Earlier this Fall I took a short trip up to Toronto and was fortunate enough to catch some Fall color! I was debating on what camera to take (including digital) but opted for my X-700 with my 50mm and 28mm lenses. I took some Ektar, Portra 800, T-Max 100 and T-Max P3200 but only had time to shoot through the color film. P3200 would have been fun at night but ah well. There was not much time to take photos and I had little time to really plan. I would have liked to shoot a black and white roll just so I could make some darkroom prints but that’s ok, these turned out quite lovely and I plan on having a few prints made at my local lab.
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It was a fun city and I definitely want to visit it (and Canada in general) again! One thing I didn’t get to do was check out CN Tower, but I think I made the right decision to spend my only afternoon checking out the Fall colors anyway.
Negatives were developed by me using a Unicolor C-41 kit in a Patterson tank using the stirring stick method. I recently ran into the Blix versus separate Bleach & Fix argument for color film and also have been possibly running into inconsistencies with 4×5 film. So I’m thinking about getting Kodak chemicals directly and also switching to JOBO tanks – with a hand roller for now. Nothing against Patterson or Unicolor but I do value the archival stability of the film. Part of the reason I shoot film is to have both an analog (my preference) and digital copy. Plus good film isn’t super cheap and making sure I get the best results is important. I might write a separate post if I decide to go the Kodak route, but it’s basically $99 to get started. Not cheap but if I can use all the chemistry the cost per film is about the same as long as I can keep the undiluted developer in good shape.