I came upon my Zeiss Ikon Contessa LK recently and decided to shoot it again. I enjoyed the results I got last time on color film and wanted to try black and white in it. This seemed like a perfect opportunity to use the roll of Kentmere 100 that’s languished in my fridge for more than a year now.
I liked shooting the Contessa LK as much this time as I did last — it’s a pleasure to use. But while rewinding, I felt the film break. I figured I rewound too vigorously and pulled the film’s end out of the canister. So I stepped into a dark closet and spooled the film into a black film can. I sent it off to Dwayne’s with instructions to open it in the darkroom.
I got just 19 shots, with negatives, back from a roll of 36. The other 17 shots must still be in the film canister!
But wait, didn’t I have trouble rewinding film in this camera before? I looked up my review and found that a 24-exposure roll of color film had rewound fine, but a 36-exposure roll of black-and-white film rewound with great difficulty and soon tore. This Contessa LK must not like 36-exposure rolls.
I misfocused about a third of the shots so badly that they were unusable. I’ve become a pretty good judge of distance, so I don’t know how I screwed up so many photographs! But this shot of the corner of my car after some rain was in perfect focus, with strong detail and good tonality.
I like the composition of this shot, which I took Downtown, but it was a little underexposed. I improved the situation in Photoshop but at larger resolution you can see pretty serious grain.
I love the sense of depth this photo creates. I shoot these trees a lot as they’re on the golf course directly behind my house. The tree in front is an ash, and it’s been killed by the emerald ash borer. I’m sure the golf course will have it removed sooner or later.
Of the shots I focused correctly, many of them had blown-out highlights, like this one. Some of the highlights were so blown that the shots were unusable. That was the big problem I experienced with this film the last time I shot it. Maybe Kentmere 100 just isn’t the film for me. It’s too bad, because it’s the least expensive black-and-white film I can find.
Side note: this is the new location for Roberts Camera, and it’s a lot more convenient than their old location. They’ve been getting my color-film processing business all summer. Unfortunately, they don’t process black and white anymore.
I sent the rest of this roll to a different processor, Old School Photo Lab, to see if I got different results. I expected I’d get several photos, but I got just this one. Several shots of my older son must have been right where the film tore. At any rate, I’m impressed with the lab for processing just one frame.
This is a much better result: less intrusive grain, no blowouts, good tone and contrast and detail. This frame required no processing in Photoshop to look this good, although I did crop it a little. Processing and scanning aren’t the whole story, of course. This was a mostly cloudy day, so the sun wasn’t so intense.
I’m thinking I need to buy a little more Kentmere 100 and let Old School Photo Lab process it all. Maybe the Kentmere likes whatever soup they’re using better than the soup at Dwayne’s.
