Surge marks

Always learning something new. I have been getting these terrible surge marks on my B&W pictures. Regardless of how and how much I agitate or with pre-soak and without it, the demons appeared in the pictures. So, I tried to get help at Flickr, asking wheather there is a working recipe to avoid these marks.

Among the answers, I tried to follow the advice of one of them, coming from Larry D., a long acquaintance at Flickr. He insisted with me to refix the negatives and see. I did it and the surge marks were gone. The lower pic has the marks on the top side and the upper one is the result of refixing/washing.

Well, I learned that rapid fixer is not that rapid, it needs about 5 minutes to clear completely, at least with the film I have been using, Polypan F, and so, the fixing time should be 10 minutes using the rule of doubling the clear time.

My thanks to Larry D.!

Winter pause

I know it is possible to take good pictures in Winter. Nevertheless my routine is somehow broken by the weather unpredictable changes. Most of the time it has been cloudy and pictures need sun and contrast. Sometimes it rains and it is also cloudy of course. When the sun shines the sky is completely clear, no clouds at all, like today. I like photos with some clouds, an empty sky is boring. But with such good weather yesterday and today I had to go out and take some pictures. Yesterday I choosed an Olympus Pen EE-2 and took color pictures, using a Fuji Superia 100 ISO exposed at 50 ISO. The film was developed in the 2-bath C-41 process of Dignan.

This Olympus Pen EE-2 is not that sharp, but is OK.

Today, I choosed another camera, a Konica Big Mini. I read somewhere that it has excellent lens. Using this time the rest of my Polypan F 50 ISO, exposed at 100 ISO and developed in a Caffenol developer with Vit. C and Phenidone, I took some pictures without clouds.

The empty sky doesn't look so naked because I cut it from the scene.

I like the photos made with the Konica Big Mini. It is incredible how good this P&S cameras can be. Next time I will be using a Pentax P&S, also very good and with zoom. The 3.rd Konica picture above was cutted to the center, This is similar to the so called digital zoom of the digital cameras.