Richard Tuohy

The bauers you have are 40/160 asa only cameras. Unlike many other 40/160 asa only cameras, these cameras can't read daylight stocks of 25 and 100 asa. You can switch off the internal 85 filter (which is used when shooting tungsten film in daylight situations) but this doesn't allow you to shoot 100 asa daylight film as 100 asa - it will still be rated as 160 asa in a bauer. What you can do is the following: Set the camera to auto and have the filter switch set to daylight (which means, 'with filter') Read the exposure indicated by the meter. Now switch the meter to manual mode and roll the exposure to the reading indicated in the previous step. Switch out the internal filter - ie swich to the 'tungsten' (bulb) position. Now film. This isn't as hard as it sounds. cheers, richard

Hey, thanks for the offer Karl, I'll keep that in mind. Much appreciated. richard

Just found today that I was able to slow down my prostar using a lighting dimmer attached to the motor power input... probably more viable as a movie film processor now. The russian site (Olexander's old Geocities site) is now gone. His replacement site doesn't have the image of the little russian processor. Not that you would ever be able to find or acquire one of those little processors ...

Wittner send their k14 to dwaynes in kansas like everybody else. Their web site indicates december 15 t]as the last day they will be posting to dwaynes I believe.

Hi Marc, the prostar is worth looking at. I have recently acquired an oler model of prostar myself. The tanks are 1 litre. The processor is designed to phisically fit only 1 x 100' roll on a daylight spool at a time - to porcess longer lengths, you couldn't close the lid or use the supplied film take up and supply arms. Yes, they are self threading. Kodak intend you to splice a so-called 'self threader' to the front of the roll of film. I don't have one of these. They look like a strip of film but made from a different material. They look like some kind of bi-material strip. I have found that polyester leader will also self thread. The self-threaders are available, but due to the kodak brick wall, I can't get them here in Australia and Kodak USA won't send them to me. But I don't think they are necessary anyway really. There are moving rollers all the way through the film path on both sides and, when threading,the film seems to simply hapily snake its way between all the little rollers. that is pretty cool. Some factors about the prostar. It needs warm water fed to it. The film path is very short and the tanks very small. For instance, the film only passes through the developer for about 1 minute. Too short of course, so needs slowing down (and using the hottest temperature setting) The wash time is also very short. The lomo tanks on the other hand are extraudinarily good to use once they have been tuned and you are used to loading them. You can do any process you like in them for any amount of time. They are extremely flexible and much more reliable than any small processing machine - at least the small processing machines that i have had.

any one have one they might be able to sell? email richard@nanolab.com.au richard

10 x 2000' tins would be 6 kilometers of film. I think he might have 30 or so tins ... so yes, miles and miles. We aren't talking 'ends' here. Yes, stocks designed for specific purposes will do a more technically correct job. Most films are technically correct ... and most are crap for that matter, but that is another story.

Experimental film makers don't have much difficulty finding reasons for varying the development process of particular stocks. I have a friend in Sydney with a 35mm B&H contact printer and miles of colour print film. He uses the colour print to make black and white internegs from, then to make black and white prints. I have some collegues in France (at MTK lab in Grenoble) that use 3383 colour print as a colour reversal print stock processed in E6 (which is done by using a VERY short first developer time of about 1 minute) and also 3302 bw print as bw reversal print stock ... all sorts of things can prove to be useful if you have them, or they are free or handy.

This sort of engineering simply isn't affordable unless you could sell thousands of units. That's my opinion. I think there is a tendency to want to compare prices with currently available digital consumer products, however the potential market for the latter is in the tens of millions of units (bear in mind that each new digital product that comes out isn't coming out in a vacuum as a new super 8 camera would be but rather builds on the engineering, designs, r&d and parts from perevious models.)

Hi Murray, they are Kodak Cat numbers, so yes, directly from Kodak. But note that those cat numbers are for kit components that make 20 gallons of bleach - that is a lot for lomo processing. Plus, I don't believe Kodak Australia currently import these components and their doing so would be very expensive. Sadly you can't deal with Kodak in the USA if you are outside the USA or Canada. The R-9 bleach is much easier anyway. rt

Hello Marc, few things. the bleach process is 'too completion'. You can't realistically over bleach. Leave it in for 3 minutes and it will be well and truly done. The permangenate bleach will be fine for a second film processed in the same session. If you are diluting the bleach to make up volume, leave film in longer. While you don't use a stop bath for the black and white reversal process, if you use a very good and long wash, you can turn the lights on after the first developer without effect. But it does have to be a very good wash to make sure there is no developer left on the film. That said, there is no need to do that. After a minute or so in the bleach (wont matter just how long), turn the light on and pull the spiral out and have a look to see if there is any silver left on the film. The silver is black. Of course, it is better to re-expose to light with the film in a water bath so as to ensure the light hitting the film isn't' being focused by little spots of water, but if you have to check, just check. If you have to dilute the developer, then do so, but just as little as possible. Does the Foma kit provide for a separate developer solution for first and second dev? If so, pinch some second dev to top up the first (as long as its actually the same developer formula that is ... it may be a different developer). good luck, rt

of course, if 1.6 was the correct exposure, then pushing 1 stop will mean over exposing 1 stop. If the lighting was even, and you are prepared to trust the camera's light meter, then process 1 roll normally and see.

g'day garry, there is no way for us to know if the film needs pushing or pulling or whatever - there are just too many variables. But lets make a few assumptions. lets assume that the camera is working the way it did back in 1967 when the camera was made (43 years ago!!). So lets assume the meter is working. If it read 2.8, then 2.8 is correct for 160 asa film (which is what that model bauer will read tri-x as. Tri-x is actually 200 asa, but all sueper 8 cameras that use automatic asa notch detecting (which all but a few do in one way or another) will rate it either as 160 or 250 asa, not 200. Yours rates it as 160 which is a 1/3rd stop over exposure. That's fine. The next issue is the distribution of the light within the frame. If the scene was uniformly lit, then the exposure meter will have read the scene as accurately as any reflected light meter pointed at the scene, so the result will be correct. If your lighting was patchy, however, then all bets are off - correctness or otherwise will depend on just what the light was falling on compared to what the camera's meter was seeing overall. But lets assume it was evenly lit more or less. Given those assumptions, I think with Tri-x indoors with a daylight boosted by other lights (unless you are just talking domestic light fittings) you will have had enough light. What you should do however is just have one roll processed and ask what the results are like. You might well say, 'I don't have time for that'. Well how much time is there to shoot it again? cheers, richard

yeah, Svema are definitely gone. Tasma is still going though I believe. Its a very impressive list Simon, however of those you list, only Kodak and Orwo make film sold as cine camera film in 16 and 35mm. yes, you can shoot the agfa sound neg and print stock as camera film in both guages . Foma is limited to 16mm reversal as you know, and Ilford do advertise one stock as suitable for cine use but is 100' 35mm only I believe. As for Lucky, Fuji, Efke, Berger, Adox etc., I don't believe these companies offer bw cine film at all - though i would happily be proven wrong. You might be able to get a 100' length of 35mm, but surely not at a cine price. richard

This is a new version of Portra 400 only just released. Kodak describe it as based on Vision 3 technology.

To answer your question about grain, film processed as a negative will in general have more apparent grain than the same film processed as reversal. This is because during exposure, a greater proportion of the larger silver hailide crystals have managed to be hit by a photon of light than the smaller crystals. This means that during first (or negative) development, there are more of the larger crystals developed into silver than the smaller ones - so the negative image comprises larger crystals, which, as clumps, are the visible grain. In reversal, these larger crystals are then bleached out, leaving a greater proportion of the smaller crystals to form the positive image during the second development stage. cheers, richard

Hi Thomas, if you have managed to devise a process that results in a negative image from Fomapan R100 reversal film, then you are the first! It struck me as odd when you wrote above that you had managed to re-bleach back to a negative one of the films which had come out black after second development. Bleaching takes off all the silver. It does so progressively of course. The thinner bits will dissolve quicker than the thicker bits. It also works from the edges of the film towards the centre. The bleach used in colour processes can work differently; instead of being a disolving bleach which dissolves the silver out, it can be a converting bleach which converts the developed silver back to silver hailide. The fixer then dissolves the silver hailide out. I don't quite know why Blix (bleach-fix) would have the effect you have achieved, unless it is just that you pulled the film out before the image dissapeared completely. I am intregued to know more about what you have done. cheers, richard

right, if what you can see during re-exposure are black images, then the bleach hasn't done its job. There should be no black at all. None whatsoever. The black is silver, and all developed silver from the first development should be washed away by the bleach, leaving only un-developed silver-haylide. Yes, you can see a version of your photographed imagery, however the scene should only be visible as the absense of silver-haylide. Fomapan has a silver anti-halation backing on the base side of the film. This too should be bleached away by the bleach. I suspect the brown layer you see is the anti-halation silver backing indicating that the bleach is the problem. Failure to bleach would result in completely black film upon re-developing. ARe you sure you are mixing the bleach properly? Is it a potasium permangenate bleach or a potasium dichromate bleach? What acid is involved? cheers, richard

Hi Thomas, when you say you can see what you shot when you have the lights on during re-exposure, what do the images look like? Do you see any black on the film (which is developed silver like a conventional silver negative)? Or is what you are seeing basically a cream coloured roll of film (with no silver) but with a faint trace of the images you shot still visible as a slightly lighter cream colour? If there is any silver there at all from the images you shot (ie if there is any black at all on the film after bleaching) then your bleaching isn't doing the job it is supposed to. So tell us about the image you see during re-exposure. richard

So was Dominic. The anti-halation method used with current kodak b/w films ins't a backing at all, but rather the film-base tint method that Dominic was discussing. This isn't something that is removed during processing.

Good on you Mr Wittner! This is great news. Thanks Andries for finding this out and posting it. Yes, all super 8 at Kodak goes through a Ds8 phase these days (ie sprocketed super 8 on the edges in 16mm width). Theoretically Kodak could supply their entire super 8 range in Ds8 in this length. But they have never been willing to do this in the past. I am glad they are going to do this for Mr Wittner with 100d.

The current plus-x and tri-x reversal stocks are on a grey tinted base anyway. Not sure why they did that or whether earlier generations (previous to the previous generation) of plus-x and tri-x were on a clear base.

quite extraudinary super 8 work on all fronts!

I am after a 35mm synchroniser - 2 or more gangs. Anyone have one they might sell? cheers, richard