My favorite coffee mug has a turquoise typewriter on it and yes, I use one of my three (four if you want to count my 1950s Olivetti at Casa Terese) typewriters to compose my correspondence to friends and family.
“Fabrique en Chine” is stamped (written?) on the bottom of the mug. Though I do not speak French, that tells me the mug was made in China and somehow got to France. So…
I wonder if the mug was manufactured in China and fabricated in France? Is not the English language spectacular?
Fabricate could mean “to make,” or, to really make up. While I am learning to become fluent in Italian, I discover some English words leave me in a fog. I digress…
Speaking of fog…
In my not-so-trusty freezer I had a box of 50 sheets of TRI-X, 8×10 film. Outdated, but frozen. I let the box thaw in my darkroom then loaded the sheet into my 8×10 Fidelity holders. Up at The River, I committed me some art. Brought the exposures back and to my dismay found the film is iceaged-fogged. So…
I loaded up some HP5 and back to The River I went. Sure enough, a slight fog on the left side of the film (vertical) can be detected. So…
The bellows for the 8×10 is light-leak free. So is the back. So are the holders. So…
It must be the 8×10 tray I use, with baffles and light-tight (?) cover firmly in place. Now…
The manufacturer of said processing tray states it only takes 500cc of chemistry to develop, stop and fix the film. So…
I will take two (very expensive) sheets of UNEXPOSED 8×10 film and process them, one at a time, for that is the capacity of this tray processor. The first I will process in 500cc of chemistry and the second I will process in 1000cc of chemistry. If…
The sheet processed in 500cc of chemistry is fogged and the one in 1000cc is not, then it is the amount of the chemistry involved. Or…
If both are fogged it could be the tray. Then…
I will abandon the tray with the lid and go back to processing sheet films in regular darkroom trays, 8×10 for 4×5 sheets of film and 11×14 for the 8×10 sheets. Just guess…
How many sheets of film I have fogged, or ruined by processing them in darkroom trays? None.
I will just have to use more chemistry. The Lesson…
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
I leave you with two scanned negatives that were fabrique en Buffalo Creek, Colorado.
