Tales on Film

I decided to give Caffenol a shot – specifically because I’m going to give a class at Hive76 about developing film DIY style. Should probably know wtf I’m doing before trying to teach someone else how to do it, right?

I went with Caffenol-C. I don’t have a good reason why – just seemed like a good idea.
The recipe is simple. While I bought the majority of my ingredients online, that’s only due to my laziness and lack of wanting to see if I could get these things at a local store.

That said, you’ll need some instant coffee (non-decaf), Washing Soda and some Vitamin C powder. I had my bride pick up the instant coffee while she was out. I based the recipe below off this C version from digitaltruth.

For my first attempt, I chose to use some Tri-X 400 120. I mixed up only what I needed to fill the tank.

• 700ml Water
• 36ml Washing Soda
• 11ml Vitamin C Powder4
• 60ml  Instant Coffee

There seems to be an order of which you should mix these… one way being the correct way, and the other leaving you with white ‘rocks’. I didn’t pay enough attention to what I was doing to tell you which is better, but I can tell you that if you let said ‘rocks’ sit 20-30 minutes, which is recommended anyway, they will dissolve.

Once mixed up, and rocks dissolved, I brought the mix up to 68 degrees and developed for 15 minutes, which I found to be a little short. 20 minutes for Tri-X is the sweet spot for me. The Stop process is replaced with a 1 minute wash (about 3-4 fills, empty, repeat), and a normal fixer (The only real photo chemical required), followed by the usual wash. It’s worth noting that the fixer didn’t seem to be effected at all. I ended pouring it back into my supply. It’s not worth using a commercial stop bath, as I suspect you wont be able to reuse it.

The Stop Sign above is a first result. I scanned them as ‘color’ to get that coffee feel. Also, they smell wonderful. My second round was also exciting.

So, if you’re out of developer or just in the mood for something different, Caffenol will get the job done. You’ll get some nice grain (maybe a LOT of it – like those digital folks try with their photoshops), and some nice smelling negatives. It’s definitely worth trying at any rate. I really enjoyed it – it’s fun!

Lately I noticed that my negatives had a lot spots of water drying on them. This is really annoying, I did everything right, rinsing, rinse with photoflo or dishwashing soap, but still there were marks.

So what can you do about that? I searched the internet and the most heard suggestion is do the rinsing and the photoflo again. So I did and indeed it helps. It doesn’t harm your negatives, even if they were already dry, just do it again.

As with black and white film you put your film in the development tank and prepare the chemicals according to the instructions.

C-41 development is as easy as developing b/w. To start with color development, get your chemicals, especially the developer, at 38° C or 100° F. This is very important, because even about a degree more or less can make a real difference. So I use a tray with warm water, drop my thermometer in the developer bottle and just wait till it reaches 38°C, at that point I can start.

C-41 was developed with 2 things in mind, fast and easy development, so this means all C-41 films have one very short development time. Development time is 3:15 minutes, if you want to push your film, you add 30 seconds for every stop you want to push. That’s basically all you have to know to start developing with color film. Now let me elaborate a bit more.

It’s best to do a pre-wash of the film, to aclimate the film to the 38°C and warm up the tank and reels. If you don’t do this, you could damage the emulsion on your film. This also serves the purpose of removing the protective layer on the film, so that it is easier for the developer to reach the film emulsion. You can pre-wash about a minute and keep agitating during this minute, after that pour away the water. there can be a slight color in the water, but that’s completely normal.

Then start your clock and pour in the developer, agitate during the first 15 seconds continuously, after that you turn the tank once every 30 seconds. After 3:15 minutes pour out the developer. Keep in mind, with the digibase kit I use, you can develop 12 to 20 135 films with a 500 ml solution.

The next step is to pour in the bleach, in my kit this takes about 4:20 minutes. I don’t add a wash step in between the developer and the bleach. However in some kits, the bleach and fixer are the same solution, so you first need to do a little wash of the film before adding the blix, aka bleach and fixer solution. Time for the bleach is depended on the kit you use, but as a general rule, you can keep in mind that you can’t over do the bleaching or blix step.

After the bleaching I do a short wash, fill up the container, agitate 4 times, pour out, fill, agitate 8 times, pour out, fill agitate 8 times and pour out. The next step is fixing, this takes in my kit about 6:20 minutes, but as with the bleach step, you can’t overdo it.

After that you add the stabilizer, this is some kind of soapy solution. But before the stabilizer, I add another washing step. The stabilizer does what the name suggest, it stabilizes the film. It only takes 1:20 minutes in my kit. Normally after that you stop with the development and just hang the film. I however put the film in water with a tiny bit of dishwashing fluid, to make sure that the film dries without streaks from the water.

Don’t worry if it seems like you can’t really look through the film in the beginning, this will get better when the film is dry. Hang the film in a dust free environment, like a shower for example. Once the film is attached to the stainless steel clips squeeze the film between your index and middle finger to remove foam and excess water. Best is to do this with damp or even slightly wet fingers.

The only thing left is waiting for your film to dry and for you to clean up. Drying of the film at room temperature takes about 2-3 hours, don’t use a hairdryer as you can melt the plastic. Enjoy developing, next in Developing 101, develop in caffenol, but first I have to do some more testing myself.

Once you have all the stuff, put the film in the tank and prepared your chemicals according to the instructions, you’re ready to start developing.

The most important part is the timing and temperature of your developer, this will determine how your film will turn out. I suggest you start by developing b/w film first, because that type of film is less sensitive to differences in temperature and time.

In general b/w film has to be developed at 20 degrees Celsius, a higher temperature will shorten the dev time, but also increase the contrast. Lower temperature will increase the development time, but has, as far as I know, no significant impact on the contrast. Every b/w film has his own time for optimal development. Most of the time, you can find the times inside the cardboard package of the film, but I mainly use the times from the big dev chart on the iPhone, as I described in this article

Agitation is also very important, as you move the developer around the film, this way you always have active parts of the developer in contact with your film. I use the following agitation scheme, start by agitating the tank slowly the first 1:10 seconds and after that every minute again 10 seconds. Be careful not to agitate too much as this will increase the size of the grain.

Now for the order of the development, I start my dev process with a little prewash, this means I fill the tank with some water, agitate for 10 seconds, pour out the water, fill it again, agitate again for 5 seconds and pour out the water. You’ll notice sometimes the water has a color, sometimes it doesn’t that is normal and depends on the type of film.

After the pre-wash I check the temperature of the developer, if it has 20 degrees Celsius, I start the timer and pour in the developer. I agitate according to the above scheme. As the time is almost over, pour out the developer. I use Kodak T-max, so I can reuse the developer. For stop bath I use normal tap water, I fill the tank, agitate for 1 minute and pour it out again. Now the second to last step is to pour in the fixer agitate and after 5 minutes you can pour out the fixer. This is the most magical moment in the whole process because at this point you can expose the film to light and see the images for the first time.

There is one step left, washing the film. There are a lot of different methods, you can put the film in running water for about 10 minutes, I don’t do this anymore, because it takes too much time and water. I prefer the following method, fill the tank with water, agitate 4 times, pour out, fill again, agitate 8 times, pour out, fill, agitate 8 times , pour out. As final step, to avoid streaks of the drying water, I fill the tank one more time, add a drop of dishwashing soap and agitate 4 times.

After all this, hang the film in a dustfree environment, like a shower for example. Once the film is attached to the stainless steel clips squeeze the film between your index and middle finger to remove foam and excess water. Best is to do this with damp or even slightly wet fingers.

The only thing left is waiting for your film to dry and for you to clean up. Drying of the film at room temperature takes about 2-3 hours, don’t use a hairdryer as you can melt the plastic. Enjoy developing, next in Developing 101, developing C-41.

After I showed you how to load a film on a developing spool , I’m now going to show you what you need to develop film. Let me be honest, it’s not a lot.

The developing tank, you have several models, the one you see here is a patterson light safe tank.

Black and white chemicals, if you want to develop b/w film. I just use Kodak T-Max 1/4 developer and ilford fixer. As a stop bath I use water. These are the concentrated solutions, you need to mix them according to the instructions on the bottles. I’ll explain that a bit more in depth next time

If you want to develop color film you need, C-41 chemicals. I use the Rollei Digibase kit.

Some accessories like gloves, stainless steel hanging clips, funnels, thermometer. Not pictured are the 500 ml containers I use for storing the mixed chemicals. For the digibase kit I use recycled soda bottles, for my b/w chemistry, I use containers bought from the photography store. It does not really matter where you keep the chemicals in, as long as it’s plastic and has a decent fitting to close the bottles.

For all the rest I use our bathroom as working place and the sink is perfect with the running water and the shower is perfect to hang your negatives to dry.

Next time we’ll start the process of developing black and white film.