New Film who dis?

It was one of those rare Saturdays where I had time to actually go to the camera store. The daughter was off with at a birthday party, wife in tow, and I had a couple of hours kill and a need for more paper.

I had my heart set on some Warmtone RC but it had been sitting there for quite a while and it was suggested to me I did not want to risk it, so I bought my usual 8×10 MGV in Perl. Classic paper.

I make it a general rule to buy film everytime I go into Vanbar to increase my own stocks slowly but also to ensure both Vanbar and Ilford keep supplying it.

They had just stocked the new Kentmere 200. For the great price of around $13 AUD in 120 format. I bought 2 rolls.

I realised I should have bought a couple in 135 too as I don’t want to waste the 120 on development and print testing, so I went back the next week and grabbed a couple of rolls.

I loaded the first roll loaded into my EOS33 and I went back to my trusted test site, the water heater, and took the old zone V shot, blank shot and then the what should be Zone I (4 stops lower). I’m developing in D23r and as I can’t find any information on it in this combo, I have to make some tests (you should anyway).

This is when disaster struck.

I left my camera in my car overnight and my car was broken into. My camera along with this roll and another I was working on were stolen.

The problem here is that none of my other cameras have the ability to shoot at 1/3rd or half a stop. So I just didn’t do anything with the remaining rolls. That was until I went to the District Darkroom Coburg meet-up. Bernie, the guy that runs the place heard about my predicament and leant me a Nikon N90s (American Version, I believe the civilised world call it the D90 or something).

This allowed me to get back on that horse and try again (under the proviso I don’t leave the camera in my car again!)

I loaded the Nikon with the Kentmere and trotted back out to my trusty test site.

I took a shot with the lens cap on to get film base plus fog, metered for middle grey and dropped the exposure 4 stops to Zone I. Then shot at 1/3rd of a stop for 2 stops. I shot one at Middle grey just so I know what the mid tones should look like, and lastly shot 1 image at 4 Stops above zone V (Zone 9). This should be almost but not quite pure white if my development time is working.

My next issue was figuring out what time to develop this at, remembering that in this case I just need a rough ball park figure becuase even though I have a Zone 9 shot, I’ll need to adjust my development time anyway once I’ve figured out the correct ISO with my developer. That old saying is coming back to haunt me

Expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights

Essentially I just need a basic time to figure out which of my low zone images is close to but not quite total black. Massive Dev chart suggests for D76 (a close relative to D23) 7.5 minutes if using it at stock. So I started there.

7.5 minutes assumes 20C. When measuring the temperature half through the development (3m45s) I found the temperature to be 21C. Usually I don’t care but as I’m trying to be more rigorous and do things properly I adjusted my time by drooping 10% making a total time of 6m45s.

Once dried I took the film and performed some tests. At f/8 grade 2 I found my film base + fog went to DMax at 15 seconds. This meant all my test squares were performed at 15 seconds.

As each of the frames were shot with 1/3 increments it meant I would be investigating 1/3 stops. In my testing I had stopped 4 stops down to zone 1 and I’m looking for the point at which I can see a slight difference between that frame and my Dmax.

After a lot of trying to see if I can make out any differences, I was pretty convinced that this film has lost somewhere between 1/3 and 2/3 of a stop when developed in D23r. It could just be wishful thinking but also this seems pretty in keeping with other films such as FP4 that also lose about two thirds of stop in D23r.

I shall therefore be shooting K200 rated at 125.

I also checked the Zone 9 and it does appear to be very slightly off white. This tells me that my development time of 7:30 is probably bang on. (Well 6:45 if you develop at 21C as I did). Having said that, I need to make that same assessment now at ISO 125.

One last thing I have noticed about this film is that it dries flatter than a hedgehog on the A36, which makes it great for film scanning. I’ll now run through my rolls and make an assessment as to whether I’m going to switch from FP4. I have just bought a bulk roll of FP4 though, so that won’t be for a while!

Next week I’ll show you some results from a new camera I purchased for a big trip.