What would life be without my morning pour-over? Today it's a Brazilian variety. Freshly ground, of course. The prints in front of me are from last night. They were still damp in the morning. The new darkroom in the basement is bloody cold and the prints take ages to dry down there. But now that I've brought them up to the warm living room they are literally drying in my hands. Fast. With a nice strong curl, which is getting stronger as I keep sipping my coffee. Delicious. Maybe I should get one of those T-shirt presses to flatten them. I leaf through the prints. This one's on Ilford FB matte paper. 20x25cm. The shadows have almost no detail. And the matte paper pulls it even further down the scale. Or so I think. But in the negative the shadows are fairly empty anyway, so I reckon it's alright with how black they appear. The blacks with this paper are actually quite gorgeous. They have a charcoal quality. I wonder: could this be related to the paper developer at all? I've been using Adotol Konstant, which is the Adox packaging of some old Orwo formula. This coffee is delicious... the chocolaty notes are coming through now. Not completely sure about the lady in the shadows though. I guess it's alright. There just isn't any more detail that I could've brought out there. And isn't it nice when straight lines make burning and dodging a child's game? The exposure was 17 seconds at Grade 2 on my Focomat 2c, but the sky needed 50% more for some tone. So I dodged the dark triangle at the top - which really is the underside of an overhanging highway - for 8 seconds with a straight card during the main exposure and then simply burned in for 8 seconds from the top of the building. Thus, the sky got its additional 50% and the dark rectangle remained at the original exposure for minimal shadow detail. Kentmere 400 film here, exposed at EI400. I can't fault it. It's good. But then almost anything seems to be good when shot with the Rollei. Except maybe Foma 400. What a disappointment those two rolls were. One was so bad I threw the negs away. That was my first and last try of Foma 400. It just doesn't have any speed. Cheap but no speed. Shot at EI400 they looked at least 2 stops underexposed. The coffee seems to get even tastier now. Isn't 20x25cm a bit small? Or am I just too used to 24x30cm. Maybe I should let the thought simmer and see how I feel about it later.
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