Mostly Fences, An Unintentionally Themed Post

I was able to get out for a short walk while the sun shone yesterday. I was trying out what I thought was a new to me film, Kono Rekorder 100-200, using my now usual rig, my old Leica Ic and the Voigtlander 12mm.

Kono Rekorder appealed to me on several fronts: it's high a high contrast black and white film, it's a couple stops faster than the films I've been shooting recently, it's reasonably priced by today's prices and it's available.

Rekorder is a repurposed cine sound recording film, seemingly similar to my past favorite film, Film Washi S which is rated at ISO 50.

The walk was a pleasant one through a more run down industrialish part of town. I had planned to develop this roll of film in Xtol (Bellini Eco-Film), which seems to work with almost everything, and I had a development times for this film with it.

This is where the experiment begins. In my mind, I had two bottles of Xtol 1+1 solution, both several months old, but one was sealed tight and about the half the volume of the other. It seemed sensible at the time that I would replenish the older developer with the newer, possibly a good strategy for someone who reads labels, but not for me.

As it turns out, the smaller bottle was actually MQ-19, Flic-Films recreation of the fast and harsh, high contrast developer Kodak D-19. So the result of my combination was a 2:1 solution of Xtol and MQ-19. This didn't seem like a brilliant combo to me. Xtol is a gentle developer that seems to bring out a beautiful tonal range in almost every film and MQ-19 is the opposite, fast, high contrast and grainy.

Still, the deed was done. Might as well try and use my monstrosity. As it turns out, it worked just fine, at least with this high contrast film.

Regarding the film. I should have realized this before, it's Kodak 2374 which I've used before but under a different moniker. The Film Photography Project sells it as Eastman Kodak Hi-Fi 2374, but they rate it at ISO 50. Good to know that it has such a wide exposure range! If the light is good, I'll try shooting a roll at 200 today.

Kodak 2374 comes with free cryptic numbers every few frames. They don't normally bother me, but you may or may not find them entertaining. My only real caveat about this film is that it's curly! I't pretty darn curly in fact, luckily it's thin enough that it's not too difficult to force it to lie down flat for scanning. It's billed as a high acutance film, and maybe I was excessively shaky yesterday, but 2374 doesn't seem anywhere near Adox CMS in terms of sharpness. Still it's a nice film that suits me well, if not my dream ISO 100 film, I look forward to shooting my other two rolls of it, but probably won't stock up on it.

Oh, about the title. It will be obvious once you see the photos. I didn't realize it until I was scanning these frames, but almost every shot had a fence of some kind in it. That was about as intentional as my mixing of developers.