Feeling a Bit Fellini Part II
In September I shot my first roll of Ferrania’s new P30 Alpha black and white film. I developed this first roll using Tetenal’s Paranol S a developer that I was using at the time. Since then I have changed chemistry to Kodak’s TMAX developer and so for this second roll of P30 I was not able to follow my original recipe. After a bit of head scratching and research I finally settled on:
• Kodak TMAX developer (1:4 Dilution) for 7:15 minutes at 20ºC with Continuous inversions for the first 15 seconds then 5 inversions every 30 seconds thereafter.
• Stop with Kodak Professional Stop for 30 seconds at 20ºC
• Fix with Kodak Professional TMAX Fixer for 5 minutes at room temperature
• Wash for 10 minutes
• Scanned on Nikon CoolScan 8000
Looking at both sets of negatives side by side the film that was developed using Paranol S is more contrasty while the film developed with the Kodak TMAX looks lighter with more mid tones. I couldn't say that one developer is better than the other as there are too many variables for even the beginning of a true comparison, only that both recipes worked well enough to produce satisfactory photos.
I shot Talie at box speed - ISO 80 in moderately bright evening light. The back streets of Dalston, East London were by then either in soft shadow or glowing golden-hour light. For exposure, I metered from her skin using the cameras spot meter + 2 stops and confirming with the odd incident reading from a handheld. Most frames were shot at ƒ5.6 with 85mm Planar ƒ1.4 lens on a CONTAX S2.
Model: Talie Eigeland
All photographed with CONTAX S2 on Ferrania P30 Alpha film.