My second attempt at home developing has gone a lot more smoothly than the first, though I say so myself. I replaced my 1970’s Paterson 3 tank with a new AP Photographic one, with easy-load reels. I also used Ilford HP+5, much less curly and sticky. Still having trouble getting the film out the canister to begin with – a combination of squashing the canister and then using the bottle-opener seems to do the trick.
Developed in D-76 as before, for 7.5 minutes, turning every minute. Remembered to tap the tank on the sink after each inversion, to get rid of bubbles. Water rinsing for 30 seconds with some wetting agent in, then rapid fixer (60ml to 240ml water) for 10 minutes, again inverting and banging each minute.
I was a little impatient for them to dry, but soon I should have some bulldog clips to hang them up properly with. Then came the transfer to digital – I used my previous 400D + lightbox combo, as seen here:
Film is held down by books, slid each frame along and took a shot in RAW format. Then processed in Lightroom. The tripod kept toppling forward, so I used some heavy boots to keep the legs down:
A few of my favourites are:
You can see the whole set on my Flickr. I think I’ve got a light leak, or something happened during processing, as I’ve got a dark bar across most of my photos. Will need to rectify that!