A slow notebook about shooting, developing and scanning film at home.
After a year of semi-stand development with Rodinal at 1+100, I went back to agitating every thirty seconds. The negatives are less dramatic but far more predictable, and predictable is what I want from a Tuesday evening in the bathroom.
The biggest difference is in the skies. Stand development gave me beautiful edge effects on rooftops and power lines, and just as often it gave me bromide drag streaming down from the sprocket holes. Regular agitation removes both.
Camera scanning needs three things: a flat negative, even light, and a sensor that is perfectly parallel to the film. The first two are easy. For the third, a small bubble level on the lens cap and a piece of glass on the light pad got me further than any expensive holder.
Incident metering is the honest way to meter, but a spot reading off a grey card with a phone app is close enough for negative film, which forgives a stop of overexposure without complaint.