Ruth Bancroft Gardens

David · Expire: 2013-01-25

In Walnut Creek there's a three-acre garden center called the Ruth Bancroft Gardens. They specialize in xeric plants and have a very nice collection and yard area. It's $10 to get in, but worth it. I hadn't given my Pentax 6X7 MLU a workout in a few months, so I grabbed eight rolls of film and my three lenses. The film:

1X Kodak Tmax 100
2X Fuji Across 100
1X Fuji Velvia 50
1X Adox 25
1X Kodak Vericolor II (from like 1980?)
1X Kodak Tri-pan (also from like 1980?)
1X Lucky 100

Super sunny conditions, so the light was pretty good for slow film and decent depth. The Adox film developed VERY thin. I used Bluefire high-definition developer and I developed the film for about half as long as I should have (oops.) But, the images, with some contrast enhancement, can be used. So far I've developed the Tmax, Acros, and Adox. So I'll share some of the better photos from that lot.

1 -- Tmax 100, 105mm 1:2.4 at f2.4
Yeah, that's a bee. And yeah, on the 3,200 dpi scan you can make out the legs and head. And yeah, I was like six feet away. This is a pretty amazing lens.

2 -- Fuji Acros 100, 55mm 1:3.5 at 3.5
I really dig this image's flare. And yeah, that pretty much straight into the sun with a wide-angle.

3 -- Fuji Acros, and I think this was the 200mm 1:4 at f4

4 -- Tmax 100, 55mm at f4 or 5.6, I think.

5 -- Adox 25, 55mm at f16

6 -- Fuji Acros, 55mm at f11

I'll have the lab develop the Velvia, but the others I'll develop at home at black and white this week. The Vericolor and old 400 ISO I have almost zero hope for, but we'll see.

The Acros turned out to be more contrasty than normal, by a meaningful amount, because someone's girlfriend distracted him during the developing and it sat for an extra 90 seconds.