Seattle Filmworks Cross Processing Experiment

[David]

A couple months back I got a box of free camera gear. This was the lot with the Nikon FE2 (broken) and F3 (in perfect working order -- score) and the Tamron 28-200. But for this post, the important part of the box is one of the 15 rolls of film, a 20-shot roll of Seattle Film Works. I think someone out there still develops SFW, but I honestly couldn't care less. And this had been sitting in some chick's garage for years, so I doubted it was even good. I wanted to know if the other rolls of film stood a chance at being good. So I cross-processed the SFW 200 ISO as monochrome film. The negatives were hard to scan, but the results seem improved over previous efforts. Firstly, here is a link to the whole album:

https://picasaweb.google.com/102333270936007447976/SeattleFilmWorksXPro

Here are some shots that turned out decently.


The scanner noise is back. Per Peter's (?) suggestion, I've been playing around with settings. I changed from previous scans of 360 dpi at 11X14 to 720 dpi at 5X7. I may need to try a higher resolution yet. I've also noticed the scanner noise is more prevalent when the negatives are very thick. In this case, since the SFW film has some kind of coating on it, that thickens the negatives artificially.


I was surprised by how well it captured contrast. I did some gamma correction on all of these to account for the gamma loss caused by the negatives' thickness, but in all the final product for most of the shots is very contrasty.


My favorite from the roll, I felt this captured the rose's petals fairly nicely.


Red and green grass. I think I had a red filter on for this shot. At minimum a yellow filter.


Well, proof positive that I don't live in the high-rent district. This is kinda just how my neighborhood looks.

Anyway, would I specifically target SFW film for future cross processing? as an experiment to bleach away the coating, I'd try that. However, as a serious photographic pursuit, probably not. The negatives' thickness makes scanning very difficult and unenjoyable. But the results, in good hands, could be well worth the effort.

[Scheimpflug]

[David]

I wondered if that might be the case. I am not a fan of remjet.

[Scheimpflug]