Originally posted WEDNESDAY, 15 APRIL 2009
Developing Agfa Isopan F
Having been very generously donated some Agfa Isopan F, dating from "some time in the forties" by a fellow flickrite, I decided to shoot and develop it.
I was told that the film is on a nitrate base - the kind you famous for spontaneously combusting simply because it got old - and that its deterioration gave a nice swirling pattern in the background of the pictures. Deterioration is bad with nitrate films; it increases the likelyhood that they will catch fire.
I decided to test the film to find out whether it was actually nitrate. After I'd developed it, I took the leader outside, wedged it between two pebbles and touched a lighted match to the top of it.
Of all the film types, nitrate is the only one which will burn down, and the only one which is easy to ignite. As soon as the match touched it, it burst into sizzling yellow flames and burnt down towards the pebble with a streetlight-yellow flame. I'd better be careful where I store this stuff...
Anywho, the film started off with a DIN rating of 17 degrees (ASA40), so due to its age I had overexposed and shot the film at EI6 (yes, six) because that's the lowest that my camera could meter for - I suppose I could have used the "exposure adjustment" setting to overexpose by another couple of stops, but having seen the negatives, I don't think this would have been much better.
Obviously the extreme slowness of the film meant that I was limited as to where I could shoot it: outdoors in the full sun.
36 exposures later, I'm then looking for a development time. The only references I could find to developing this film was a couple of posts on APUG - one guy said he'd recently (i.e. this century) developed some for 17m in D76 and had good results, another said he'd found an old document suggesting 9m in D76, which was a time current for the manufacture. I also found a pdf of an instruction booklet for an Agfa home-developing kit from what I presume was the 60s, suggesting a time in Rodinal of (I think) 14m with what appeared to be a suggestion of constant agitation.
Since Rodinal is pretty much unobtainable in the UK, except through one shop in London, I opted for the D-76 method (which I handily had the best part of a gallon of sitting in my bathroom, all mixed up).
Agitating for the first minute, and then 10s every minute in stock D-76 (well actually ID-11, but they're the same) and with extra long fixing and washing to account for the extra thickness of the old emulsion, I tentatively went to lift the reel out of the dev tank.
Well, at first glance it looked totally black- not promising at all - but as I carefully pulled the negatives from the reel, it became clear that I definitely did have some fairly decent looking negatives, albeit with quite a high base fog, which as the film is drying in my bathroom now has reduced slightly.
When I scan the pictures I'll let you know how they've actually turned out, the deterioration of the emulsion is obvious as a shimmery swirling pattern that actually looks quite a lot like drying marks, but isn't, since a) the negs are still a bit wet and b) I used wetting agent for a final rinse.
I was told that the film is on a nitrate base - the kind you famous for spontaneously combusting simply because it got old - and that its deterioration gave a nice swirling pattern in the background of the pictures. Deterioration is bad with nitrate films; it increases the likelyhood that they will catch fire.
I decided to test the film to find out whether it was actually nitrate. After I'd developed it, I took the leader outside, wedged it between two pebbles and touched a lighted match to the top of it.
Of all the film types, nitrate is the only one which will burn down, and the only one which is easy to ignite. As soon as the match touched it, it burst into sizzling yellow flames and burnt down towards the pebble with a streetlight-yellow flame. I'd better be careful where I store this stuff...
Anywho, the film started off with a DIN rating of 17 degrees (ASA40), so due to its age I had overexposed and shot the film at EI6 (yes, six) because that's the lowest that my camera could meter for - I suppose I could have used the "exposure adjustment" setting to overexpose by another couple of stops, but having seen the negatives, I don't think this would have been much better.
Obviously the extreme slowness of the film meant that I was limited as to where I could shoot it: outdoors in the full sun.
36 exposures later, I'm then looking for a development time. The only references I could find to developing this film was a couple of posts on APUG - one guy said he'd recently (i.e. this century) developed some for 17m in D76 and had good results, another said he'd found an old document suggesting 9m in D76, which was a time current for the manufacture. I also found a pdf of an instruction booklet for an Agfa home-developing kit from what I presume was the 60s, suggesting a time in Rodinal of (I think) 14m with what appeared to be a suggestion of constant agitation.
Since Rodinal is pretty much unobtainable in the UK, except through one shop in London, I opted for the D-76 method (which I handily had the best part of a gallon of sitting in my bathroom, all mixed up).
Agitating for the first minute, and then 10s every minute in stock D-76 (well actually ID-11, but they're the same) and with extra long fixing and washing to account for the extra thickness of the old emulsion, I tentatively went to lift the reel out of the dev tank.
Well, at first glance it looked totally black- not promising at all - but as I carefully pulled the negatives from the reel, it became clear that I definitely did have some fairly decent looking negatives, albeit with quite a high base fog, which as the film is drying in my bathroom now has reduced slightly.
When I scan the pictures I'll let you know how they've actually turned out, the deterioration of the emulsion is obvious as a shimmery swirling pattern that actually looks quite a lot like drying marks, but isn't, since a) the negs are still a bit wet and b) I used wetting agent for a final rinse.
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