A couple of months ago, I picked up two rolls each of four Harmon films: Kentmere 100, Ilford FP4 Plus, Kentmere 400, and Ilford HP5 Plus. At the time, I had recently acquired two rolls of long-expired Ansco Versapan and gotten some interesting results with it and the R3 Monobath. I wanted to get started playing with black & white photography, but first I needed two things: more film, and a developer that was more suitable for roll film.*

So I hemmed and hawed and looked at my limited toy fund and hemmed and hawed some more and somehow managed to justify buying 8 rolls of film.

Alhamdulillah and I couldn’t much justify buying chemicals too, though, so the film just sat for much of June and July. But then Eid al Fitr rolled around again, and I received a gang of D76, some Ilford RapidFix, and some Ilfostop, plus some jugs and accordion bottles—thanks Mom!—and the test was in business, sorta.

I still let it sit for awhile.

But now it’s time, more or less.

It’ll be a non-scientific test:just whatever I notice and decide to comment on. And if it’s not obvious by now either you haven’t been paying attention or you vastly overestimate my technical knowledge. This isn’t my first time shooting black & white: I shot some Tri-X at the lake a bit ago, and there’s the Ansco a couple of months back, and some Chromogenic something or other a long time ago.

But developing it is something new to play with, and that’s always fun: Alhamdulillah. I’ll just be shooting the film in my usual lackadaisical manner, processing it, and commenting on the results in whatever way I see fit.

Tonight: the boxes… boring, probably, but interesting to me. Continue reading “Harmon films: the boxes”