Charlotte Makes Photos

I don’t know what it is, but until Wednesday, I was in a dire need for a haricut. Between May and August my ends just decided to split like nobody’s business, giving my hair — at least at the ends — a sort of nest-like quality. I could brush like Marcia Brady, but the minute a low breeze would pass through the apartment, I’d be tangled up all over again.

Fortunately my hair dresser was available for a quick appointment and I’d be back to rights again. Leading up to it, I decided to try something to determine whether my recent problem with the Lomo Kino films came down to D-96 or if it was something else, so I loaded my last roll of Berlin (ORWO N75) into the Minolta and headed out.

Developing it with an officially “blessed” developer this time (HC-110), I was dismayed to see that the results were still the same: very thin and somewhat foggy negatives that were so curly that when I unclipped the roll after drying, it coiled up on my desk.

Somehow, I don’t think the film is as fresh as was marked on the box.

In the end, this whole adventure has lead me to make a change. After more than six years of playing around, I think what I really want is certainty that I am going to have nice well-exposed photos and whatever emotional payoff I had been getting from playing around and experimenting is not enough to cover the disappointment.

To that end, going forward, I will be narrowing myself down to a smaller number of combinations for black-and-white that I know work well and that I really like. I don’t have a definitive list, but things like Ilford FP4+ in D-96, Ilford HP5+ (or Kodak Tri-X) in ID-11 1+1, Fomapan 200 in Mic-X 1+1, etc.¹, are what I am imagining.

1. I have some PanF+ and Perceptol to try once we get another run of sun, among other things, so this will be more of a gradual winnowing-down. I don’t intend to waste the films and developers I have now. ↩︎