Lab-Box success and failure August 2019
It was an epic two year wait from the Kickstarter pledge, but it finally arrived ... the Lab-Box! Modular daylight film developing box for 35mm & 120. Ive tried a Paterson, with clumsily hoofing the 35mm film onto the reel in a dark bag, feeling awkward and not knowing what I'm doing, so this seemed so much easier. Having loaded up my M6 with Ars-Imago 320, I ended out for a few hours with a friend to use a roll and when we got back, he was first as he had to leave early. Carefully reading and re-reading the instructions, and about 20m later, his roll came out well developed, so my turn. Again, some time (less time) later and mine popped out well developed. Success! The monolith is so easy, one chemical. Now, I understand the advantages of the Paterson, the primary being that you can develop more than one roll simultaneously, whereas with Lab-Box you have too clean the tank and rolls and dry them, it's not a big hassle and I only intend to use it maybe once a month anyway. So, a week later I've used another roll and want to develop it, excitedly doing the process myself. Well unfortunately user-error crept in. I think I firstly wound the film too quickly onto the spool with the crank, and then gave it an extra tug for luck. I think this was my downfall as whilst I did somewhat rapidly spin the crank for the 8min dev time (cocky and impatient) when I came to pull the film out, it was all stuck together. My guess is the film was too tight on the spool. I managed to save 4 frames, the final 4 images below, so it definitely developed properly. Im now keen to try another roll and pace myself better, and then try 120.
