Milsurp After Hours

I wanted a Yashica GSN and saw an offer for a GSN that looked to be in pretty good shape, although sold as pig in a poke and it was linked with a Canon EOS Elan 7 body. Both for $45 delivered. Well... having some mad money burning a hole in my pocket... I took a chance. I didn't particularly want the Canon but was in hopes the GSN was still functional and would have paid $45 for one in good shape. Well the GSN is in pretty good condition so I felt I came out alright.

The Canon, I put on a 75-300 Canon EF lens and took some slightly out of date Kodak print film and gave it a try. Got my prints back today from the crap shoot Clark Color services. Seems Ok. It is a just a bonus as it turns out. Has lots of bells and whistles for a mid range consumer market camera. Fun to play with.

I needed some new developer for b&w and couldn't find my old standby Kodak D-76. I bought something that was advertised on a reputable photo products site as Formulary TD-16 improved D-76. So today I tried it out.

The mixing of the chemical is a two step process. First one envelope with a slow stir in 120 degree water. It dissolves fairly quickly after looking a little lumpy at first. Then the second envelope of powdered chemical. Gentile stir did not dissolve it quickly. Read the directions and let set fifteen minutes and stirred again and it eventually dissolved.

I loaded Arista film into my Canon EOS Elan 7 and went for an adventure earlier. Hit the Japanese gardens. Lots of white flowers to experiment on. Result.... my developer was probably still too warm for my usual 8 minute development time. Negatives too dark. However, not altogether a waste of film. I kinda like a few of the thick negative images.

Loaded the same camera with the same kind of film and went to some of the same places today to see what a different development in the same chemicals would do. After looking up recommended development times I was a bit confused by the wide margin of possible time to temperature with Arista Edu developed in D-76. D-76 being what this "improved" version is supposed to be like. I saw various time notions but decided to use 8 minutes again at a known 26C temperature this time. That was a bit warm, but probably significantly cooler than whatever I used last time and I should have gone to 7 minutes.....but it worked out. Negatives much more to my liking although still a bit over cooked.