Efke 25 Old School Film Part 2

Field in Sherwood 11

Farmhouse in SherwoodEfke 25 Film

I shot and processed my first roll of Efke 25 black and white film. I did a lot of reading around the internet to determine just how to process this film. I have been shooting with Tri-X almost exclusively and processing with D-76. With this film I wanted to challenge myself and I decided to process with Rodinal which is now called R09 One Shot. It is the same chemistry as the legendary Rodinal so I will refer to the chemistry as Rodinal. I decided to develop the roll by way of stand developing. I bought some Rodinal from Blue Moon Camera and Machine.

I was nervous about developing the film. I wanted to get the ratio proper and I did not want to waste this roll. I went on line and found a wide range of ratios and processes. There were many references to Rodinal and how it was the best to develop this slow fine grained film. I dove right in I mixed the chemistry and processed the film. I was so excited when I finally hung the film to dry. Wow the grain structure was amazing. Although something was a little off the base was weird looking. It wasn’t clear. I took the processed film to Blue Moon we talked about why the film look the way it did.Wall 15 I finally realized that I mixed the Rodinal as 10 to 100 or 1:10 not 1:100.

The film was way over processed, although some of the images looked cool. As I said I was totally impressed with the grain of the film. I have another roll in my camera now. I took it to Montana with me on our Christmas vacation and am dying to see the results this time with the 1:100 ratio. More later…