In Croatia

...there is a film called Efke, which comes in a 6.5,9.0 sheet film size. Only a half centimeter wider, but it lays flat, which is the whole battle, as the flattened roll film still curled under the dark slides making them prone to popping out of the corners and curling when the dark slide was removed. When that happened, the party was over.

Film is in 50 and 100 ISO I believe, so I bought two boxes of the 100 ISO. There were still issues regarding the dark slides not slipping back into their grooves, resulting in 2 out of the first three shots being ruined due to accidental exposure. I think I fixed it with some machine oil in the grooves of the metal film holder. I took a sheet of the ruined film and practiced in the light and in the dark until I was quite sure the problem was solved. I loaded the three film holders but haven't exposed them yet.

The one exposure that did work is this:


It is a self-portrait I made using a tiny, wind-up self-timer unit that screws into the hole where the cable release goes. Push a button and get up to 16 seconds to strike your pose!

Development was by tray processing, since I have no film racks that size and the half centimeter means the sheets won't go onto a 120 reel. I had never tray-processed prior to that evening, so that was a very interesting process....

Next time, the second time.