On 02/01/18 08:27, D.M. Procida wrote:
Nick Odell wrote:

On 01/01/18 10:37, D.M. Procida wrote:
Nick Odell wrote:

I've got enough film to keep me out of mischief too.

Do you have a good supplier?

Since Poundland stopped selling Agfa Vista Plus, I've been gloomily
watching my personal stash decline.

If they have it in again (there have always been interruptions in their
supply, but this time there are noises that it may be permanent) I'm
going to buy a couple of hundred rolls and keep them in the freezer.



The guy who runs the austerityphoto.co.uk blog has published an email
reply he received from Poundland confirming that they will not be
stocking Agfa Vista Plus any more, unfortunately.

I saw that too, but I still hope that eventually they'll get hold of
more.

The only things I feel it helps to remember are that very fine grain film
will tend to lose its definition over the years and high speed film will
need de-rating faster than low speed film. My rule of thumb is to halve
the ASA after 5 or 6 years for ASA 800 and above, then halve it again
every ten or so years after that. ASA 400 and below, just halve it every
10-15 years. Works for me.

My needs are strictly fun-based, so I am sure I can get away with it.

Fo Christmas my son gave me a packet of soda crystals, cheap
decaffeinated coffee and vitamin C powder; we're going to try a
home-made developing solution.


Excellent! I've had a lot of fun playing with cafenol I'm sure you've
discovered already but, typing the film brand and speed plus the word
cafenol into google will offer little tweaks to the basic recipe that
may improve the results. There are usually samples to compare. You can
develop C41 colour film such as the Agfa Vista in cafenol but of course
it only comes out B&W and I don't think the results are as good as using
a bona fide B&W film.

A lot of people skip the stop bath these days but if it was good enough
for the old-timers.... I use dilute spirit vinegar.

And to keep everything to kitchen-cabinet chemicals, I use common salt
as a fixer. You must use a fully-saturated solution (that's just under
400g to make up a litre) and the process takes about 24hrs but it does
avoid using chemicals that ought not be tipped down a domestic drain.
Don't forget, all the discarded silver ends up in the fixer so you can
reclaim it by electrolysis if you want to.

Nick