Dia-fuckin’-fine

Hole in the wall. Abandoned Nike-Hercules base “Site Bay” in Alaska. Fomapan 100 at ISO 120 processed in Diafine.

I want to introduce you to my newest friend, Diafine. It’s a great developer for lazy asses like me who like to shoot lots of different films at different speeds, including pushed a stop or two, and don’t like to hassle with specific temperatures and times and all of that nonsense.

With typical one-bath, one-shot developers, you simply immerse the film in the developer allowing a reaction to happen. You have to process for a specific amount of time depending on the film and your desired push/pull. During this time fresh developer (supplied by agitation) reacts with the film emulsion and then you dump the spent developer.

Diafine is magic because it’s a two-bath developer. You immerse the film in bath A for three or more minutes (every film is the same) which is how long it should take to fully saturate the emulsion. Then, the film — still holding the bath A chemical it soaked up — is exposed to bath B and the two chemicals react together with the film emulsion. Because there is a limited supply of bath A contained within the emulsion to react with the bath B chemical, this leads to some interesting results:

Home Processing: attempt #1

So this weekend I had a vasectomy. Good times! The rest of my family went on a trip out of town while I had nothing to do but sit around and be lazy (with good reason). Coincidentally, I made a splurge (for my broke ass) and bought the stuff I need to home-process 35mm black and white film. So in the week leading up to my snip snip I went out and about and burned two rolls of Ilford HP5+ so that I’d have something to do while my junk was on the mend and I had no one around to worry about opening the “darkroom” (read: bathroom) door.

The basis of my procedure was this article on Lomography. Now I gotta tell you guys something: I work quick, dirty, and sloppy. I cut corners if it saves me a few bucks (otherwise I’d probably just let the lab process my film for me) or significant effort. The process in that article seemed to get good results, so I suggest following it in general. I’m going to go through the areas where I deviated and point out what worked well and what didn’t.

Stairwell jungle

Anchorage, AK. Minolta SRT-101. Vivitar 28mm 1:2.8. Kodak T-Max 400.

In the stairwell of the building where I work someone has made a jungle. I used to go like to sit in there on my break and hang out or take a nap, but one day someone put about a dozen plants of various species and sizes in my sunny spot! Anyway, I just thought this plant looked cool and the way the sun came in the window was interesting, and a good opportunity to get close up to something.

Yukon Bar

Seward, AK. Minolta SRT-101. Vivitar 28mm 1:2.8. Kodak T-Max 400.

Took this one outside the Yukon Bar in Seward, where my punk band played a couple shows a few weekends ago. Seward seems like a pretty seasonal place and the winter is pretty quiet, so I think between this place and the joint across the street, this is where the “nightlife” is in town in February.

Barber Pole

Seward, AK. Minolta SRT-101. Vivitar 28mm 1:2.8. Kodak T-Max 400.

Abandoned Power Plant

Ship Creek neighborhood, Anchorage, AK. Minolta SRT-101. Vivitar 28mm 1:2.8. Kodak T-Max 400.

Drumming in the Dark

Seward, AK. Minolta SRT-101. Vivitar 28mm 1:2.8. Kodak T-Max 400 (shot at 800)

Evacuation Route

Seward, AK. Minolta SRT-101. Vivitar 28mm 1:2.8. Kodak T-Max 400.

First two rolls

So earlier this week my first two rolls of 35mm film were processed and scanned! The downloading was quite the arduous process as I had to do it via my work wifi which sucks balls. But I got them, and overall I’m happy with the results; but there were definitely quite a few “learning experiences” in there too!

Both were shot on my Minolta SRT-101 with a Vivitar 28mm 1:28 lens, Lomography Lady Grey 400 film (which, it turns out, is Kodak T-Max 400 with a different sticker on it!). I sent the rolls out to PhotoVision in Salem, Oregon. I’m happy with their work and they set up a folder in their BOX account with both rolls in it, and presumably future orders will be found there as well, which is pretty cool.