Srivatsan Chari’s Photoblog

It’s all started when I found Fujifilm Superia 800 Color Film (NOW WITH 4th LAYER!!!!!1) lying around, expiring its ass off on a dirt-gathering shelf of some corner shop.

So like any other fool, I bought 3 of them.

Which i waited for a long time before shooting.

So, last umm… Junewasit? when i went to bombay, I decided to do some propah street in bombay

buttofcourse, i just end up taking pictures of friends and animals.

the cretins at the studio, didn’t scan all 38 photographs, they decided that 25 is a nice number to stop at.

Which brings me to an important public service announcement.

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If you are in Dubai, more specifically Bur Dubai,
PLEASE DO NOT GO TO “AL MAMOORA STUDIO” for ANYTHING.

They’re overpriced, they’ve got SHIT quality and SHITTIER service and are just general douchebags.

People who know NOTHING about photography should NOT be allowed to work in photo-studios.

So please, do yourself a favor, go to some other photo studio, where people are AS clueless, but more polite.

——————————————————–

So yeah, forgive that rant, but consider it seriously if youknowhatimsayin…

ok, back on track now…

all shots taken with my 28mm f/2.8… i think…

as always, i must apologize for the scan quality, al mamoora are shittier IRL than their name would make it seem.

Late at night, public bus in bombay,

moar

cab, i shot it for teh lulz bokeh

anuj acting apprehensive and all, actually assholes assume anuj as an ass

no, we weren’t drinking

anuj and shreyans, with his canon ae1 (smexy camera that!) at mcdonalds in bombay

Scene at shankara. shyamla, squirrel, shreyans; Srivatsan shot said scene.

thats true youknow, “success means never having to wear a suit”

shruti, reviewing pictures on the canon

and finally, my thing de resistance

a diptych, its brilliant how it accurately portrays shreyans,

there are 3-4 good ones on the roll, but since douchebag inc. a.k.a. al mamoora studios didn’t feel like scanning them, i’m not gonna be able to show them off for some time.

cheerio!

and if you DO shoot film, try superia 800,
its got great tones, (although i suspect the old-times-quality on this is due to it being expired)
it tolerates pushing upto 1600, very fine grain

all in all, sex film.

Prettehness is all around me, too bad i dont get any =(

ahem,

So, I had this kodak academy 200 roll sitting around waiting to be developed.
(I bought it in bombay, for 30 rupees =], 3 months expired)
Since i use ilford chemistry, i  couldnt consult the all-knowing bottle of ilfosol S.
So, i go to our god, google.

“kodak academy 200 ilford developer” nothing useful
“kodak academy 200 ilfosol s” again, nothing useful, just stuff in Cyrillic for some reason
“kodak 200 ilfosol s” again, stupid Cyrillic results

and so on and so forth…  Apparently NOONE on the internets has any idea how long kodak academy 200 black and white film should be developed for, in ilfosol S. or maybe they arent allowed to speak of it.

stupid worker and parasite.

All i figured out was, that kodak academy 200 (asedfiuhwst9324r8t bah, its too long, ill call it KAT), yes KAT was sold almost exclusively in east europe and asia. Of course, all of them have access to kodak chemistry, but this being dubai, i’m stuck with ilford chemicals (not that they’re bad or anything).

Someone almost used ilfosol s with KAT, but she posted on a forum asking if she should. And some jerk asked her to use d76 instead… bah..

So I checked out developing times for KAT with a bunch of different developers, and after going through the data like i was some kinda genius, I decided to go for 8 minutes at 20degrees.

I did a clip test too, (on leader + blank frame + blank frame + half a frame) and the results looked a tad oveprocessed so i decided to go with 7.5 minutes instead.

And, what happened?

Nothing serious, just low contrast. Should’ve just developed for 8 minutes.

Sigh, oh well, like myprivateparty says, “if you haven’t fucked anything up, you haven’t lived”

Anyway, I used Ilfotol, the wetting agent this time. Its just outrageous how they charge me 60 dirhams for a litre of Ilfotol and ask me to use at 1:200 dilution!!
I mean, what kinda shitty underhanded tactic is this? its gonna take me a lifetime to go through that bottle of ilfotol.

So, for anyone in the same predicament as me, googling and navigating through gibberish in Cyrillic desperately looking for developing times, heres a heads up

KODAK ACADEMY 200 IN ILFORD DEVELOPER ILFOSOL S SUGGESTED DEVELOPING TIME – 8 MINUTES AT 20 DEGREES CENTIGRADE

KODAK ACADEMY 200 BLACK AND WHITE FILM PROCESSING IN ILFOSOL S (1+9) AT 20 DEGREES CELSIUS SUGGESTED DEVELOPING TIME IS 08 MINUTES

(i do hope Celsius and Centigrade are the same)

ENDUT HOCH HECH!!!

All shots with the yashica fx-3 and the TOU / FIVE STAR 28mm lens i bought off ebay for 24$

I shot this roll at a bunch of places, started off with the iftar deviantmeet at johnnyrockets in MOE

utterclutter. pretteh no?

Pichkyon! its Zixyon!

His name is Omar, Abu Omar…

Funny guys, nice though

An American from erm, America, working in dubai as a flasher.
Two Lithuanians from Malta working in dubai making… yes… you guessed it, flash games!!!!
And a Rana, being scene.

Rob Phillips, Pavél Žuk, Ignatius Žuk and Rana Yourmom.

(those lithuanians make some darn good games, check em out:  http://deartistofwar.deviantart.com

Pretteh lady with a bottle of coke

Theres a pretteh lady somewhere there

Pretteh lady  Hot buns  Tape a L’oeil  Hot nuts!!!

Then, a few days later, to Gourmet Burger Kitchen in uptown mirdiff.

They serve the SHITTIEST burgers. But they look quite good. Meh, that describes dubai as well.

Please DO go there if you enjoy peanut butter in your chicken burger and burnt brinjal and fenugreek leaves in your veggie burger.

Sigh, what a perfect waste of money they are…

My veg burger…

Wineat laughing in his head, looking at vivek struggling with his veggie burger…

Arun laughing, looking at vivek struggling with his veggie burger…

Vivek, feeling emo about the veggie burger…
He’s probably feeling sorry for wasting the burger, and scared that it might be flushed into the sea and go to the king of the sea and cry to him and he would be punished for wasting food.

Religion is teh suXXorz =)

High point of the outing? I got to see a cobra =)

Ok, so i lied, thats the only pretteh car…

Later that night, at new abra stand…

We end with a pretteh girl… Who hid behind vince in a crowded foodcourt coz she doesnt like being photographed
But, i’m trycurious =)

So, cheers from dubai, home of shitty negscanners and <puke>Gourmet</puke> burgers!

to quote Europe’s favourite cat and mouse team,

ENDUT HOCH HECH

(someone please tell me if that means anything)

Evening all!

And guess what? Ive finally done it, Ive FINALLY processed my first roll of black and white film =)

TMAX 100 BW film using
Ilford Ilfosol S (dilution: 1+9) @ 8.5 minutes / 20°C
Ilford Ilfostop (dilution: 1+19) @ 15 seconds / 20°C
Ilford Rapid Fixer (dilution: 1+4) @ 2.5 minutes / 25°C [couldn't help it, the clock was ticking, and the fixer wasn't cooling!]

Apparatus :

300 ml each of the aforementioned chemicals (at respective dilutions) purchased at salaam studios in wafi mall, Dubai
Processing tank, film spool, thermometer purchased at Standard Supplies in VT, Bombay
Measuring cup (MAX 160ml HA!) borrowed from the kitchen
My bathroom
Random stuff- clip, a pair of scissors, tub with cold water (to maintain the temperature at 20°C)

Manual : The Ilford developing manual

Yes! so teh process begins!

So, i got everything in the bathroom, measured everything out, and put the mugs with chemicals a small tub with cold water to get the temperature down to 20. Then came the time to remove the film from the canister

[Yes i have a lot of garnier fructis stuff, so there]

Which turned out to be a challenge since i didnt have the film-opener-thingy and since i was working in the dark. So, i called up my friend, and he said, use your fingers, pry the sides out, and so i did. AND IT WORKS!!! ha, so i did, and transferred the entire film onto the spool, and stuck that thing into the tank.

Yay! and i thought that was the hard part, HA!

Now, comes the pouring of chemicals and the agitation and the timing and the whatnot.

Developer in, shake well for 8.5 minutes, pour out
Stop bath in, shake well for atleast 10 seconds, pour ou
Rapid fixer in, shake well for atleast 3 minutes (i brought it down to 2.5 minutes since the fixer was @ 25°)
Running water at 20° for atleast 10 minutes, and well, since this is the sunny and shitty dubai, there was no way i was getting running water at 20° atleast in the summer, so i had to use the tub full of water, pour out the water and change the water after every 10 seconds, some 10 times. (which is actually a good thing, im saving water)

and, a word of caution to everyone, PLEASE MAKE SURE THE FUCKING LID IS FUCKING CLOSED BEFORE YOU START INVERTING AND AGITATING THE STUFF!!! now you know why i smell of developer =P

Yep, as you can see, its all done =)

Now, the time came to retrieve the negatives from the spool (drum roll please) and i was scared as fuck, i was half expecting it to come out retarded.

and they did, well, atleast thats what i thought, coz the first frame i saw was completely black, and then i realized that was just because i shot it that way.

BUT, as you can see, they came out teh kewl!!!

w00t w00t!!!! so there you have, negatives, almost perfectly developed, a tad overdeveloped methinks, maybe due to the fixer.

The customary shot with the negatives of course =)

and the photos from the film (all taken in and around the mysore palace in mysore) (it sounds funny, mysore, try saying it over and over again)

here it go!

If u look hard, you can see Arun in the bottom of the frame. Yay!

yep, so there you go, the first BW film i processed myself, w00t… I’m real happy with the results, cant wait till i do the next one =)