Film: Svema DS-4 color film from Sumy Oblask, Ukraine, expired 1987. The rolls I have had either a very hard life, or a visit to Chernobyl on the way here – possibly both. It’s pretty much destroyed. This is the third roll and the first one where there’s anything even remotely image-like left on it. The film base is recycled shopping bags (not really, it was probably brand new shopping bags). The gelatin on it stays sticky forever and also collects dust like nothing else. It’s a weird film. Original price 95 Kopeks though, about one Euro cent at the moment. I paid slightly more for it.
Box speed ISO 50, but shot at ISO 25-ish. The colors aren’t as funky on most other pictures, they’re mostly relatively normal, if very weak and green-ish.
Development: hahaha. Ha. In the process of going crazy with this film and having it always come up with nothing on it, I arrived at the following, uhm, recipe:
- 1 hour stand-development in 1:100 Rodinal, 20°C. This step is probably not necessary. Probably. It’s a good-luck charm kinda step.
- 1 hour semi-stand, like, move it every 20 minutes kind of thing, in C41 developer at 20°C
- Fixer for 8ish minutes
- It’s theoretically scannable at this point, but you’d need an anti-aircraft search light, it’s very very dark
- But it’s also safe to handle in normal room light now, so I put it into C41 Bleach+Fix, by visual inspection (too long and nothing will be left, too short and the scanner can’t see through it). Turned out to be 3 minutes or so, but I wouldn’t do that blind.
I call it “room temp double stand semi bleach bypass”, plz credit me, thx.
Camera: Rolleiflex “Old Standard”, 1932. Which shouldn’t be carried around with a cocked shutter because it likes to fire randomly when bumped. And then I though, fuck it, TV-Tower double exposure.
TL;DR: Broken film, developed by a madman, and I don’t know how to use my camera properly. Result rocks though.
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