{"id":40304,"date":"2024-10-20T06:25:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-20T10:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/?p=40304"},"modified":"2024-10-18T22:30:31","modified_gmt":"2024-10-19T02:30:31","slug":"re-examining-negatives-botched-by-poor-processing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/re-examining-negatives-botched-by-poor-processing\/","title":{"rendered":"Re-examining Bad Negatives Further Botched by Poor Processing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sometimes I just got it wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On my August 1984 trip to Montreal, I carried two Leica 3A rangefinders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One was loaded with Kodachrome. The other with Kodak Tri-X.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem was that on the B&W camera, I was using a pre-war (1930s vintage) Leitz Elmar with uncoated elements. While sharp, this tended to produce low-contrast images that exhibited a variety of artifacts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Complicating matters, the I had bulk-loaded Tri-X into cassetts that I’d used again and again. In this instance, the cassette suffered from some minor light leaks and scratched so of the negatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The shutter on the old Leica wasn’t the best. While it did ok at a 1\/200th, and 1\/100th (no 1\/250th or 1\/125th as on more modern cameras), most of the other shutter speeds were a bit random.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if all that wasn’t enough, I did a pretty poor job of processing the film! I don’t recall exactly what I did, but from the looks of the negatives, I was using nearly exhausted developer. To compensate for the weak solution, I upped the temperature and the time. The results were very low contrast with comparatively high-grain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in the day, I’d deemed the negatives too challenging to print, so I put them in a glassine envelope largely unprinted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite all that, I’d managed to make some interesting compositions, if not great photographs. The other day I scanned the whole roll. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The photo displayed here iswest of Montreal at Sainte Anne-de-Bellevue along the parallel Canadian National and Canadian Pacific double lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had taken a suburban train from Windsor Station. And made this view of an eastward VIA Rail LRC train with MLW diesel coming out of the afternoon sun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Unmodified scan of 35mm Kodak Tri-X negative exposed using uncoated Leitz 50mm Elmar with a Leica 3A rangefinder processed in some sort of low-grade soup that barely qualified as developer. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Slightly improved version of the above photo. This was modified in digital post processing to increase contrast, remove spots and adjust exposure.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The following year, as my second camera, I brought with me to Montreal my father’s vintage 1960 Rolleiflex Model T, which used 120 size film and had an excellent Zeiss Tessar lens (coated!). Loaded with Plus-X, this produced vastly superior results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Live and learn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tracking the Light Explores Photography Every Day!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was using a pre-war (1930s vintage) Leitz Elmar with uncoated elements. While sharp, this tended to produce low-contrast images that exhibited a variety of artifacts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40305,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[6060,10,6108,48],"tags":[6281,5175],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Montreal_Aug14_1984_\u00a9Brian_Solomon00134-2.jpg?fit=2048%2C1267","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BVuC-au4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40304"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40304"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40309,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40304\/revisions\/40309"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}