I am an Idiot….

OK, some gear talk now. I know I said no more such things but I have to confess…. I am a bloody idiot!

I got a very nice Contax Tvs camera off eBay last week. Works like a charm, feels great and has just the bells and whistles I want, manual aperture, manual focus if I need it, and flash can de disables permanently. What’s more, the Tvs is supposed to have a great little zoom lens. Not as good as the contax T2 or T3 fixed focal lenses, but good, as in really good.

So I gave the camera a quick checkup and decreed it fit for action. I loaded a roll of HP5 and snapped away – just test shots you know, nothing important.

Feeling great I developed my film this morning in my trusty Rodinal…. and was disappointed.

Completely underexposed! Crappy camera! Bloody eBay! Not again! 

This was the best Lightroom could do with the negative – definitely not great! Grainy, splotchy, ugly….

I sent a mail to the seller, a reputable professionnal in Germany, hoping to get a quick refund.

Some hours later it occurred to me that, well, it’s unthinkable, but couldn’t I have made some kind of an error….

I have used stand development for the last rolls, but this time I didn’t want to wait that long for the results, so I used a ‘normal’ development method…. but I completely messed up the soup. I used a 1+100 mixture of Rodinal instead of the correct 1+50.

Imagine the results… UNDERDEVELOPED, NOT UNDEREXPOSED!

So I am an idiot – I wrote the seller an apology. I lit some candles… not, not that, but I could have slapped myself.

Now it’s on with the second test-roll (what a luck that film is so cheap…not!). I’ll keep you updated with the results….