Those pictures mentioned in my post about playing with artificial light? They were a total loss. I messed up the development.
I was not very happy about this costly mistake and needed to know what went wrong. So, I loaded another roll of film into the Nikon FM2 and drove straight to the country park to get some test shots.
It turns out that a 24-frame roll is rather long when you haven’t planned what to photograph. It took me nearly two hours to get the shots, mostly of random nature things, before I could return home for Round Two of developing Kodak Ultramax with Bellini C-41. Now armed with a sous-vide heater, I was confident I could keep a stable temperature throughout the process. I was also going to do inversion agitation instead of twirling the small plastic rod.
The development was successful, but was it a fluke? The only way to be sure was to do Round Three of developing with Bellini C-41. To be doubly sure, this time I used a 20-year-old roll of Fujifilm Superia 400. Again, shooting the 24 frames took some time.
The pictures that came out were as good as can be for expired film. I knew I had nailed developing with Bellini C-41.
I think the most significant change in my process was the use of inversion agitation—which looks like shaking a cocktail drink, except with less vigour—instead of agitation with the plastic rod.
Even P was impressed.
