At the start of this year I decided that this would be the year that I used up all the odd rolls of 35mm film in the fridge so that I could start 2024 with just three 35mm film stocks in my kit bag. I also want to standardise my developing regime too and start the new year with no more than three, perhaps four, developers in regular use. Looking in my odds-n-sods box yesterday I realised that whilst I’ve made some inroads I’m not likely to meet my objectives unless I stop using my go-to Ilford films for a while. I’m using far more 35mm film this year owing to my rangefinder experiments but I am constantly falling back on my old favourites of Ilford HP5+ and FP4+, especially for testing cameras. I actually ran out of Ilford HP5+ a few weeks back, necessitating the purchase of a 100 foot bulk roll.
Indeed, I’ve just totted up and found I’ve used 16 different B&W film stocks this year so far and used 9 different developers (it will be 10 when I open the 510 Pyro that arrived in the week). There are other films in my fridge I’ve not used before so 16 won’t be sweet 16 for much longer if I do manage to make inroads into my stockpile. So much for 2023 being the year I simplify my workflow!!!
So, in an attempt to move things along I’ve just put my hand in and drawn out four films at random. These will be the next four 35mm rolls I use. Given that I’ve some weird and wonderful films in the box, including some 2 and 5 ISO films, I was amazed that of the four random films three were rated at 100 ISO. The next four films I will be using therefore are:
Adox CHS-100 II
Adox HR-50 (a bulk-loaded roll gifted to me)
Kodak ProImage 100 (colour!)
Orwo UN54 (also a bulk-loaded gift)
I will make individual posts for each of these rolls in due course. For now the CHS-100 has been loaded into the Canon VL2 paired with the Jupiter 12 35mm lens. The ProImage is in the Leica IIIf. A deliberate choice as the Leica is perfect for my exploration of the photographic style of Saul Leiter and whilst he did use black and white film he is better known for his use of colour. I doubt that I will use this roll up as quickly as the other three.
So, there you have it. A small-scale project that should produce four more blog posts too. I just need to pull my finger out and make some inroads into my odds-n-sods box.
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