Camera Talk

We are going through the trailing end of a monumental drought, and the rivers and dams that feed water to the city are almost dry. Water quality has dropped and government is asking people to reduce consumption as much as possible. This is expected to persist for several months.

When developing a roll I normally use about 10 to 15 liters of water, which may not be a big deal, but it adds up. Anyway, tap water has a lot of salt and other contaminants, not suitable for developing film and maintaining tanks and reels in good condition.

As I cannot develop film using tap water anymore, film photography will have to wait until the winter rains fill up the reservoirs. I may shoot a little anyway, and hope that the latent images last until water is available again.

Maybe it is the opportunity to give some local air time to my little Canon digicams, which I was using only in travel and tourism.

Julio - one option is th4e Df96 CineStill developer-fixer. You still have to do the final wash, and I guess that's where you can use a lot of water. Maybe you can use a hypo clearing agent to cut down on the wash time and then perhaps use a gallon of bottled water.
This is both a developer and a fixer in one solution. No need for a stop bath.
Df96 developer-fixer

Julio, good luck with the drought and congrats for that WC yesterday!
It is raining buckets in the west coast of SouthAmerica!

Thanks! Everyone here is crazy about the sub20 soccer cup, indeed. As usual we spoiled someone else’s party.

Mike, thanks for those tips. The problem is washing water, more than dev or fixer, which I have. Bottled water is kind of rationed right now.

I’ll wait until it rains again. Rain is coming from the South Pacific in a month or so, according to the weather experts. It is already in the West side, eventually it makes its way down here.

Keep shooting, then you'll be more efficient with your developing when you do get round to it!

Here's hoping the rains arrive soon. The weather is all over the place everywhere it seems.

It's really impressive how quickly people forget the past.
This el Nino seems to be on par to the 1982-3 one that devastated the Pacific coasts.
At the time people built houses on stilts, now they build them on concrete pads, and all the flood areas are inhabitated.

Some day the good times will be back, Julio! Meanwhile you could lean towards the Dark Side and shoot some vintage digital perhaps? Digicams with old-time CCD sensors? These seem to be 'in' right now

Good advice! Will check if some of the digital oldies has some juice left.

Julio, it's only for a while of course. You need to come back to the bright side afterwards

I'll let you know how the latency is on some films, Julio. I've got a batch starting from a couple years ago I've yet to get developed.

PF