I don't know if this is so much of an entry as a record of what I did and perhaps my plan to mitigate the problems in the next try.

• First roll of Arista Ultra 400, expired 10/2008. (I have two rolls.)
• No AE finder metering, all frames metered with a Sekonic L-508
• First roll developed at home
• Film is VERY curled after drying in the closet. Difficult to scan.

Shooting Notes

All the shots are using the 80mm lens and metered with the Sekonic. I expected that some shots will be totally useless, as I had the Sekonic set to spot for several frames (with the cap on) and thought I was using the ambient meter.

Development Notes

First washed with distilled water at 80º. This turned out to be a good move—it took off most of the dyes (the solution poured out a greenish color) and brought the film to working temp.

Followed instructions on the DF96 from Cinestill, added 25 seconds for development time at 80º to account for pouring the chemical in. Full tank (490 mL), agitated for 45 seconds, still for 30 sec, agitate again for 30 sec every 30 sec. Roughly.

Finished with distilled water wash, then wash under tap water for 5 mins 25 sec.

Development was...not a total success. Some images were fine, and others were really spotted. The film was super slimy out of the tank, so I felt like I needed to wash it again under the tap after unspooling. I wasn't sure if water spots would appear (the Wasatch Front has seriously hard water).

Digitizing Notes

Expect this will be the same every time for the next little while (not investing in fluid mounting, or different hardware, or shooting film into RAW DSLR files). I used the Epson V600 Photo scanner, using the Epson adapter. VueScan is set to save RAW DNGs. From there I imported into Lightroom and processed using Negative Lab Pro.

Scanned in using Ilford XP2/400 “preset” in VueScan, all other settings normal.

I'm pretty happy with the results from using VueScan and Negative Lab Pro, with the default hardware that comes with the Epson V600 flatbed. I'm sure I'll N+1 this setup as well, but I'll have to get past development errors.

The results:

Conclusion

I've got some work to do. I think the first step is to run the same process, but use a known-good film stock to eliminate that variable. I'd probably also use the prism metering rather than the Sekonic, at least until I better understand the latter (and again, to eliminate metering as a variable). And I think I should wash with distilled as the last step, rather than the first step after development.

The Lab-Box instructions state that an exposed film should be tightly rolled for at least a day if it's a film that's been in the camera for some time. I'll try in the next week or so to find some time to shoot a roll and wait until a weekend to develop it. Perhaps that can reduce some of the weird streaks and curling (hypothesis: the film was rolled incorrectly, and touching.)

I've ordered some Photo-Flo and a Paterson squeegee to see if that helps prior to hanging the film, and I'll still need to devise a way to weight it better. Films that come back from the lab stay flat and are easy to scan, but this roll was challenging.

Even though most of these are junk frames, I'm excited to continue experimenting.