photoarchiv

keeping negatives, and keeping track of them

Written down because every roll I develop teaches me something I forget by the next one.

Stand development
Highly diluted developer, one agitation at the start, then an hour of nothing. Forgiving with mixed exposures on the same roll, which is most of my rolls. The edges go soft if the tank is underfilled.
Sleeving
Strips of six into polyethylene, never PVC — the soft plasticiser migrates into the emulsion and shows up years later as a haze nobody can clean off.
Base fog
The density film carries even where no light reached it. Grows with age and heat, which is why the freezer holds more stock than food.
Reciprocity failure
Past a second or so, film stops answering light proportionally and needs far more exposure than the meter claims. Each stock fails at its own rate, so the correction lives on a card in the bag.