Third Roll of Polyfilm Handmade Film from Ukraine
Shot my third roll of Polyfilm Ortho this past weekend when we were in Brooklyn. I didn't hold off until the Mermaid Parade; I shot it around Sunset Park the day before when we were walking around. Shot in my Zeiss Ikon Nettar 517/16, the smallest decent medium format camera I have. Per Ihor's suggestion, I shot it at EI 32, and developed in Rodinal 1:25 for 8 minutes. Six minutes of pre-soak, acid stop bath, 5 minutes of post fixer washing, and a final rinse in distilled water and Photo-Flo. I don't think it helped much; I think this batch just has issues.
The first couple of shots seem to have some kind of fog at the edges. I haven't seen this with other rolls of film I've put through the camera.
The third shot starts to show the plasticizer effect, particularly in the sky but also on the brick wall. It gets worse with the fourth shot, particularly in the bricks at top.
In the fifth shot, we start to see signs of mottling too.
The sixth and seventh shots continue the pattern. Seven is particularly dramatic in the plasticizer lines, particularly evident in the lower part of the picture, shown in close-up.
Eight and nine are more of the same. Ten has some dramatic mottling to go with the lines, as well as black holes in the emulsion.
Eleven and twelve dial back the faults. Eleven is kind of blurry, which is on me, not the film. But there are still the issues we've been seeing throughout the roll.
I have one more roll of this to shoot; I'll probably take it to Florida and use it for something that's not critical given the issues I've seen on the first three rolls and expect much the same result. Changing the development process doesn't seem to make a significant difference in the result; 8 minutes worked well from an exposure standpoint, but the artifacts were worse than on roll 2. Ihor and Vitalii have said they think they've figured out what the issues are. I look forward to getting another batch and proving them right.
Posted at 11:03 AM