I've finally started working on processing those 30 sheets of large format film I shot with the Pink Cow back when Andrés and Amy were here last month. Enough time has passed that I've forgotten what I took pictures of, so it's like a sense of discovery to pull them out of the tank and go, "Oh, yeah! Awesome!"

I've done six so far, and there's already a few that look promising. It's hard to tell for sure until they're scanned, but there are a few of these that I remember being happy with as I took the picture, and it seems they did in fact turn out as I was visualizing. That's a satisfying feeling that doesn't seem to happen to me often, for some reason...

Developing them is so much easier with this UniColor motorized drum. Just load the sheets of film into the tank in a light-tight changing bag, then set the tank on the machine, pour in the developer, turn it on, start the timer, and walk away. Come back ten minutes later to change to the next chemical. Much better than sitting in the dark, shuffling sheets of film in trays, breathing chemical fumes for half an hour.

The drum supports four sheets at a time, but you need some way to keep them from overlapping. I've tried four different times to make various ingenious devices to act as separators, but all have failed. So for now I'm just doing two at a time (which can be done safely without a separator). It takes a little more time, but it's so effortless that it really doesn't matter. Eventually I'll try again to make a divider, but for now I'm content to do two or three runs a day and get six pictures developed. Scanning is the only part that really takes a long time now with these 4x5" negatives — fixing all the dust spots in those 20 square inches of film can take over half an hour per photo. There are definitely some upsides to digital... But then you hold a large format Velvia slide in your hands and decide maybe it's worth all the effort :)