Darkroom: A day of processing!

Technically I don’t have a darkroom – so perhaps the title should read darkbag, but anyway I’ve been processing today. The first bit of news is that last weekend was the Pilford Heritage Show, and I managed to visit again. I was hoping to take some 6×6 and 35mm but in the end I didn’t feel 100% when I woke, so just took 35mm with me in the end. So today I managed to process those 3 rolls of Ilford Delta 400.

Next thing, I’ve done another day of walking along the Castleman Trail (Takumar Trek)- and I had another 3 rolls of my FP4 (1998) movie film to process – or so I thought! I’ve made a very stupid beginners error! As I was walking and shooting, I threw the rolls of the film into the bag, loaded up the next and carried on. Normally I’m good at remembering what I’ve used and done, and label things up at the end of the day. This day however I ended up with a roll of film that I was un-certain whether I’d used or not! Stupid!! Today I went through a whole sequence of processing, give or take, half an hour, to process a blank roll! The tip to share here is: as you shoot, note what you’re doing! Doesn’t matter how, as long as you know! I won’t be too rough on myself as the film has a value of only about £1, it’s more the wasted time!! The other thing I’d add as a tip if you find yourself in such circumstances is just process the film and take the hit – the other possibility is to re-load a film that IS used and then effectively loose two rolls one on top of the other, that would be much worse!!

I also did a clip test (more on that in a later post!) Completely by chance/luck I cut the first one, EXACTLY down the gap between the first and second frame! Now what are the chances of doing that in a dark bag!! Perhaps luck was on my side!!!