agfapan

Boston, LA, Back to Maine - Agfapan APX 400 - Late 2019, Early 2020

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Boston, LA, New Orleans, Back to Maine - Agfapan APX 400 - Early 2020

There’s nothing quite like exploring a (relatively) unfamiliar city.

Boston should be more familiar to me -- I grew up two hours away from it. For about six months I’d go down every saturday to an extracurricular at MIT, then do Boston School of Rock. A couple years later I spent three weeks learning to make a guitar there — It’s a shit guitar. I mean I love it but it’s kinda shit. At any rate I stopped through the city on my way back to LA this year I think I did last year? Maybe it was two years ago. I can’t remember -- admittedly my brain/sense of time has kinda gone to shit (NB: I wrote this bit pre-covid -- my sense of time’s just gotten worse since then).

I got to the city fairly early on the Tuesday to basically just wander and shoot while I waited for a friend - the same friend who I visited last time I stopped through Boston - Shout out Andy - hopefully we’ll get to go do beers again soon.

At this point I’m working on my eventual giant stupid lab report or “what I learned shooting” on Agfapan APX 400 (original, german made, not the Harman/Kentmere stuff) -- I developed all of this in their/all the fucking stupid old mens’ forum’s favorite for it - Rodinal Spezial, which I will refer to as “spezial” from here on out to avoid confusion with Rodinal (which I also tried). They’re actually very different developers - the branding/naming is wildly unhelpful. I’m not enamoured of it, even though it has like a six minute development time at 20ºC. If you bother to read the safety sheet, it looks pretty similar to the modern Rollei RPX developer (which kinda tracks when theoretically RPX is the modern successor to APX), and HC-110 which I’ve never seen straight prints/scans from that I’ve particularly liked - setting aside Brendon Holt’s work on film -- also I’ve come round a bit more - HC-110 does also tend to look really good with kodak 400tx/Kodak Tri-x.

I pushed everything to 800 for safety. It’s alright? Like overall it’s okay and the photos are still solid but I’ve gone on to shoot more of the film and process in xtol 1:1 -- and frankly - it’s preferable by a long shot - the film bows way less than it normally does in the Spezial, less grainy, has a sharper edge to it - likewise if or when I run the film in standard Rodinal I’d expect quite a bit of grain - (it’s an old tech film) - but general sharper or edgier results (look for that further down).

Anyway, I decided to run all around Boston, Boston proper mind you -- for those unfamiliar with the area, the “city” of Boston is really made up of like 100 (exaggerating) smaller cities. I basically made a giant loop through the north end, and met up with Andy at the end of the day near Boston College. There wasn’t much light at that point so I don’t have too many photos from there on.

As much as Boston is an Old Colonial city, I honestly find that I tend towards shooting the skyscrapers and the brutalist public structures that crowd the main business district. I definitely shot less than I thought I would on this trip/visit, even given a whole day - in fairness I’ve gotten a lot choosier about the shots that I take.

Also in the spirit of changing stuff up, I tried to employ a looser/faster shooting style and more hipshooting to continue to push my previsualization skills -- also to try and feel out what shooting more like Moriyama feels like. I think I got mixed results. It felt okay at first, and there’s a bunch of stuff I do like, but I’m not 100% how I feel about the whole thing -- I think if I’d picked a developer or a contrast ratio that was a bit punchier and gave the photos a harder edge that might’ve helped some. Food for thought.

In other notes this is still a fairly early outing for me with the Minolta Rokkor-x w 35mm f/1.8 - though still equipped to the ever-constant Minolta XD-11. Some of the compositions are a little awkward, I’m still kind of wrapping my brain around the lens - I haven’t or hadn’t really gotten it under my fingers or in my brain all the way, but overall the look or angle of view has grown a lot on me. That said, I think I’d prefer the 1.4 of my 50mm than the 1.8 of the 35mm - I know that’s like ⅓ stop distinction but when it gets dark that ⅓ seems to make a world of difference - or like you’d be shocked at that difference.

I shot the film at 1600 and 3200. Not much better — take a look above and below for examples.

I’ve later come around and decided to merge this with my review overall of APX 400, and my return to maine photoblog - because it hasn’t really been all that long, and it’d be a really short post otherwise.

I think if I learned anything shooting the APX it’s that some film is just straight up dogshit awful - like theoretically there are good photos but like whatever. I feel like it’s worth noting that even the kenmere/harman (Agfaphoto APX 400) version of the emulsion is also terrible - and wildly expensive.

I basically packed all my shit up in about a week before lockdowns went into full/heavy effect in LA and then fucked off home back to Maine because, believe it or not, before covid, I was actually pretty tired of LA - no disrespect to anyone currently living there or from there - I just couldn’t hack it there anymore for my own personal reasons - it’s nobody’s fault but my own. I’ve wrapped up a few projects - which may or may not see the light of day.

Pretty quick after getting back to maine (and quarantining indoors for two weeks) - I scored up a camera kit containing a Minolta Rokkor MC-II 58mm f 1.2 (and some other bits) - to sell - which had some issues, but overall has performed fine - but I used that along with some of the APX 400 to finish testing it - I’m still definitely going to be selling it - I still prefer the MC PG Rokkor 50mm f/1.4 - for a 50ish lens length if for no other reason than familiarity, and that I personally believe my copy is magic - even though I seem to have really switched to 35mm in a big way. 

The final variable is that the last three rolls I did of APX 400 were in Renatto Repetto’s Coldinal Method - stand at 2hrs 1:50 +/- 40ºF --- and quite frankly that’s probably the best in terms of tonality that the film does. That said, it’s a medium/high speed film, in rodinal, and that just ruins any kind of reproducibility at any size bigger than 3x5 or 5x7 if you’re being really generous. And I’m not usually a stickler for technical capability in film - though I did love acros (original acros, not acros II - It doesn’t look the same no matter what anyone tells me - the tonal scale is distinctly different), when it was still alive and available. Honestly, there’s nothing I do with the original agfapan apx 400 that isn’t basically garbage - Will Hopkins (who’s got a travelogue in the works for us) seems to have had great results - so I dunno, but personally, between the flat and strange (strange bad) tonality, and the fucking miserable bowing that the film does, making it flat out soulcrushing to scan, I will never buy another roll of it to shoot myself, even if I can get it for cheap. Actually, if I were going to shoot another “budget” option it’d probably be a fomapan. They look nice, and dry flat - which makes it a clear pick if you want to buy a lot of film cheap - and you employ a scanning/hybrid method.

APXSpezial20200415_0661.jpg

Anyway. Thanks for giving this a read - really the words (and gear talk) is just here to push my seo ranking, so thanks, and sorry for any bloviation. If you like the content, subscribe to our patreon, throw me a donation, or pick up a zine - if you subscribe or donate all the funds go towards hosting content, rather than help me recoup from projects. 

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Downtown Los Angeles -- 11/18//1/19

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Los Angeles 11/18//1/19

My primary mode of image making (yeah, I know it’s cringy to put it that way, or I find it cringy) -- generating work? -- is to go walk around and look or hunt for for sights or landscapes to adequately express both my own feelings and thoughts, with the feeling of the place integrated into that. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t. I’d wager most of what I do ends up getting buried on my hard drive or dumped here -- not because it’s bad, but because I feel like it’s just better viewed as a large dump of images, and it’s not necessarily my “strongest” or most directly competitive work. But I still think a lot of it is neat, and I like to get into the habit of sharing stuff so it doesn’t completely rot away on my hard drive. Also notably most of that day-to-day practice is shot in and around Downtown Los Angeles, so this is maybe two of my more serious, more real sets or studies, on an area I shoot often.

Walk 1: I try and shoot the Bonaventure.

So here’s (I guess a re-do) of part of my Agfapan APX 100 review -- broken into two primary walks. The first walk was with the Minoltina AL-S (I mean another re-do review?) -- up into a part of downtown or the financial district I haven’t really explored too much before -- ideally to get a good shot of the Bonaventure -- but also to kind of explore the corporate parks that seem to crop up around the financial district. I know public space seems to be required for a lot of zoning laws here in Los Angeles, but I’m slowly slipping into the opinion that I’d rather have a real park be easily accessible via direct taxes on those buildings and have it well maintained than some weirdo corporate park that, unless you’re willing to hunt for it, nobody knows exists. Unless the corporate parks are private property that exist for no discernable reason aside from some kind of vanity.  It’s a strange phenomena, and I’ve only ever seen it in Los Angeles. Food for thought.

For the camera -- I dunno. I’ve inherited another couple “compact” rangefinders between last year and this one -- I’d wager it’s getting dangerously close to a year since I shot the first batch of photos -- the AL-s is really actually a nice rangefinder given that it’s compact, cheap etc. The frame-lines are pretty accurate (if there’s only one set of framelines is it frameline?) and on top of that the finder itself has breathing room around the lines, which to me, is the single biggest advantage to shoot rangefinder over SLR. There are other advantages, but being able to see what’s around your image while looking through the finder is a huge plus, and it made me second guess a lot of these photos way less than I would normally at that point in time.

The film itself -- on that first trip/walk I know shot at 100 I developed all the Agfa APX 100 in Rodinal 1:50 and pushed to somewhere between 160 and 240 via semi-stand development (agitate normally the first 3 minutes, then 1-2 gentle rotations every third minute) The look is pretty good, or like I like the baseline, but it’s grainer than I’d hoped it would be, or like I wish I’d gotten more grain masking -- though I wonder if that only comes into play via true stand development. Either way, I was happy or proud enough to go see an area near my house (apartment) I rarely if ever actually go explore or see. In it of itself there’s no strong feeling or thought here, but it’s interesting enough to warrant posting up.

Walk 2: the one where I get a cold, but it’s worth it because it never rains here, and I get to capture Downtown Los Angeles in exactly as depressing and cold a manner as it feels, figuratively.

Yeah basically read the title on that one. I dunno. I was saving this and the last one for the megabus I was going to called “bury me in LL Bean” but I’ve nixed that project. It’s super fucking narccistic to think I actually need or deserve a retrospective of the last five years (almost six?). I dunno, I’ve gotten significantly better but it’s not like I’m a big enough deal, even in my own mind these days, to warrant any kind of retrospective.

(APX 100 1:50 to the left, Tri-x 1600/3200 below)

So much belated, this is probably the last chapter of that five year period. Unimportant as it is. I’m sure I need to purge it somewhere. So why not here, on the home of Wasteland Books, which is simultaneously a zine and or idea graveyard for myself, and maybe a platform too. Have y’all bought anything? 

Anyway, I tried to keep a consistent profile across the walk, which, after my camera (I was running with the XD-11) got shorted out -- and started having extreme technical difficulties -- I was stuck shooting the built in mechanical shutter at 1/100 and crutched at f/4 -- which while not  particularly slow or particularly wide open, is still less control than I’d ideally like to have had. And the camera still went ersatz again towards the end. Notably I did throw in a roll of Kodak Tri-X pushed to 1600 or shot at 1600 and pushed to 3200 (either way in xtol 1:1) in the mix, along with a roll of Kodak T-max 100, developed in rodinal 1:100, in my then totally crippled camera at the very end, because I’d finally burnt the XD-11 to the ground.  (Agfapan APX 100 1:50 Below)

You’d think the repair techs at my local camera shop would be happier to see me back as often as I was during that period. Mostly they seemed annoyed Which I guess is also fair -- the XD-11, according to them at least, is pretty miserable to fix. 

Again, I encountered more corporate parks on that walk. Or I guess because it’s attached to government buildings, government corporate parks. Just badly designed civic features. Most of my focus was on banal tired construction and the undercurrent streets between downtown and chinatown. This was also before I figured out canned air was a thing, and at this point I can’t really be bothered to re-scan everything, as this is now non-essential or competitive work.

So that’s downtown in the rain, or around the rain. A bunch of good photos, and photos that’d probably otherwise be clipped out. It’s basically just a way for me to show work in progress.

Overall, I like my results, give or take some fallibility. I also prefer the look of one developer/film combo, one lens, etc, over shooting a smorgasbord all at once, but it’s okay here. I do really love the inky black you can pull out of Agfapan APX 100. 

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(T-max 100 below)