priscimon blog

I scanned the tab showing the exposure guide for Kodak Ultramax 400 colour film, also realising that the reciprocal to be applied in the Sunny 16 rule is 1/250 s for ISO 400 film, and not 1/500 s as I did.

Last year, I found a Kenko KFM-2100 on eBay for incredibly cheap—if you know how ridiculously expensive spotmeters are—and immediately bought it. It works very well, except that the batteries last much shorter than the nominal 100 hours of continuous use. Today was my day off and a good opportunity to tackle the problem.

The contacts in the battery compartment were blackened, possibly as a result of chemical corrosion that had not been cleaned enough, but luckily they could be fixed by re-tinning. After my attempt to take apart the meter was blocked by too many tiny ribbon cables, I resigned to tin the contacts in-situ. I proceeded carefully to avoid melting the plastic case with the hot tip of the soldering iron and achieved a successful repair, confirmed by the absence of the ‘bc’ battery check symbol when the meter is switched on.

For further tests, I set up LED lights and took pictures of various household items, using the Kenko for metering. The same battery that was previously reported as low was still working after the few hours of the session. I could now say that the repair was a success.

I then developed the film in the bathroom, P needing the kitchen to prepare dinner, and I agitated the tank in a figure-eight motion, which I had just read about—two changes to my process. The new agitation method is now my favourite, as it saves me from fiddling with the tank lid and from dealing with leaks. Developing in the bathroom was also more convenient, because I had the entire bathtub as a work area and did not have to worry about spillages.

Anyway, here are the pictures that I like from today’s development.

This weekend we are staying indoors as P continues to recover from the pain in her lower back, which had her immobilised for most of the week. She was well enough to help me fix spikes on our garden fence, which we hope will deter pigeons and neighbourhood cats—and the occasional foxes—from climbing over and making a mess.

Earlier this morning, I was of a mind to pop out to Mytchett Lake for a couple of pictures, but I lost the motivation after that bit of DIY at home. This mood is reflective of how I have been feeling despite recent improvements in the weather.

Instead, I sat in my alcove office, dismantled the Nikon Coolscan V ED film scanner, and gave it some much needed TLC. After I put it back together, I fitted new rubber feet to the bottom, as the original feet had worn out thin.

I picked a set of negatives from 2009 to test the scanner and found these pictures reminding me of when Woolworths stores were closing across the UK.

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Nikon UK got in touch with me and offered a re-repair of the Nikon D850. This is after I remarked in their customer satisfaction survey about the washers/shims intruding onto the viewfinder area. I was reluctant to accept, explaining to them that I wasn’t prepared to have the camera sent to Europe for another month. But they promised that I would benefit from a priority repair in their UK workshop, which would take at most 10 days. I took the offer and will be posting the camera to them in the coming week. I have to say that so far Nikon’s customer service has been very good.