Found this in an old folder, unedited. It's from a 35mm roll of Ilford FP4 Plus developed in Amethyst Aqua, a catechol + PPD developer I experimented with briefly. This was exposed using a Minolta SRT 101 fitted with a humble Minolta MD 135mm f/3.5 lens that can be had for a few bucks. In fact, the whole kit could be had for $50 with patience.

 

A few things came to mind as I edited this portrait of my beloved Juliet: My god, she's beautiful, I'd forgotten how much I like FP4 Plus, Amethyst Aqua has potential, and finally, 35mm film became a viable studio portraiture format with the advent of digital editing/printing.

The conventional wisdom has always been that 35mm was too small to produce the smooth tones and gradation required for professional studio portraiture, or at least that's how I understood it. I recently acquired an Adams Retouching Machine for retouching film portraits, and in reading the literature on retouching it became clear to me the primary reason 35mm was never used in professional portrait studios was because it was next to impossible to retouch, and portraits are retouched. That's a very practical explanation that's easier for me to understand than the argument for gradation.

 

I think I'm going to start using more 35mm film in the studio.