First time film processing...
Finally got round to getting my hands dirty (not literally) and processing my first film rolls (Ilford HP5 Plus ISO 400) with the assistance of a kind colleague of mine.
Using a changing bag, I tranferred the two rolls of film from the canisters onto the plastic reel, which was then placed into the developing tank. After 30 mins or so of pouring various fluids (developer, fixer, warm water) in and out of the tank, the images finally appeared on the negative films. With the films being hung up by the door to dry overnight, I was extremely eager to scan them into Photoshop to get a proper look at them.
The following day, I gingerly placed the negs onto the glass of my Canon flatbed scanner (using the film adapters that came with the scanner), started up Photoshop and got my first thumbnail previews of the shots. They looked OK, so I went ahead and scanned a few of them at maximum (3200 dpi) resolution. Much to my surprise, they came out extremely grainy, bordering on being rubbish. I love film grains, but what I was seeing was definitely not the level of grains that you would expect from an ISO 400 film. Worse still, one of the rolls had a vertical streak running down every single frame, and I am still not sure whether it was due to a mistake during processing or from the camera itself (I used different cameras for the two different rolls). Since the other roll does not exhibit this defect, I suspect it is more likely to be the latter.
Anyway three of the "better shots" (which I actually quite like) that came out - the first two I took using the my Canonet 19QL (£15 from eBay!) and the last one using my Cosina 35E (£2 from eBay...) - notice the vertical streak in this last one:
Notice the vertical streak in the following photo:
Using a changing bag, I tranferred the two rolls of film from the canisters onto the plastic reel, which was then placed into the developing tank. After 30 mins or so of pouring various fluids (developer, fixer, warm water) in and out of the tank, the images finally appeared on the negative films. With the films being hung up by the door to dry overnight, I was extremely eager to scan them into Photoshop to get a proper look at them.
The following day, I gingerly placed the negs onto the glass of my Canon flatbed scanner (using the film adapters that came with the scanner), started up Photoshop and got my first thumbnail previews of the shots. They looked OK, so I went ahead and scanned a few of them at maximum (3200 dpi) resolution. Much to my surprise, they came out extremely grainy, bordering on being rubbish. I love film grains, but what I was seeing was definitely not the level of grains that you would expect from an ISO 400 film. Worse still, one of the rolls had a vertical streak running down every single frame, and I am still not sure whether it was due to a mistake during processing or from the camera itself (I used different cameras for the two different rolls). Since the other roll does not exhibit this defect, I suspect it is more likely to be the latter.
Anyway three of the "better shots" (which I actually quite like) that came out - the first two I took using the my Canonet 19QL (£15 from eBay!) and the last one using my Cosina 35E (£2 from eBay...) - notice the vertical streak in this last one:
Notice the vertical streak in the following photo:
Comments
http://www.mattdentonphoto.com/cameras/light_seals/index.html
I doubt it's a difficult thing to fix yourself.
Also, I'm not familiar with the camera, but if it has any kind of little "film window" or whatever it's called that shows you that a roll is loaded, light could be leaking in through that, and simply covering it with some tape might help.
I cannot be sure the light seals are OK (it has certainly gone gluey!) although my previous roll, which had been processed professionally, were OK. This is why I suspect what I am seeing this time is due to an error during processing by myself.
Btw, the Cosina is a 35mm film camera, and it does not have a film window (I presume you are talking about the window thing on say on the back of a Holga?)
I will have to do more "controlled" experiments to work out where the leak is coming from.