18 and counting
17:25
I didn’t write much this week, but I was rather busy. Just now I have developed third set of films and that means I have now 18 rolls developed from summer period of traveling.
I also come to situation when I used the last bottle of Paterson Aculux II. The era of Aculux is over now from me. Last three films are developed in Fotospeed FD10, great developer. My feeling is that it is actually better than Aculux. I have bought before summer two canister for 5 liters.
I know that this is probably not much of interest to most of you, but I write this a bit also for me. So please bear with me.
You may know that I was using my old Palm IIIxe as timer for developing my films. Well I had all my database of times there so I can conveniently select film and developer and it was preset for the time I was using for that particular combination. Somehow I left it over the summer and battery died taking with it also all my timings. Well, I have stored for each film I ever develop, used timing in my photo management software, IMatch, so nothing is really lost.
But after this and also to avoid some unpractical issue with driving Palm with stylus or pouring developer over its screen, I decided to by hardware timer. I bough bloody expensive one, almost 30 euro. It has two independent timers and nice big numbers. It is a pleasure to work with it.
So I am happy, this week quite a few films developed, new timer, new developer and all looks very good. Soon enough you will see some new images.
I bought a 3-channel timer earlier this year, the one like this: http://www.speedgraphic.co.uk/prod.asp?i=6047&1=Kaiser+Process+Timer (but for the same amount of Euros, in pounds it is really pricey). Still, 2 channels sounds OK, for stop bath you can just count to 10 or 20 or 30 yourself. ;-)
I’ve been using a $15 casio watch with a stop watch feature – (which they all have) for about 8 years. The wrist band has cracked off, and I had to change the battery once. I keep it in my pocket. There is no particluar benefit to this – but I’ve become superstitious about it.