Experience of first roll in 510 Pyro

Mamiya C series Twin Lens Reflex cameras are fabulous things, or can be.  Mine had a troubled start in the collection.  It was bought as excellent condition, serviced etc.  From early on it became clear there was a significant front focusing issue.  Vision correction was one possibility and I experimented with that on a good few rolls.  I went to see an optician to discuss it and eventually decided on more detailed trials.  I recorded images versus the focus scale distances and whether I had used my glasses to focus or not.  The outcome seemed to be the front focus issue was there with or without glasses, it just varied the amount slightly.

Time to shim

Having already read about viewfinder shims with these cameras, the next step had to be some shim experiments.  Using thin translucent plastic, a focus screen was fashioned and fixed on the film plane.  With the back of the camera open, a time consuming series of tests began. The camera was pointed towards a distant object around 500 metres away. Slowly adding tiny plastic washers to the viewfinder fixings and checking focus scale, versus what I could see on the film plane and then the actual viewfinder.  When I got to a point where the viewfinder screen was a little under 1.5mm (estimated) above it's previous level, the image was in focus on the film plane when the focus scale showed infinity and it looked good in the viewfinder. I concluded that Mamiya couldn't have made it so it needed that much adjustment and I contacted Newton Ellis in Liverpool.  They would know how to fully diagnose it.

After a couple of weeks and a sizeable bill, the Mamiya arrived back home. It had needed a substantial amount of shims, so maybe someone dismantled it at some point and thought 'get rid of some of these pointless washers'. My tests had actually been leading in the right direction, but they wouldn't have been precise enough. So, I was convinced the now professionally repaired Mamiya would perform just as I wanted. 

A chemical change

Loaded up with some Fomapan 100 and off I went.  Having worked through the roll, I was keen to get it processed.  I like my Atomal 49 and I know this films is fine it in.  There is of course a lot to be said for sticking with what you know, but I didn't.  A bottle of 510 Pyro had sat in the cupboard a little while ready for when the current batch of A49 ran out.  I did have enough powder to mix one more batch of A49, but I decided I should entrust this film to the 510 Pyro.  This is a staining developer, so I approached it with some caution. Given it's viscosity, getting it to flow from the bottle into the provided syringe, wasn't entirely easy.  Still, I managed to mix some without leaving any marks around the house. 

Actually on the day, the chemicals were much closer to the 20 mark.

510 Pyro

I was quite surprised to see how quickly the solution darkened. It's a one time use developer in theory, though you can get more than one film out of a batch, but it will look like more like crude oil by the time you come to do another one.   At 1:100 dilution, the process gave me times that would be similar to Atomal 49, but with the potential to stain work surfaces.  Again I managed to do it without the tricky explanations that would have followed if it had.   When the negatives emerged from the final rinse, my reaction was mixed.  I could see it looked as though they were probably correctly focused, but they also looked thin and somehow unimpressive. 

This one was cleaned up somewhat, mainly in the darker areas.  The spectral highlights actually hide the blotches a little, but close up, it's a mess.

What happened?

On the scanner things got worse.  Blotches, small blotches everywhere.  Shadow detail... well it just wasn't there really.  Highlights were quite good, in fact quite impressive, but this might be the only redeeming feature.   I had followed an Ilford agitation routine, although perhaps I wasn't quite precise enough.  It seemed that it either wasn't enough or possibly too much. Given some people think it's good for semi stand developing, maybe the agitation was too much.  Given the price, I can't really give up, but I don't think I'll be trusting it with anything other than test films from fixed and cleaned cameras.  The Mamiya probably deserves better now.

Highlights, pretty impressive.  Shadows, not so much. This one has been cleaned up.

Next steps

My next chemical order will probably be another Atomal 49.  I have enough for another litre of working solution, so the 510 Pyro may have to wait until the right job comes along.  I suspect it may be good with low contrast scenes and where grain and sharpness are less important. It has made some quite dramatic effects in the graveyard scene, but I don't think it's what I exposed for and there has to be a way of escaping the blotches.  Think I'll shift to semi stand developing next time I use it.

Lesson

Some folks really like Pyro developers, but I have also found others saying don't go near 510 Pyro.  No subject divides photographers like developing chemicals and routines.  The lesson for me? If you want to be sure of the outcome from something as important as focusing adjustments, don't change something significant, like the developer.