What about this Tetanal 2 bath only for home processing?

Vladimir1986

Vladimir1986

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I would like to salute you all on my first post fist of all: I am quite new to photography and I am quite excited to share my hobby with other people!

The thing is that I had a nice relation until now: I used to take my films to Snappy Snaps for developing; pricey but good quality. The problem is that last time I went there they wanted to charge me 17£! With a very tight budget I decided that it was about time to develop my own film...

After a quite long search, I only found a provider of chemicals (Tetanal), and only one product. It comes to my surprise that the chemicals consist on Developer and Blix, technically you don't need Stabilizer with this set up. I understand that Stabilizer is a bit tricky, leaving marks sometimes, but I would like to ask first: Anyone tried it? Is it any good?

Or anyone knows more products? If I am honest I feel a bit overwhelmed not knowing well where to go and what to do. In any case, thank you very much for any answer, or just for reading the post of a bit confused amateur and beginner photographer.
 
Welcome Vladimir, I can't actually help you as I have not started to develop at home as yet (very soon though) but there are many others on here, who will be along as soon as they wake from their morning naps, who can and will give you more information than you could ever need.

Andy
 
I've processed colour slides and black and white, but never colour negative. That said, there is a four bath Fuji kit available, listed as such on the Ag site and listed (but not described) on the Silverprint one.
 
Thanks for the speedy reply and welcome, Andysnap!

I have to recognise that I am a bit overexcited about this developing home thing, and it makes me to have too many doubts. I actually would love one day to be able to do enlargements and prints home, but I see it quite far away :P. right now, I have to spend some time doing numbers and reading lots of guides so I minimize the risk of messing it up
 
Ah, thank you Stephen!

That actually made me to remind another question:

It comes to my understanding that to fill a developing tank you need just 500cc of chemicals; however I see that most kits come in 1L and 5L form...

Is it fine to just cut the mixtures to need? (For example, using just half of the chemicals on a 1L kit to end with only 500cc of mix).

That is quite important to consider, as I don shoot so much, and I understand that the unmixed chemicals will have a much longer shelf life....
 
Simple answer - if powders, they are probably a mixture of different chemicals that should be dissolved together. In powder form, they are unlikely to be evenly distributed, and therefore powdered chemicals should all be dissolved, rather than part quantities. If liquid, you can use parts, but many photographic chemicals will store better in full (and unopened) bottles.
 
Well, it seems that with extra care, chemicals can last a mix between 6 months/20 films. Probably more fpr me, as I am quite bad at spotting colour changes and defects on photographs.

I have been looking for some good bottles for a while. I remember them from when I was 14 and saw a darkroom for the first time: Black with red cap, and you where able to squeeze it like an accordion to remove the air inside. I am not being lucky and can't even remember the name of those things. I am thinking that if I can just fill the lacking liquid with some distilled water and add some more time to the developer and blix... I don't expect to lose much of the chemicals every time I develop, as it will be between 400cc to 500cc from a 1L bottle, and hopefully the tank won't leak much

But right now I am just selling the bear's skin before killing it, as I didn't even buy the lab kit yet!
 
Or concertina bottles I think.
 
you get stabilizer with the tetenal kit . just wondering why you think you think you dont need it ?? as for using part of the chems ,,,just wait until you've shot ten/twelve rolls then use the one litre kit . ( £18)
 
Vladimir1986 said:
But right now I am just selling the bear's skin before killing it, as I didn't even buy the lab kit yet!
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Haha....love that expression.

Welcome to the forum and good luck with the processing.
 
donut said:
you get stabilizer with the tetenal kit . just wondering why you think you think you dont need it ?? as for using part of the chems ,,,just wait until you've shot ten/twelve rolls then use the one litre kit . ( £18)
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I only got it from a website I can't remember now and the fact it says "2 baths". I also find it weird, but ignorant as I am with this subject, I won't disagree.

In any case, I am going to buy the chemicals first, and with that I can plan the rest of the kit: It is not so difficult to just add one more bottle to store the chemicals.

Ah, both acordian and concertina are right and I was able to find some online... aprox 12£ per bottle, but I think you can't get too cheap on tools!

Now the fact is that being poor as rats and with a 0 hour contract It will take me a while to save enough money for the full kit, but it is one of those things that I consider to be worth it because of the love you can put on the process, and the money you'll save on the short run. I will post the results as soon as I can develop!

Thank you very much for all the quick and useful replies too
 
If you're keen to get started, I'd get cheaper bottles. The kits don't last that long any way...
 
the stabiliser is needed, it helps ensure clean negatives, Fuji stabiliser is superb and should last a very long time for home processing but i don't know if you can buy small bottles.
 
The tetenal kit has stabiliser in the final wash. The two baths are the developer and blix then the stab.
 
Don't forget the old dodge of storing chemicals in any suitable plastic bottle to exclude air is:- to add glass marbles.
 
I used to use concertina bottles, but they are a bit of a pain to clean, and I heard that the plastic is slightly gas-permeable anyway (rather defeating the object!). These days I go into Boots (the chemist) and ask the pharmacy for their 500ml brown medicine bottles, which are REALLY cheap (somewhat less than £1 each, I think). Then, if I have a 1 litre bottle of something, I decant it into two 500ml bottles so that the second bottle is air-tight until the first is used up. Simples :o)
 
excalibur2 said:
Don't forget the old dodge of storing chemicals in any suitable plastic bottle to exclude air is:- to add glass marbles.
Click to expand...

I use 2 pint plastic milk bottles and just squash the sides in until the liquid is at the top, then screw the top down hard. It's usually air tight and OK till you get down to 1 pint volume, when you switch to a 1 pint bottle. You can only use each bottle once, but they are virtually free if you use milk anyway.
 
I have used both Tetenal and Rollei Digibase C41 kits and in both cases, you can mix smaller amounts - eg 2 lots of 500ml. If you use jobo tanks with rotary processing you can use 4 lots of 250ml (but a jobo processor may be some way off in your plans).

However, there is definitely an advantage in saving up your films so that you have enough to use all the chemicals when you start, because of the limited life span of the chemicals. However, depending upon your rate of film use, you may have to be very patient. The Digibase kit has a reputation for having a longer life span than the Tetenal kit.

For some reason Tetenal do not count the stabiliser, which they do provide, when they describe a "2-bath" kit. Perhaps the justification is that you can use the stabiliser outside of the developing tank, in daylight.
 
DaveTheWalker said:
I used to use concertina bottles, but they are a bit of a pain to clean, and I heard that the plastic is slightly gas-permeable anyway (rather defeating the object!). These days I go into Boots (the chemist) and ask the pharmacy for their 500ml brown medicine bottles, which are REALLY cheap (somewhat less than £1 each, I think). Then, if I have a 1 litre bottle of something, I decant it into two 500ml bottles so that the second bottle is air-tight until the first is used up. Simples :eek:)
Click to expand...

Used to do the same, BITD, but used glass marbles that were small enough to fit down the neck of the bottle - just keep adding marbles to take up the space...
 
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