Mesilla

We spent a few days visiting with friends and family in Las Cruces.  Our motel was close to the little town of Mesilla, so it just took a couple minutes to drive there on a Friday morning to visit the plaza and shoot a roll of film in my Brownie Hawkeye Flash.

The town clings tenaciously to its past; things change, but more slowly than in most places.  The economy is still closely attached to the land, and traveling south or west quickly brings visitors to fields of onions and vast pecan orchards irrigated only with ground water.  The Rio Grande is mostly dry long before it gets to Mesilla; the acequias that run through town contain only sand.

The Kodak Tri-X Pan Professional film I shot in Mesilla was rated at ISO 320; that would be a bit fast for a sunny day in the Brownie Hawkeye Flash, but it seemed like the twenty-seven years beyond the expiration date would likely have tempered the sensitivity of the film sufficiently to allow use in the old box camera.  I processed the film as recommended in the data sheet in the film box and I thought the results were pretty good.

More Tri-X expired

 A quarter century on this Tri-X performs nicely thanks to frozen storage.  It seems to me that the tonalities and grain are very close to what a fresh roll of the film would produce.

I still lost one frame due to the curling of the thin film at the end of the roll.  For the next roll I will reverse the loading to put the curly end at the innermost part of the reel.  Or, maybe a better solution would be to insert the film strip in the reel with the emulsion side out since both ends are likely to have a strong curl.

Tri-X Prof (TXP) 07/1994

 I shot a roll of Tri-X Prof (TXP) in my Mamiya C330.  The expiration date on the 320 ASA film was an intimidating 07/1994, but it had been frozen. I gave the film a little extra exposure and a little more time in the developer and it performed very well.  My handling and processing, however, left something to be desired.  I lost a couple frames to poor loading onto the reel and also saw some light leak damage in some of the pictures.  The tonal values and grain were very nice in the surviving frames.

Plaza Don Luis

Plaza Vieja

I have four more rolls of this old Tri-X.  I'll try to be more careful with the processing, and I'm thinking it will be interesting to try some portraits to take advantage of the unique character of this film.