ShowcaseFirst roll through the Pentax 67, be honest

Got the 67 in the new year (yes I know, I said no more cameras) and finally developed the first roll last night in the bathroom. HP5 at box speed, 10 frames, 9 usable which I'm calling a win.

The ones I want eyes on. A portrait of my flatmate in window light at f/2.8 with the 105, focus right on her near eye and the far one already going soft, which I love. A street one on Gloucester Road of a bloke carrying a tuba, horizon tilted (on purpose? not really). And a wide-ish one of the Suspension Bridge in fog that came out flat and grey and I cant tell if its my exposure or my development.

Scanned with a borrowed camera and macro lens on a light pad. Is the flat one a scanning problem or a negative problem? The negs look thin to me.

Thin negs in fog is almost always underexposure, pal. Fog fools meters into thinking there's loads of light. Next time give it a stop more than the meter says and pull your dev time back a touch. And the tuba man with the wonky horizon is the best thing you've described, leave it

lucyinthedarkroom said:

Fog fools meters into thinking there's loads of light

oh thats annoying, I metered off the sky like an idiot

Ah, the bridge in fog... my dad used to say fog is the only weather where the meter and the photographer both lie to each other. He shot that bridge on Plus-X for years, every autumn, and I don't think he ever got a negative of it he liked. I've got his contact sheets to prove it, little grey rectangles all the way down, with "AGAIN" written on the back in pencil!

Lucy's right about the extra stop. But what developer are you in? HP5 in flat light at box speed is going to look flat, it's just being honest about the day... The fog has already squashed all your tones into the middle, so on top of the extra exposure you want a slightly longer dev to stretch them back out a bit. Ten or fifteen percent, not a full push. Or is that heresy now? It wasn't in 1979.

And don't throw that neg away. A thin flat negative can still make a lovely soft print on a harder grade of paper, if you ever end up near an enlarger.

pinholepete said:

you want a slightly longer dev to stretch them back out a bit

Aye, fair, I said that backwards. More exposure and a bit MORE dev for flat fog, not less. Too many late nights in the cupboard. Less dev is for when the light's harsh and you want to hold the highlights, like a sunny day on the beach. Fog's the opposite problem.

Ilfosol 3 at the moment because its what the shop had. Will try a stop over and +15% next time its foggy, which in Bristol is tuesday. Thanks both, and pete your dad sounds like a legend

also the flatmate portrait came out even better on a second scan, I'd got the light pad too close and it was flaring. so at least one of them was my scanning and not my negs

Congrats on the 67. Every time someone posts about one I nearly buy one, so thanks for that. Genuinely though the flatmate portrait at 2.8 sounds gorgeous, that lens and that format in window light is about as good as it gets. Now please stop before I open eBay

He was! He also kept his fixer in an old whisky bottle, which is less legendary and more how my mum nearly had a very bad evening in 1987... the label was still on, you see. She took one sniff and said a word I wasn't supposed to know at that age. After that everything in our house got labelled in red marker, including, for reasons nobody explained, the cat's bowl. Anyway. Do post how the next roll goes.