Tutorial How to develop your first B&W film.

cambsno said:
To those that do scan themselves, what do you use and what is the quality like?
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I, and many others use a V500 or one of its close relations. Results are fine not up to wet printing or a proper lab scan but more convenient and cheaper. I get better raw quality from my D3100 vs the scanner but that's not the point for me any way.
 
cambsno said:
- Obviously things can go wrong, but overall would you say its fairly easy to process negs (its a bit like following a cooking recipe)?
- Have seen some great reviews on the Epson V500 scanner. How would this compare to getting them scanned by Ilford/AG etc... Are there any cheaper alternatives, or is this going to seriously affect quality?
- What is the typical cost (in terms of chemicals and consumables, excluding initial investment) in processing own 120 & 35mm?
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Yes, it's pretty easy. I don't even process with my instruction sheet anymore, seeing as it's such an easy routine and with everything labelled there's no chance of confusion, no pouring of the fixer in first or anything like that. B&W film developing has a lot of leeway and it can tolerate a huge amount of incompetency! :bonk:

The V500 is a capable scanner, although it often needs some experimenting and tweaking to get the best out of it. Whilst the labs often do have higher end equipment, they are batched scanned and often not scanned to a lossless file format. Whilst it is more time consuming to scan at home, you can control every part of the scanning process, and the fact that almost everyone on this forum has a scanner tells you how good lab scanning is...

I wrote up a typical cost per roll of developing after initial costs here:
http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showpost.php?p=3962571&postcount=2
 
i thought i would give some different chemicals a go for a change so got some Ilford ID-11 developer, Ilford Ilfostop and the Ilford Rapid Fixer.

Just looking at the fact sheet for the Ilfostop it says the time is 10 seconds! That just seems a bit quick. By the time you pour it in , youre pouring it out.

Does anyone else use Ilfostop and can confirm that?
 
essexash said:
i thought i would give some different chemicals a go for a change so got some Ilford ID-11 developer, Ilford Ilfostop and the Ilford Rapid Fixer.

Just looking at the fact sheet for the Ilfostop it says the time is 10 seconds! That just seems a bit quick. By the time you pour it in , youre pouring it out.

Does anyone else use Ilfostop and can confirm that?
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Yeah it's very fast! I give it about 30 seconds so i have time to get my fixer ready.
 
No mentioning of red light here. Is it not necessary anymore to process Black & White photos? Please advice.
 
Fastrider said:
No mentioning of red light here. Is it not necessary anymore to process Black & White photos? Please advice.
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Red lights are for printing with. Film development doesnt use them.
 
Fastrider said:
No mentioning of red light here. Is it not necessary anymore to process Black & White photos? Please advice.
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A dim red light is used when processing PRINTS not film. i.e. where you have your developed film negative and you fit this into your enlarger and project the image onto your paper, for that you can use a red light....

For developing your film you can't use a red light as the un-developed film will be sensitive to the light and expose further... There are some dim green lights that produce light in the area of the spectrum that the film isn't sensitive to but it really is very simple to remove the film in a bag from the canister and fit it into the reel then the reel into the pot so it isn't necessary.
 
I'd like to try my hand at stand developing next - I don't really understand the dilutions though :/ I'm going to get some Rodinal, I'm developing a roll of 35mm Acros 100 first. If I'm going for 1+100 dilution, does that mean X / 100, where X is the usual amount of Rodinal I'd use? And the rest is topped up with water? And is the stop/fix process the same as normal?
 
1mL of Rodinal for every 100mL of water.

So a 35mm roll in a Paterson tank is usually 290mL, so in theory, 2.9mL of Rodinal. That said, a lot of guidance suggests that you should use a minimum amount of 5mL of Rodinal to ensure an effective development; I can't vouch for it either way as I always need to use at least 5mL of Rodinal regardless.

(my 3,000th post, sheesh)
 
For 1+100 Rodinal, if your tank holds 300ml, you add 3ml of Rodinal to 297ml of water
 
freecom2 said:
Isn't that 1:100?

(I know it makes no real difference, but both are used interchangeably - which is a bit silly)
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If you can measure out 297ml of water accurately then you're right ;)
 
Blimey, those are some really tiny amounts! I'd best get myself a syringe at the same time as the Rodinal then... Cheers :) And congrats FC2!
 
One litre , 1000ml, weighs 1000g so just weigh out 297g on your kitchen scales. That's what I do, never had a problem.
 
essexash said:
One litre , 1000ml, weighs 1000g so just weigh out 297g on your kitchen scales. That's what I do, never had a problem.
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I know it's being picky but the weight of 1 litre of water is 1kg but isn't the specific gravity of developer higher? So not just a simple equation of 1g = 1ml or vice versa.

I may of course be talking out of my arse, I'm sure somebody terribly cleaver will be along soon to tell me so :lol:
 
The density of Aculux 3 developer is certainly different from the 1gml-1 of water, I measured out 180ml of it in a measuring cylinder graduated in 10ml and the scales read 198g.
 
RaglanSurf said:
I know it's being picky but the weight of 1 litre of water is 1kg but isn't the specific gravity of developer higher? So not just a simple equation of 1g = 1ml or vice versa.

I may of course be talking out of my arse, I'm sure somebody terribly cleaver will be along soon to tell me so :lol:
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Yes, I think you make a good point - easiest is just a marked graduated cylinder/container for the liquid developers which use large quantities, and a syringe for the smaller stuff (Rodinal, wetting agent etc.)
 
What fine grain developer would you guys recommend D76 or TMAX? I've only been rodinal so i'm not entirely happy with the results on high speed films.
 
Of the two mentioned I've only used D76 and I'm happy enough with the results on faster films depends if you want to push I suspect.
 
T-Max Developer is incredible for pushing - it is a far more modern developer designed to push reliably.

HC-110 is also reputably quite good for pushing, but it's quite expensive so I never used it.
 
does anyone do their developing in the dark in trays? I was thinking about this last night. I want more control over individual neg's and having to do 6 sheets at once wont let me do that. There's no point adjusting exposures for a scene if you end up lumping everything together in a tank.

So i thought of setting up some trays in the bathroom to do single sheets at a time. Just wondering how many sheets you could put through the chemicals before the soup gets used up. Could i still use Rondial 1 shot or would need something a bit stronger if i'm putting several sheets through it over time. Does the red light thing only apply to printing, developing the negs still has to be done in the dark?


If you can measure out 297ml of water accurately then you're right ;)
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I just use my kitchen scales. I know dev and water have different densities but in the quantities being used it makes next to no difference.
 
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freecom2 said:
Isn't that 1:100?

(I know it makes no real difference, but both are used interchangeably - which is a bit silly)
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Chemists will argue otherwise. They think that 3:1 means 1 part in a total of 3 whereas us normal people consider it to be the same as 3+1 i.e. a total of 4.
Their argument falls flat when discussing 1:1.


Steve.
 
I've never seen a chemist express it like that before Steve, not even some old school chemists.
 
essexash said:
does anyone do their developing in the dark in trays? I was thinking about this last night. I want more control over individual neg's and having to do 6 sheets at once wont let me do that. There's no point adjusting exposures for a scene if you end up lumping everything together in a tank.

So i thought of setting up some trays in the bathroom to do single sheets at a time. Just wondering how many sheets you could put through the chemicals before the soup gets used up. Could i still use Rondial 1 shot or would need something a bit stronger if i'm putting several sheets through it over time. Does the red light thing only apply to printing, developing the negs still has to be done in the dark?




I just use my kitchen scales. I know dev and water have different densities but in the quantities being used it makes next to no difference.
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You could try and pick up a Paterson Orbital. It uses so little chemicals that I would happily just develop two 4x5 sheets at a time ( it will take a max of four 4x5 sheets). So you you only need to save up 2 of your N. N+1 etc. negs and process them this way.
 
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i forgot about them, theyre rare as hens teeth though but i'll keep an eye on the bay. Although ive got a Jobo Lift system thing gathering dust in the spare room so i have to be carefull about having too many gadgets kicking about!
 
So, I've read through this thread... the basic instructions seem clear enough (*), and the couple of utube videos I've watched make loading the spiral seem more doable than most descriptions I've read. But there's one bit of black magic that doesn't really get explained AFAICS. It is... what chemistry to use? I see mention of Rodinal, ID-ll, TMax, D76 and even caffenol, but no-one really seems to say what they're good for. Meanwhile I'm reading through "The making of 40 photographs", and Adams is saying he's developed the negs in this or that developer with normal plus one or what-not.

At the moment I've got a small shot of Tri-X, and I can get HP5+ from Boots nearby. I scanned the last lot of Tri-X back from Peak yesterday, and I thought they were rather grainy, though the negs don't look thin. (Also found a watermark, black mark Peak!) I'm not after grain particularly.

So, what would be a good buy for starters? Particularly a kit, since I'm a simple-minded soul?

(* Except I'm not really sure what "agitation" means, precisely, having seen various posts about people doing too much of it and getting odd marks near the sprocket holes...)
 
ChrisR said:
So, I've read through this thread... the basic instructions seem clear enough (*), and the couple of utube videos I've watched make loading the spiral seem more doable than most descriptions I've read. But there's one bit of black magic that doesn't really get explained AFAICS. It is... what chemistry to use? I see mention of Rodinal, ID-ll, TMax, D76 and even caffenol, but no-one really seems to say what they're good for. Meanwhile I'm reading through "The making of 40 photographs", and Adams is saying he's developed the negs in this or that developer with normal plus one or what-not.

At the moment I've got a small shot of Tri-X, and I can get HP5+ from Boots nearby. I scanned the last lot of Tri-X back from Peak yesterday, and I thought they were rather grainy, though the negs don't look thin. (Also found a watermark, black mark Peak!) I'm not after grain particularly.

So, what would be a good buy for starters? Particularly a kit, since I'm a simple-minded soul?

(* Except I'm not really sure what "agitation" means, precisely, having seen various posts about people doing too much of it and getting odd marks near the sprocket holes...)
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Different chemicals achieve different things, well the same thing but in a different way, well the same way but with different results. Some developers such as Rodinal enhance acutance which makes the image look sharper but also make the grain more prominent. D76/ID-II (they're the same thing) is one of the the other standard chemicals and it has a solvent which acts on the silver grains and softens the edges and reduces how apparent the grain is. T-Max is a developer designed for tabular grained films like Delta, T-Max and Neopan, you can do these films in normal developer but the results are slightly better (I believe) and I think you can do normal grain films in T-max but its probably a waste.

For faster films like Tri-x and HP5 I'd go for some thing with a solvent effect, in fact I usually use D76. 35mm HP5 in rodinal looks like a detuned TV imo (some may like that look). There is a flickr group for all the major developers so have a look in there for the films you shoot and see if you like the effect.

I mostly shoot slow stuff in MF on the RB67 so I've pretty much standardised on Rodinal because it keeps well and works with the films I shoot most often but I've also got some D76 quietly going off under the sink just in case I need to shoot something faster in a smaller format. I'd let you have a coke bottle of D76 but I don't trust it now and I'd hate to ruin a film on account of duff developer. But you can get a sachet of it cheap from e-bay and mixing the stock solution is very simple.
 
cambsno said:
To those that do scan themselves, what do you use and what is the quality like?
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steveo_mcg said:
That's me told ;).

Given the cost of scanning from some of the labs I kind of assumed they were drum scanned.
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steveo_mcg said:
I, and many others use a V500 or one of its close relations. Results are fine not up to wet printing or a proper lab scan but more convenient and cheaper. I get better raw quality from my D3100 vs the scanner but that's not the point for me any way.
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I have an Epson V750 and a Scanview Scanmate 11000, as you would expect the £40,000 (when new)11000dpi Drum Scanner blows away the £500 (currant price) flatbed scanner, but unless you are doing massive enlargements the Epson V750 is more than adequate for film scanning.

As for Steve's statement that prints from scanned images from the V500 are not up to those produced by wet printing, I do not find that to be the case either with the Drum Scanned Images or even high resolution ones from the V750 from high ISO 35mm film (slow 35mm, MF & LF less so), If you scan an image well (takes a fair bit of time to get the correct workflow) and print large on a good printer then the benefits of a digital system can come into their own, as with a wet print grain will start to be evident at relatively small enlargements, whereas there can be ways of masking this to some extent in a digital workflow.

In my opinion there are only 2 areas where a digital image scores over a film image and the first of these is at High ISO, especially over ISO6400 where a good quality image can still be obtained from certain Digital Cameras and even higher than ISO12800 if you are prepared to accept there will be some noise introduced, and the second is for teaching, as with a digital camera you have instant feedback, something that apart from using Polaroids (or suchlike, which is also not an option for 35mm film) is impossible with film.

Just my experience and take on it.
 
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EdBray said:
something that apart from using Polaroids (or suchlike, which is also not an option for 35mm film) is impossible with film.
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Au contraire monsieur... http://www.mir.SPAM/rb/photography/hardwares/classics/nikonf4/filmbacks/index1.htm

(About half way down).


Steve.
 
Steve Smith said:
Au contraire monsieur... http://www.mir.SPAM/rb/photography/hardwares/classics/nikonf4/filmbacks/index1.htm

(About half way down).


Steve.
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Fair enough, although how prevelent they are and if film is still available for them might be an issue aside from the price of a) buying the back, b) buying the film (quite expensive for each pair of images), and the amount you would have to have to use to teach, I still think Digital is best for that and the fact that there is/was an instant film solution wouldn't change me opinion on that.
 
does anyone do E6 developing? Im comfortable with B&W now and fed up forking out 30 or 40 quid a time for peak to do my 5x4's so thought id take the plunge and try it myself.

I was looking at this kit

http://www.firstcall-photographic.co.uk/products/619/tetenal-colortec-e6-kit-5-litres

I see some kits have different numbers of chemicals so im guessing this one is fine. How hard is E6? it just just a case of being really accurate with the tempriture?
 
I've got the kit just haven't tried it yet. Haven't tried my c41 kit either mind...
 
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