14. More testing the lens

   I found on Amazon the other day a really good deal of $69 for a Goddox 400 watts strobe.

   I have had a box of photographic darkroom supplies stored in my attic for 30 years, and found in it a box of 8x10 Kodak T-Max100, a full bottle of HC-110 Kodak developer and a bag of fixer. I questioned Google about using such old film and chemical, and the answer was rather encouraging and suggesting to give a couple more stops of exposure.

    So Randy came over to play yesterday afternoon, loaded up a couple of 8x10 holders with that nearly antique film, and shot some portraits of me as a test of that lens I got for our Big Berta. We mixed a quart of developer and fixer, and processed the film in a rolling tank I used 50 years ago to process 8x10 Cibachrome prints. The first sheet came out blank, so he increased the exposure for the next two. This time, even though it looked blank again on first look, there was a faint image visible over a white background. I processed the last sheet this morning using about 3 times more HC-110 concentrate to mix the developer, and got a still very weak but stronger image:

   I scanned it and processed it in Photoshop. The result surprised me as, disregarding the dust sots due to my dropping the negative on the floor, the tonal range is pretty good for such a grossly underexposed negative

and the image is pretty sharp:

    We will figure out exposure issues at a later date, as the purpose of the test was to see how sharp the lens is, and that is quite satisfactory at f9 for our ultimate purpose.