Getting back to reversing

[P C Headland]

Spring has arrived in the southern hemisphere. For us in the lower North Island, particularly those in the capital, that means changeable weather with frequent gale force winds. This last weekend was one of those periods - strong gale force nor' westers, horizontal rain and cloud. Being in the hill suburbs meant we were in the clouds.

So, not good weather for outdoors stuff. Given some recent discussions on another analog focused forum, I thought I'd have another go at some black and white slides. I loaded the Fujica STX1N with a roll of Fomapan 100 and setup some appropriate props. Light levels, even with big windows, were quite low, which meant I couldn't stop down as much as I'd have liked as I wanted to keep even the +3 exposure at 1 second. Apart from not being able to get the entire prop-scene in focus, it didn't have any negative effects on what positive outcome I was trying to achieve.

The development was as follows:

1. 1st developer: PC-TEA 1+25 @ 25C (saved for use as 2nd developer) for 15 minutes
2. Rinse a couple of times (bringing temperature up to 30C)
3. Bleach 30 minutes at 30C (350ml 3% hydrogen peroxide plus 21ml white vinegar)
4. Re-exposure (on reel), natural light (what little there was....)
5. 2nd developer: PC-TEA 1+25 @ 25C (re-used from 1st developer) for 15 minutes
6. Fix (probably not necessary)
7. Wash



I shot two similar scenes. I metered using the camera's in-built meter and compared that with my phone light meter app, and they both agreed. I shot the scene at 0, -1, -2, +1, +2 and +3.

Here's the slides on the light box, shot with the iPhone:

Slides on light box

Frames shot at 0, +1 and +2 all looked usable, 0 and +1 looking like they'd project well, +1 and +2 scanned quite easily. Ignore the background lines on this first set, that's down to me being a bit clumsy...

metered (0)

+1

+2

And the second scene, which I shot first:

metered (0)

+1

+2

The point of doing B+W slides if you're just going to scan them? Well, it was better than going outside

[Brazile]

Another fun experiment! Hard to be sure, given the paths these images have taken to my screen, but looks like an "ideal" exposure might be somewhere between +1 and +2? Depends on how you want to show them, of course.

Robert

[titrisol]

Interesting
Foma 100 has gray background, right?
+3 means exposing like ASA 25? or 12?

[P C Headland]

...
Foma 100 has gray background, right?
+3 means exposing like ASA 25? or 12?

It's a slightly grey background, about the same as FP4 / HP5, but not as clear as Adox HR50 or Rollei Superpan 200.

+1 would be EI50, +2 would be EI25, etc. Given the rather extreme scenes - blacks and shiney chrome, I'd probably rate this at EI50 or EI64 for normal scenes. The stuffed toy is light green (SuSE Gecko). I was quite surprised at how well it held on to both shadow and highlight detail.