I finally got my Leica M3 back from the repair shop where it’s been residing for 4 MONTHS!!!! It had a very elusive light leak which has taken an age to track down but fingers crossed it’s now cured. I ran a roll of film through it today and it looks like it’s fine.
I’ve been experimenting with Rodinal developer recently, using it to ‘stand develop’ my black and white film but I’m disappointed by the uneven results I’m getting. I’ve also been reading about and looking at the results of developing Tri-X in Rodinal diluted 1+25 and although a lot of people seem to think it’s not a good combination because of the grain, I actually like that look for certain subjects. The photo’s in this post are all Tri-x/Rodinal (1+25) and I have to say I’m surprised by the lack of grain! Thinking it might be my scanner reducing the visable grain I decided to print one of the negs in the darkroom – the featured image in this post. Still not as grainy as I was expecting.
The other ‘test images’ in this post were all shot in varying light conditions.
I think I’ll stick with this developer as I really like the results when I use a ‘normal’ development technique (i.e regular agitation)
West Cumbria, March 2013
JOHN PICKLES 