Advise for my home developing choices

hoftwi

hoftwi

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i would like to start my home developing as it will work out cheaper and have more fun. I have chosen the following for my attempt, may you guys advise me whether they are good for my start and any other suggestions regarding the process and chemicals would be greatly appreciated.

Colour:
Tetenal C41 Kit 1L

B&W:
Ilford Ilfotol wetting agent 1L/Fotospeed RA50 Rinse Aid
Ilford Rapid Fixer 500ml
Ilford Ilfosol 3
Ilford Ilfostop 500ml

thanks in advance!!!
 
What you've got will be absolutely fine to start off with. There's a load of stuff you could choose from that will give slightly different results, but you'll pick that up eventually. Go for it!

And good luck, it's a fun process, you'll never be bored (or rich!) again!
 
What B&W films are you developing? Ilfosol 3 isn't all that great, so you may want something else depending on your film choice.
 
Yeah, what film do you have in mind? I didn't mind Ilfosol 3 when I used it but it doesn't seem to curry much favour with people. It'll do the job though.

As for colour, it may be worth getting comfortable with B&W developing before you delve into C-41. And are you planning on doing C-41 with normal Paterson tanks?
 
If you want a nice easy liquid developer thats similar to but different from Ilfosol3, try Patterson Acculux 3, its much better value and I've got some very nice fine grained but fairly sharp negatives with it. AG Photographic recommended it to me as a starter developer and its worked quite well for me.
 
The black and white stuff will be fine - as above, everyone has their own preferences, but it'll get you started and comfortable enough with the process to be ready to start experimenting with different developers (the stop/fix and wetting agent will be fine for anything you do B&W wise.)

As for the colour - I started with the Tetenal C41 kit - it's relatively easy, though a bit more time and temperature sensitive than B&W processes, so it's probably best to get completely comfortable with the cheaper chemicals in B&W first. If you over/under run on time or temperature with the C41 you WILL get fairly noticeable colour shifts, and it pretty much took me the whole first 1L kit (16 rolls iirc) to get to a stage where I was happily producing relatively consistent shots "out of the soup" I found it useful to take a test shot at the start of the roll which had a "colour correction card", and use this as a reference to get colours rendering naturally in Lightroom as a initial approach, then apply the same settings as a overall "colour correction" sweep to every scan from that roll, just to get any time/temperature induced colour drifts out of the picture.

A bit like this...


Reala100_2010-08-30_009_colour chart by The Big Yin, on Flickr

One thing I've just been bitten by, is that the Tetenal kit appears to have a bit of a "shelf life" issue - my last chemicals went off on me recently, resulting in ruining the 3rd roll of the Homeless Holga project... Moral of this story - I found that the 1L kit does between 12 and 16 rolls of 35mm (faster film depletes the chemicals more - a 400iso film "counts" as 2 rolls according to the instructions with the kit) consistently, and is good for maybe 3 months or so (at least in my experience, as always with the internet YMMV) So, if you're not going to be processing 3-4 films a month, be prepared for wasting some chemicals or film, or prepared to put up with "truprint magenta" colourcasts :lol: If I do get back into processing C41 again, I may give the Agfa Digibase chemicals a whirl instead.
 
wow....so glad to get that many advises!!! As i have just started films taking not for long, I am still trying out different B&W films, such as HP5, AGFA APX100,Rollei Superpan ISO 200,Kentmere 400 etc. i have read loads of threads in here regarding the B&W developing, and found out Ilford Ilfosol 3 is not everyone's 1st choice but the reason i chose it cox it is liquid and seems easy to use,rather than the power that i have to mix it up by myself. i would expect my first few times would be a mess, so would like to start with something less complicated. Samuel suggested to use Patterson Acculux 3, so i may give it a try instead.

C-41.....i know it needs to be more accurate about the temperature so i will try it when i get used to develop b&w but want to save postage if i buy them all at the same time!

freecom2: yes, i think i will still use the same Paterson tank. is this not a good idea?

have thought about to get an aquarium heater to adjust the temperature, i found loads of them on the bay but maxi is 34c only. i may have to look into it more.

Mark: thanks for your tips!! however, it makes me hesitate to do c-41....as i am always a messy person and not so good at precision,haha.....
 
Ilfosol 3 doesn't work well with faster films at all- poor contrast, large grain and not hugely sharp. If I were using that range of film I would personally go for rodinal (r09). The grain will be visible in the faster films but it gives good contrast and nice sharpness. Also works extremely well with slower films. The other bonus is that it is cheap and you use small amounts! Just take care and wear gloves, especially with the undiluted developer.
 
hoftwi said:
C-41.....i know it needs to be more accurate about the temperature so i will try it when i get used to develop b&w but want to save postage if i buy them all at the same time!

have thought about to get an aquarium heater to adjust the temperature, i found loads of them on the bay but maxi is 34c only. i may have to look into it more.

Mark: thanks for your tips!! however, it makes me hesitate to do c-41....as i am always a messy person and not so good at precision,haha.....
Click to expand...

Actually, there are instructions with the Tetenal kit for processing at a lower temperature for a longer duration (86f rather than 100f) which should be well within the range of aquarium heater's I'd say. I actually just had a large insulated "coolbox" which I use as a tempering vessel. Fill it with 45'c water from the hot tap, drop an aquarium thermometer sensor in there, along with the chemicals, and just sit back and wait 'till it hit's 39'c. At that point, I'll take enough water from the tempering vessel to pre-soak the film, pour it into the processing tank, and put the processing tank into the
tempering water again. Drop the lid on for 5 minutes, and then have at the processing. If you keep the lid on the ice-box, and you're operating in a normal room-temperature environment (i.e. not out in a garage in sub zero temperatures :lol:) it'll hold the temperature well enough to complete the processing without problems.
 
thanks Mark again, it sounds fun!!! but i think i will get B&W done first, till then i should have slightly more confident of C-41. may you explain what you mean of 'pre-soak the film'?
 
menthel said:
Ilfosol 3 doesn't work well with faster films at all- poor contrast, large grain and not hugely sharp. If I were using that range of film I would personally go for rodinal (r09). The grain will be visible in the faster films but it gives good contrast and nice sharpness. Also works extremely well with slower films. The other bonus is that it is cheap and you use small amounts! Just take care and wear gloves, especially with the undiluted developer.
Click to expand...


I see people here always say the R09 is cheap but when i look into it, such as AG /Nova,it is still more expensive than other developer. you mean it is cheap, is it because it only needs a small amount to develop?
 
hoftwi said:
thanks Mark again, it sounds fun!!! but i think i will get B&W done first, till then i should have slightly more confident of C-41. may you explain what you mean of 'pre-soak the film'?
Click to expand...

They recommend in the Tetenal Instructions, to add a measure of the tempering water to the tank, and soak the film in it for 5 minutes before starting the processing. This ensures that the tank, the spiral, and the film are all "up to temperature" and ready to rock and roll - it may also prepare the film for it's processing - there's certainly quite a bit of colour in the water when you tip it out at the end of the pre-soak time!
 
hoftwi said:
I see people here always say the R09 is cheap but when i look into it, such as AG /Nova,it is still more expensive than other developer. you mean it is cheap, is it because it only needs a small amount to develop?
Click to expand...

I agree on this, everyone always says Rodinal is cheap but any developer with re-use capacity will be cheaper. My preference, T-Max Developer, works out far cheaper than Rodinal - 100ml of T-Max Dev processes 6 rolls for me (£1.24), on the other hand 100ml of Rodinal at 1+25 dilution processes 5 rolls for me and costs £3.72.

Even if you use a 1+50 dilution it still works out more expensive per roll.

I do know and respect that reusing developers can potentially create problems that one-shot doesn't have - but really they are nothing if you also plan to C-41, which is more finnicky.
 
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thanks all for the useful advises and am going to order the chemicals in a couple days. at the meantime, i will do some more research regarding the processing procedures. can't wait till i can my first roll done!
 
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