It’s not FDA approved. For anything. Ever.

There’s something about night-time and snow. Dark sky, light ground. Quiet, cold. Still. It has a very particular feel to it.

A few nights ago, I took a few photos after everything was dark and quiet. I’m pleased with how they came out.

Looking out the front of the house, at the old church across the street…

Then out the back of the house, at my backyard…

Technical details: The camera was my 60 year old Zeiss Ikon Nettar, using GP3 Pan film at ISO 100. Processed for 7 minutes in TMax 1:4 developer.

Not long ago, I ran some more film through my Rollei A26 camera. The A26 was IMHO one of the better cameras made for the 126 cartridge format film. A very compact, sturdy, well-designed camera, the A26 is a nifty little piece of kit.

The film I used this time was Kodak Verichrome Pan. It was ‘new in box’, sealed & unopened. It was marked with a ‘Process Before’ date in 1973 — in other words, this film was thirty-six years past its best-before date.

Nonetheless, a healthy combination of blind optomism and overconfidence led me to assume that not only would the film still be good, but that I would be able to process it successfully in my haphazard kitchen-sink darkroom.

The results were a resounding ‘not bad’. I had some problems with focusing, because I suck at guessing distances and sometimes forget to focus entirely. However, the A26 has a pretty-good depth of field, especially in bright sunlight.

Here are a few examples:

Technical info: Verichrome Pan ISO 125, automatic exposure. Developed in T-Max 1:4 for 9 1/2 minutes.

Here’s a neat little camera – the Rollei A26. It’s from the 1970′s and was designed during the Instamatic craze. Using 126 format film cartridges, it’s kind of nifty – closed, it’s the same size as the Rollei B35, plus it has a built in lens-protector. You just pull it to open it and it’s ready to go!

On the downside, 126 film has been discontinued since the last millenium, though you can still find some now and then. Or, if you can find some 126 cartridges, you can reload them with 35mm film. This is what I’ve been doing actually – reloading 126 cartridges with modern 35mm film. See, 126 film is actually 35mm wide, but it has different edge hole things.

The biggest problem with the 126 reloads is with the holes is I get a few double-exposures or overlapped exposures, because the 126 format uses one edge-hole per frame where 35mm film has holes every few mm.

Technical info: Agfa APX-100 aka Silvertone 35mm film loaded into 126 cartridge, exposed by Rollei A26 automatic exposure, processed in T-Max developer 1:4 for 6:30 minutes.

With all the road work and construction going on around the office, I have been wanting to take some pictures of the giant watermain tubes for a while.

I finally threw some film in my Canonet and went around on Sunday when I figured nobody would be around. Oops – they were working Sunday! I stopped and took some shots anyways though.

There’s something about the big massive roundness of these watermain sections that I find oddly compelling. They are over 2 meters in diameter – big enough to stand in.

Technical Details: Shot with Canonet GIII QL17 using Silvertone ISO 100 aka Agfa APX 100 film. Pushed to ISO 400, processed in T-Max 1:4 for 12 minutes.

I finally decided I’d better start filing away all my negatives, after all the photography I’ve been doing in the past few months. I don’t even know how many rolls of film I’ve processed here, but the negs had been piling up.

I have some of those archival 3-ring insert sleeve things, so I got to it, filing away my negs by date and roll. So far, so good.

When I was finished though, I found myself with a rogue bit of film…

Five frames of Ilford FP4+, obviously taken recently (that is, in the past few months) but I have no recollection of ever using FP4+ film. I have HP5+, but that’s the only Ilford I’ve used. I went through my notes, but I can’t find any reference to FP4+ nor can I find any more frames from this roll.

It’s a mystery…