Finally I managed to arm myself with some more negatives – two whole films’ worth in fact. Sadly, few of them were particularly interesting. Just over a whole film was given over to some macro shots in a makeshift ’studio’ rigged up in the back room. After a promising test run in digital form, I had reasonable hopes for the silver halide versions, but things didn’t really pan out. Firstly I’d totally forgotten about reciprocity – not really an issue with digital – so everything was underexposed; and secondly the images are just soft. I’m not sure to what extent that’s down to me and to what it’s down to the lens, but it’s not the easiest one to focus (half the focusing ring tends to be black most of the time) and all the images I’ve had out of it have been soft. Not to mention the prominent vignetting at the 300mm end of the zoom. Anyway, for whatever reason, they’re woolly images and as such they simply don’t work.

The remainder of the shots didn’t really grab me either – a handful had some merit but failed to convince me that they were particularly interesting or aesthetically pleasing. But at least this week they weren’t underexposed by two stops…

Unfortunately when it came to the darkroom I was flustered by having so many new images and so little time in which to print them. I ended up running around madly trying to guess exposure times and comprehensively failed to do anything in any sort of calm, considered manner. As a result, the two prints I did make were skewed, marked and the tonality was barely adequate. Still much to learn, methinks.