Let’s do something a little more tricky. Shooting some outdoor pictures at night may prove interesting.
I like the low shutter speed and the particles flying off the flames. I was shooting at 1/30 of a second, which is pretty much the limit to hand held camera operation. Anything less would require a tripod.
When scanning these, I was impatient and did not do a preview scan. (Scanning is agonizingly slow.) What happened was the previous automatic settings for the last set of pictures was applied to these. I realized this and did a re-scan. However, the re-scan yielded very poor results. For my previous scans, I’ve been just relying on the automatic settings on the scanner and editing in post. When adjusting some pictures after scanning, they just didn’t turn out well at all (poor contrast, extra grain, and other problems). So I think going forward, I’m going to pay more attention to the scanning process.
I had trouble with some of the brightness variations in many of the portrait oriented photos. The flash washed out one side, and I had to tone it down in Photoshop. Applying gradients to exposure adjustment masks helps a lot.
Watch your fingers!
Development Details
- Film: Ilford HP5+ (ISO 400)
- Camera ISO setting: 400
- Developer: Rodinal with 1g Sodium Ascorbate
- Developer Dilution: 100:1
- Development Time: 1hr
- Development Agitation: Semi-Stand (20 initial inversions, 5 inversions at 30 minutes)