Some Things Work, Some Things Don't

This Saturday 1-27 was 127 Day and even though I haven't been able to get out and shoot much, I was determined to get out there at least a little for 127 Day.

It was a hazy day, at least in the morning when I was out, so I chose my trusty Sawyer's Mark IV that was loaded with Rerapan 400. Rera 400 has never and will never be my favorite film, but it's film and it works.

Because I don't love the intrinsic contrast range of Rerapan 400, I decided to try a technique that's worked for me in the past with other films. I have a mixture of Xtol (a nice gentle developer) and MQ-19 (a quick harsh and contrasty developer) that I've obtained good results with by using Xtol development times. I've been lucky in the past to get greatly increased contrast without a concomitant increase in grain.

Unfortunately,one's luck doesn't always hold out forever. Some of these shots had very poor contrast, so little as to be unusable for me. Others had a little more contrast, but increased grain and others were just a mess.

I admit that some of the problem may have to do with my very odd scanning system. Taping the negatives to a piece of translucent plexiglass, placing a light tablet over them and scanning with my flatbed scanner. I think I'm going to have to finally give in an buy a real scanner, rather than continue with my Canon all-in-one, which has proven to be pretty decent at everything generally.

I'm quite unimpressed with most of the shots. Here are the few that aren't egregiously bad. I realize they're not that horrible, just not what I was hoping for in this case. But thart's photography I guess.

BTW, looking back at some previous rolls of Rerapan 400, those that I developed with my homemade sagebrush developer Artemisianol, stand head and shoulders above all the others, both in sharpness and in contrast. I need to get out there and harvest some sagebrush, but it will be a while until I can do that.