Kentmere 100 | The 35mm Project

I decided to go crazy and push a roll of Kentmere 100 to 1600iso.

It took a while to decide which development time I should go for. Kodak, Ilford, Adox and various forums all suggest different timings. I was reading from one commenter to double the timings plus 20%. The Massive DevChart has a rough guide on how to work out timings when pushing however did not extend to four stops. I decided on Rodinol 1+100 at 120 minutes, 20ºc. The first 5 minutes I agitated the soup every 30s for 15s. After 30 minutes I agitated for 15s.

Full development stats:

Rodinol 1+100, 20ºc. 120 minutes. Agitate every 30s for 15s for 5 minutes. Stand for 30m, agitate 15s, stand.
Ilford Stop Bath 1+9 for 1 minute constant agitation
Ilford Fixer 1+4 for 12 minutes
Wash for 10 minutes
Tetanol Wetting agent 1+400 in deionised water for 1m. Gentle agitation.

I must admit when I pulled the negative out of the soup I was expecting a series of black frames from either the contrast going crazy or from over developing. I peeled back the first few frames to check the fix and to my surprise saw some well developed shots!

Kentmere 100 is rated best between 50-200 ISO….. so I was expecting a lot of grain….once I dried and scanned the negative I was blown away how detailed the shots are. The grain is fairly small and overall contrast not as intense as I expected. The night time/darker photos are when I was drunk on a night out and was underexposing instead of overexposing. The daytime photographs on the street I overexposed by at least a stop.

There is change in the contrast levels of each photo, some pictures (such as the swimming pool shot) have a lot of grey tone without much highlight and shadow whereas other pictures are more contrasty.

I will push this film beyond four stops in the future to see how far it will go and still give me useable shots.

Kentmere 100 Pushed 400

How else can i start this blog than with … wow! What a film!

I’ve never used Kentmere before and this was actually the third time i had loaded it in my camera. “Third time?” you cry … well, i loaded it in and went from shooting outdoors to indoors in very low light so wound the film up and replaced it for some Kodak TMAX P3200. The second time i replaced it for Rollei and now, finally we have Kentmere.

The quality of the images are fantastic, this film loves to be pushed! Outside, the film is acceptable. Shadows and lights are fairly even. The squirrel was a friendly guy! Letting me get about 1 foot from him. However inside is where this film (for me) excelled. I visited Westminster Cathedral during the last few frames and managed to capture some great scenes with the light spilling in. The added contrast and grain from the push in my opinion enhances the haze and feel of the Cathedral.

The only concern is the marks that have been left on the film. It looks like light has spilt into the roll somehow. Changing the roll a few times before actually shooting the entire roll is probably the cause. However i have left the images in as i find the effect an interesting addition to this post.