially when developed in D-96, Kodak’s standard black-and-white developer for cinema film.

As part of a recent order I made with Lomography (who ships a selection of bestsellers from Canada now), I requested a few rolls of Berlin, its 400 ISO sister. It was once a favourite of Kathleen’s, but when she set making photos aside, we didn’t really purchase any more of it. Berlin is either repackaged ORWO UN74+ or UN75. I’ve never really known the difference (or if there is even one), perhaps beyond some subtleties I’m just not tuned into.

In any event, I really wanted to see what Berlin/UN75 does in D-96 and if I would have something a little like Eastman Double-X (which I also love). There was one problem though: the Massive Dev Chart app did not have any times listed for D-96 in any of the film’s names and ORWO’s processing data sheet (available in German), only mentions that D-96 is like another one of their developers and like UN54, which I didn’t find entirely helpful. …except that development of Potsdam/UN54 is 6 minutes at 20°C, which I have had consistent success with. I then looked around more, and found blog posts that indicate 6½ minutes (with nice enough results), and CineStill’s D96 developer lists a time of 7 minutes.

Feeling like 6 minutes would have been a little short for a 400 ISO film, I had originally selected 6½ minutes in line with the blog, but then at the last minute chose 7 minutes as my benchmark, figuring a vendor would try these things out more than once and that the MDC lists 6¾ minutes for ORWO’s P400 (derived from UN75) at 21°C.

As I usually do, I used the Massive Dev Chart app to adjust my time downward. In summer it is quite a bit warmer in my apartment, making all of my chemistries warmer too. In this case, my was 25°C, which brought the time down to 4 minutes and 40 seconds. This adjustment was also in line with how I process UN54/Potsdam, so I thought nothing of it.

…until I pulled both rolls of Berlin out of the tank and found very very (very) thin negatives that had spent nowhere near enough time in the bath.

The scans above and below represent the very best I was able to tease out of them in scanning and required that I engage in a little post-hoc “digital development”, in which I raised the black point significantly, raised contrast, raised highlights, and lowered shadows. So while in the game of “is it pictures?”, it was. But only just.

Charlotte and Kathleen at the Hot Wench Market

August is really when the market and festival season sets in for Ottawa. And while they don’t always have a queer theme or vibe to them, it wouldn’t exactly be wrong to state that they’ve got a fairly queer (and often vegan) constituency. And I’m not just referring to Kathleen and I!

On Saturday, we visited the Hot Wench Market, which is billed on its Instagram page as “the scrappy little ottawa market for magical humans to share our passions (while being hot) 🧙🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️”. It was not even a question that Kathleen and I were going to visit. Magical, fantasy, witchy, gothy, and all sorts of other local delights, we were bound to find all sorts of things.

While the main goal was for Kathleen to find some thrifted items for her outfit for the Black Swan Ball in November (I can’t choose outfits that early, so I’m waiting for some October inspiration to hit), by the time we were done, we had no articles of clothing, but rather a bevy of crafty delights, like an intoxicatingly-delightful scented candle (it won’t be that long until we’re back in cozy movie-watching season), very cute stickers, notepads, jewelry, and a drink mat, which is like a large coaster. We also enjoyed some very nice vegan sandwiches for lunch – Kathleen, a “chick’n” pesto, and me, a “sala-me” and sauerkraut, and, well, when it’s Little Jo Berry’s, some treats followed us home too.