i haven't used photo flo...i just kind of squeegee the water off with my fingers to get as much off as i can before i hang it up.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Can we talk about film?
- Thread starter mollyc
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Yeah, it seems that many people don't bother with this step, or just use dish soap? But I was given the Photo Flo so I am using it.
Wetting agent is basically just soap to help break the surface tension when rinsing the film. This reduces the risk of water spots on the dry film. It’s not necessary per se, but can help if you have hard water in particular.
Kentucky hard water made me use Photoflo without fail, although eventually I just gave up and used DI with photoflo for final rinse. If you use it, just remember that 1:200 really means 1:200. That’s 20ml in 4L, or about .6oz in a gallon. I only ever made it in 1 gallon or 4L quantities(I have containers both sizes that I use sort of interchangeably). Higher concentrations cause excess foaming, and can also crud up your dry film worse than water spots. Keep it cold and watch it, as diluted it can grow bacteria if kept too long(fortunately the 32oz bottle I bought in 2007 still looks nearly full).
On advice of a retired Kodak engineer who use to hang out on a few photo forums but since passed, I use to also add 1% formaldehyde to my 1:200 Photoflo when I was doing E6. Apparently it was part of the specs as an emulsion hardener, but for health and environmental reasons commercial labs either don’t use anything for this it use some expensive and exotic replacements. It stinks, but I see no indication that the half gallon left of what I made up 5 years ago is anything less than perfect.
On advice of a retired Kodak engineer who use to hang out on a few photo forums but since passed, I use to also add 1% formaldehyde to my 1:200 Photoflo when I was doing E6. Apparently it was part of the specs as an emulsion hardener, but for health and environmental reasons commercial labs either don’t use anything for this it use some expensive and exotic replacements. It stinks, but I see no indication that the half gallon left of what I made up 5 years ago is anything less than perfect.
Use your water rinse first, to get rid of the fixer that's in the emulsion, on the reels, etc., and then go to a brief dunk-and-gentle-agitation in Photo-Flo. I remember the Photo-Flo step was only about 30 seconds or so, then we'd put the film in a dryer or a drying cabinet.
Use that Photo-Flo once and throw it out. You don't want to reuse it, because it will have traces of your chemistry in it, plus it is so highly diluted that you don't need to worry about saving it.
In place of Photo-Flo, when on VERY tight deadline, we used something called Yankee Film-Dri (I think - anyone else remember this stuff?). It was either alcohol or ether, or something close. It nearly knocked me out the first time I opened the bottle in a small, enclosed film darkroom.
The idea was, after the fix and a VERY BRIEF water rinse, you dunk your roll of film in this stuff and it basically purged moisture from your film. No need for more than about 15 seconds of drying. Then it was off to the enlarger and if you didn't have something usable to bring to the Sports desk by your second print, you were in trouble.
I liked to go back and re-fix, then properly wash and dry my negatives after using that stuff, once I was off deadline, so the negs would last.
I have printed from wet negs before, but that's best avoided 🤣
Anyway, back to Photo-Flo. It's a great way to make sure you don't have water spots on your negs. Very simple final step before drying.
An example of my first shot at developing, this is the Kentmere 400, 6mins @68F using theHC110. 'Scanned' in RAW on the EOS RP in a film holder and presented here with no processing apart from inverting and exporting as a JPEG for the web...the low-contrast looks great in some shots, but some others look much better when I crank up the contrast after scanning.
Getting the focus right when 'scanning' the negatives using the FD 50mm 3.5 Macro is very challenging. I feel like I can't quite see when I'm right on.
I like the way things came out, but I am now trying to think about how to control the contrast of my shots better. Metering? Film stock? Development times/technique and developer choice?
![Export1.jpg]( "Export1.jpg")
Getting the focus right when 'scanning' the negatives using the FD 50mm 3.5 Macro is very challenging. I feel like I can't quite see when I'm right on.
I like the way things came out, but I am now trying to think about how to control the contrast of my shots better. Metering? Film stock? Development times/technique and developer choice?
Often low contrast in the negative isn't necessarily a bad thing as global contrast can be increased in post(or printed at a higher grade in the darkroom).
With that said, shooting at higher ASA and developing longer(pushing) can give more contrast. Developer selection plays a part too, as there are some known high contrast developers. Rodinal is one of those. If you want to get brave, Dektol is super high contrast(and also so active that it give stupidly short times on film).
Last thing-filters can increase contrast but need some thought about selection for a specific scene. Yellow, orange, and red are the standard B&W filter kit, but blue and green also have their place. If buying them, I recommend getting good second-hand filters. A while back I looked at bunches of filters in a spectrophotometer. Good ones-Hoya, B+W, Nikon, and even some "second tier" brands like Tiffen will transmit light down to the stated wavelength then cut off completely, which is what you want. The cheap no-name filters I tested had "notches" that gave the desired color to your eye, but would basically be useless on film since they weren't true cut-off filters.
With that said, shooting at higher ASA and developing longer(pushing) can give more contrast. Developer selection plays a part too, as there are some known high contrast developers. Rodinal is one of those. If you want to get brave, Dektol is super high contrast(and also so active that it give stupidly short times on film).
Last thing-filters can increase contrast but need some thought about selection for a specific scene. Yellow, orange, and red are the standard B&W filter kit, but blue and green also have their place. If buying them, I recommend getting good second-hand filters. A while back I looked at bunches of filters in a spectrophotometer. Good ones-Hoya, B+W, Nikon, and even some "second tier" brands like Tiffen will transmit light down to the stated wavelength then cut off completely, which is what you want. The cheap no-name filters I tested had "notches" that gave the desired color to your eye, but would basically be useless on film since they weren't true cut-off filters.
To me, that looks like it's flat due to processing, not the original exposure.
How do you agitate when you're in the developer? Flat negs and what looks like overdeveloped streaks (along the top of the frame) come from insufficient agitation, that could be at least part of your issue.
As for precise focus on the negs when making a digital "scan" with your EOS RP, you should go into live view, and then you can magnify that. This link should help.
And make sure you're not using the lens wide open at 3.5, that will help!
Last edited:
yes i zoom into the grain on live view and definitely don’t be afraid to add contrast in post. how did you convert negative to positive?
For agitating, I've just been inverting the tank repeatedly. Maybe I should be shaking/swirling with it a bit more oomph?
When shooting the negatives on the RP with the macro lens I've been set up at F8, ISO 200. If had something like the text on the edges of the negative to focus on I could get it dialed in fine, but my film holder obscures those. I will try the live view, thanks for the link.
I am using a very low-tech conversion process - Irfanview batch process/rename tool to open the RAW image, convert to greyscale, invert, and save as TIFF all in one go.
I gave up on Adobe after CS6 to avoid paying monthly subscription fees, but I have an owned copy of CS6 on my old Mac Pro, I could use that as an alternative.
When I would first pour developer in the tank, I'd tap the corner of the tank twice in the sink (I assume you're doing this in a sink of some sort) to knock any bubbles loose, then holding the top of the tank lid, I'd invert the tank twice or three times, while also rotating my wrist back and forth so I get some swirling as well as some inversion. The agitation time is 5 seconds every 30 seconds. Then I put the tank back down, wait 25 seconds, invert/swirl/agitate for 5 seconds, wait 25 seconds, invert/swirl/agitate, etc. and repeat until it's time to pour out the developer. Then add stop bath (or plain water, whichever you use), during which I'd usually agitate constantly. Then for fixer I'd do the same rate of agitation that I did when I used developer.
@mollyc and @bunnspecial are correct - add contrast in post. It's better to start with a slightly flat neg and then make adjustments in post. If your negs are too contrasty, it's hard to get a good range of tones back later.
Just like with RAW when shooting digital. You'll notice that RAW images come out of the camera slightly flat. That's so you have much more flexibility in post.
I hope this helps!
I use Negative Lab Pro to convert, but it is currently only available as a plug in to LR, which won't help you. I haven't tried this, but Negative Supply Lab is bundling Film Lab with some of their purchases, and it looks interesting for a standalone app.
If that is so, I am over-agitating. The instructions I am following suggest adding the developer, then agitating for 1 minute, then for 30 secs every 30 secs through the remaining development time. I am using water as a stop bath.
That's good to know. These negatives look good with contrast added in post, and I take your point that you can always add contrast but you easily can't recover more subtle tones if the original image is very contrasty.
If you are using a more diluted developer than I used to, then your instructions could be correct. There are so many variables (type and dilution of developer, temperature, agitation, time) that affect what the negs look like.
When in doubt, I always go back to data sheets. There's a lot of information on them!
Kodak for Tri-X
![Screen Shot 2023-01-15 at 8.40.16 AM.png]( "Screen Shot 2023-01-15 at 8.40.16 AM.png")
Ilford for HP5+
![Screen Shot 2023-01-15 at 8.41.07 AM.png]( "Screen Shot 2023-01-15 at 8.41.07 AM.png")
Kodak for Tri-X
Ilford for HP5+
Thanks! - that's more or less how I'm doing it, I just need to agitate for less time.
This video may help. Your timing may be different (as @bunnspecial noted, use the data sheet for your Kentmere film, or the Ilford film that it is similar to) but if you need a "walkthrough" of how to develop b/w for consistent results, this covers the basics of what to have on hand and how to go through the process. I'm sure there are many such how-to videos on YT. It may help to watch someone go through the steps, and he does a good job of explaining what he's doing along the way.
I actually found that one (among a few others) and used it as a bit of a guide apart from my longer agitation time. Next time I'll follow his process a little more closely.
Zone focusing question: I've been shooting more lately with the Nikon FM / Series E 50mm f/1.8, and if any of you own that lens I had a question about the focusing distance scales on the lens.
With my contemporary Canon lenses the focusing scales on the lens barrel are shown as a bracket specific to a given aperture. It's easy to read the near and far distance limits. But the E-Series Nikon lens has several colored brackets. Some of the colors seem to match with aperture settings (orange, blue, and yellow), but starting with f/8 and wider the apertures are printed in white, and there is no white bracket. If I am shooting at, say, f/8, which of these brackets should I be reading to measure my appropriate focus range?
![KEN_5166-460.jpg]( "KEN_5166-460.jpg")
Probably a dumb question, but I haven't yet been able to find a copy of a user manual for this lens to explain reading the scale.
With my contemporary Canon lenses the focusing scales on the lens barrel are shown as a bracket specific to a given aperture. It's easy to read the near and far distance limits. But the E-Series Nikon lens has several colored brackets. Some of the colors seem to match with aperture settings (orange, blue, and yellow), but starting with f/8 and wider the apertures are printed in white, and there is no white bracket. If I am shooting at, say, f/8, which of these brackets should I be reading to measure my appropriate focus range?
Probably a dumb question, but I haven't yet been able to find a copy of a user manual for this lens to explain reading the scale.
If I understand the question the colored bands on a Nikon lens are for setting your Hyperfocal distance. For example the blue band is for f16, if you set the infinity mark at the left blue band everything between the blue bands will be in focus according to the distance scale. Scroll down to read about it in this link https://digital-photography-school.com/what-the-numbers-on-your-lens-mean/ The explain it better that I can.
Ah, yes, that's exactly how I understand it as far as it goes for f/22, f/16, and f/11. The part I'm slightly confused about is, if I set the aperture to one of the white-colored settings (f/8 through f/1.8), which hash mark should I set the infinity mark at? Blue? Orange? Yellow? Something else?
I'm sure there's a 'method to the madness' for this particular lens's scale, but I am not sure what it is.
Also, I note that the first version of this same lens (I have the second version illustrated in my previous post) has a slightly different hyperfocal distance scale:
I believe for the white colored apertures the scale is not valid. I do remember learning in school how to figure it out manually. But that was over 40 years ago and the info fell out of my brain. But learning the formula will be your best bet. I believe the scale is tied to the focal length & film size (sensor size) not a particular lens.
I see...in which case I should be able to just use the same scale as it appears on my Canon FD equivalent lens (the 50mm f/1.4)...I also looked up the formula and see there are tables online. Thanks!
I am mostly trying this to improve my skill at taking 'snapshots' outside, without standing there like a dope futzing with focus.
if you use a 14 mm full size equivalent lens or lower, virtually everything is hyperfocal at F4, no futzing required