First home development!

Noah_

Noah_

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I've just finished my first ever home dev'ing & both films have come out wonderfully! I'd just like to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone on this Forum who offered amazing advice, gave me useful tips & recommendations in my thread here.

After processing my own films for three years during education I've missed it terribly since finishing my courses last summer. I'd always wanted to dev my film independently at home but was unsure on what chemicals & techniques would be best for me. After posting a thread on here & receiving all that wonderful advice, my dream became a reality! It's felt wonderful to get back to using traditional black & white photography as thats the medium I was originally taught with ~ as much as I value digital, analogue photography is simply irreplaceable. I've got a few expired Ilford HP5 films from 1989 & 1991 stashed away so I'm looking forward to experimenting with those now that I'm assured I can dev them myself. My hands are a little itchy after getting some fixer on them D:!

Just a little 'behind the scenes' photo taken for a workbook I keep →
DSC00813.jpg

As soon as I can get to use the scanner at my dad's house, I'll post a couple of the test photographs I took for these first films & I might be cheeky enough to ask if anyone has any critique on them!?
 
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well done Ashley ,look forward to seeing the scans ,,wet printing next :)
 
donutagain said:
well done Ashley ,look forward to seeing the scans ,,wet printing next :)
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Yep, I gotta echo that well done...:thumbs:

...and also say that as excellent as developing your own film is, eventually you get the hankering to wet print and complete the cycle.
 
I'm glad it went well :) my first solo rolls werent my best :D covered in kink marks and tears, but ive got it nailed down now :D
Looking forward to seeing the results :)
Wet printing is the next natural progression :)
 
Mm I have a watermark or two on one of the films but I don't mind, I'll re-wash it much more carefully.

By wet printing d'you mean print from the negatives in a darkroom using the dev/stop/fix trays? I've done that before for all of my college assignments but unfortunately I just don't have the facilities to do it at home, so I'll be scanning rather than printing them for the time being I think. I might look about for access to a darkroom? Not sure at the moment.

My mistake if you meant something entirely different by wet printing? hahaha.
Thanks everyone for your kind words!
 
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Yeah Wet printing is proper darkroom printing :) Even if you dont get regular access to a darkroom, if you spend an afternoon you could probably get most of the way through a roll of 36 exposures, or if you are more tactical, scan them in and choose which ones you want to print up nicely :)
 
I was awful, I used to reprint the same print for hours to try & get a perfect photograph! Perhaps I'm better off scanning, digitally processing & printing? I've never done it that way so it'll be a new venture :}
 
I was the same when I started wet printing but split grade printing has helped speed things up no end. Why not see if you have a community darkroom near you, or a darkroom for hire somewhere? There must be a couple left in London still.
 
Kev M said:
Why not see if you have a community darkroom near you, or a darkroom for hire somewhere? There must be a couple left in London still.
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Mm thats what I'm considering doing, just need to look into it a little more!
 
Well done, and wow that is a lot of Ilford chemicals in one shot! As ever, the Show Us your Film Shots thread is the perfect next step in the process :)
 
Yeah definitely, just need to get them scanned/printed altho I might do another batch & then get them done all together. Hahaha yeah I rather like Ilford products!
 
if i have water maks on the shiny side ,i breathe / huff on the film then gently wipe it off with a clean glasses cleaning cloth ...( actuall wipe the whole frame not just the mark )
 
Glad to hear it after all your planning & waiting for things to arrive! You'll soon get into your own rhythm as you get more comfortable with it. Looking forward to seeing the scans!


robhooley167 said:
if you spend an afternoon you could probably get most of the way through a roll of 36 exposures
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You must print a lot faster than me - it takes me a month to get through a full roll :gag:
 
@donutagain Awh yeah thats a pretty smooth way of cleaning your negs :}

@joenail Thank you, my changing bag took weeks to get here but it's been worth the waaait :} Hahaha it takes me a while to print many photographs as well, I guess I can be too much of a perfectionist at times? I dread to think of the amount of test strips I went thru at college, that paper ain't all that cheap!
 
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I dont use test strips at all, well apart from when im teaching people how to wet print. I pick a baseline exposure depending on the negative and then go up or down in stops from there. The focussing of the exposure doesnt change and if the roll is similarly exposed then the exposure time barely changes as well.

The main way of controlling the exposure i use is to alter the developing time of the print, bit shorter than normal to make the print brighter etc :)

It's a quick and dirty method but it gets results, if the print was an important one, i would spend a lot more time on it, but for general prints it does the job :)
 
I see. I'm completely different in the darkroom - 2 test strips for everything (split grade f/stop), dry in microwave to compensate for dry-down, an average of 5 prints on 10x8 to determine burn/dodge times/stops/grades & 2 prints on 12x16 - 1 with 1.4 stops more exposure to compensate for size increase, another with a more accurate compensation.

Then I see them the next day & they've dried completely differently from the test strips, so I have to start over again!

IamAshlyRose said:
@joenail [...] I guess I can be too much of a perfectionist at times? I dread to think of the amount of test strips I went thru at college, that paper ain't all that cheap!
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I think most people (in the darkroom) are very much perfectionists when it comes to 'fine' printing.

Rob, why not just contact print the roll & scan that instead of printing all 36 (or more) frames?

-J
 
I do contact print and scan as well, i like to keep my negatives in decent size print form as well as contact prints. I wont always print a whole roll, but often a good part of it to keep as a backup.

I guess this is different ways of either learning to print. I had no idea about printing when i started out, all i knew was that the negative goes in the top and the paper at the bottom. I reckon i learnt the essentials and didnt bother with fannying around with test strips as i found my method worked well enough after a little refinement.

I teach the proper method test strips, multiple exposures etc as i dont want the people i teach to have any reason to blame me for giving them a bad workflow. I just think it wastes time for non critical prints.

If i was doing 20x24 inch fibre based prints, i would take loads of time and make plenty of tests. But for 8x10's on expired paper? no point.

Its interesting to see how we all have different ways of doing things
 
It certainly is interesting. The darkroom I share rarely has other people in it, so it's fairly rare for me to experience how others go about printing. I see what you mean now about printing most of a roll for backup, etc & failed to understand what you meant at first :) I try only to print good frames now though because I no longer have any usable expired paper & I can see enough from the neg/contact to get an idea of whether or not it's worth spending time on. Now all I need to do is get my hands on that 20x24 Polaroid camera & not bother with printing at all :D

-J
 
I do 2 test strips personally. I tend to enlarge to 8x8 so cutting down 8x10 always delivers those test strips, which work just fine for me.
 
I use test strips as I just don't have the paper to spare if an enlargement goes wrong. Not to forget that I was taught dark room at college & we had workbooks in which we documented our work literally from start to finish with detailed notes about what & why? It just became routine haha.

I usually use between two & four 5x4'' test strips to decide on a correct exposure for a print. Usually a whole roll of film has almost identical exposures for each frame & after that each print doesn't take as much time as the first.

May I ask why you're talking about using expired paper? Is there a technique in it that I'm not aware of? :}
 
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I use expired paper because it's what I have access to at the moment (I have in date stuff but I save that for proper prints) , prints come out fine but it's a lot cheaper to buy in decent sizes
 
Oh fair enough :} thats not a bad idea.
What papers do you or anyone else prefer to use? I only tend to stick to one favourite option but I'm curious about others out there?
 
I tend to use ilford as its easy to get and repeatable. I was given a load of expired paper, some kodak stuff polymax (seems a bit fogged) and ektalure (lovely FB stuff) and a load of agfa which is ok. A while back someone on ebay was selling 20x24" Ilford fixed grade for about £20 a box of 50 sheets, that cuts down into a LOT of 10X12 ;).

There is a chemical you can add to bleach paper, a tiny ammount can be used to bleach out the fogging on old paper, then you need to over develop a little to compensate I believe. Can;t remember what it is but someone will know what I'm on about.
 
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Ilford multigrade for proper prints, I have some expired grade 5 I'm working through ATM though.
Would live to be able to afford Fomabrom and adox fibre based warm tone paper though. Unfortunately not feasible on a student budget
 
I've been using Ilford MGFB Warmtone for the last week - really lovely paper. Good for portraits & (if toning) landscapes. Got a box of Adox stuff through today & something really weird happened - the emulsion went a sort of off-ivory colour & was quite amazingly dirty. Later when squeegeeing the emulsion started to peel of as if it were some sort of protective coating (think iPhone screen protector), but took the image off with it. Turns out it was something with the developer. Not sure what, but after I mixed some more all was cured & it's a lovely paper with a really bright white base. Easy to get a good print on, but hard to get a great one.

Will be trying some Foma Warmtone FB tomorrow - will post results here :)
 
Seems like we all quite like Ilford MG papers :}
 
IamAshlyRose said:
Seems like we all quite like Ilford MG papers :}
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From my experience, they are the easist to get hold of, reasonably priced and give good enough results :)
 
Mmm, I tried Silverprints equivalent once during college & found it awful. I'm not a fan of gloss papers tho so I suppose it was biased. It was about £9 for a box of 100 in our college store but I'd rather pay the £40 odd for a box of 100 Ilford papers.
 
Ilford papers are very standard IMO. Adox have a much nicer MGFB Glossy, which dries almost perfectly flat, responds to toning nicely & is a lot easier to handle.

I'm assuming the Silverprint stuff you mentioned is their 'proof' paper. If so, it's usually Ilford's throw-away stock that they get on the cheap - not a 'proper' paper. I'd only really use it for contact sheets & various experimental prints.
 
I used the not quite 'proper' Silverprint paper when we began experimenting with pin hole stuff early in my second year at college. I soon went back to Ilford tho! Ilford Satin is gorgeous paper.
 
Ilford Warmtone Fibrebased is very nice paper, i have a print on it on my wall atm. I'm not sure if its the age of the paper but its very curly, was a nightmare to get in the printing easel :D
 
Hahaha.
I've never worked with Fibre Based papers, only resin coated. Is there much difference in the final outcome?
 
IamAshlyRose said:
Hahaha.
I've never worked with Fibre Based papers, only resin coated. Is there much difference in the final outcome?
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They tend to be matte unless you glaze them, essentially ironing them. Other than that they arent much different image wise, they are more difficult to wash because they absorb a lot more of the chemicals than resin coated.
 
Fair enough.
I just remembered we were recommended not to buy fibre based papers in college but if there's no essential difference to the quality of prints & all that I'm not too fussed about missing out atm hahaha.
 
IamAshlyRose said:
Fair enough.
I just remembered we were recommended not to buy fibre based papers in college
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I can understand when you are just starting, but once you have a bit of experience then they are worth a crack. Might buy a box of 12x16 when my next student loan comes through :D
 
After reading this thread, I need to print more! (well, I need to start making good enough negatives to print... but that's an issue with me and film :bonk:). After learning basic prints, dodging & burning, what sort of techniques do you ascend towards? I've only really gotten that far.
 
Lith Printing, toning. Then comes getting consitent at printing :)
 
Split grade printing is very useful if you've got lots of highlights/shadows. I've just finished a really annoying print - 0.5s at grade 0, 3.7 sec at grade 0 covering up bottom half, 1.7 sec at grade 5, burn sky 5.3 sec grade 5 & 4 sec grade 0. Took me about 3 hours & lots of roll-ups!

I think there's a massive difference between FB & RC. With fibre paper the print is in the paper (or looks like it anyway), with resin coated it's on the paper. The feel of FB paper is a lot nicer as well. I don't think I could use anything else now unless I'm farting about.
 
What do you need to do to dry fb paper? Do you need a proper fb dryer that holds it flat?
 
I always dry 2 prints back to back. The bottom one dries as flat as you're going to get it & the top curls a bit at the sides.
 
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