wheres the best place...

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joelhall

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joel
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to have film developed if youre poor and cant afford your own darkroom?

i know theres far less choice in places for developing around now (after a little hunt into town) but what are the labs of choice for all you guys (except your own darkrooms of course ;))?

thanks guys.
 
You don't need a darkroom to develop b/w
What film, b/w, colour neg or slide
What format, 35mm, 120....etc..

I shoot mostly 120
I develop my own b/w
I don't use colour neg
I take my slide film to CCimaging

:)
 
i live in aylesbury, bucks. ive found some decent links going through some of the posts here. what i was really interested in is having 6x6 developed as i may upgrade in the very near future. peak imaging seems good from their site and various comments here, but i wondered how good people have actually found them?

also, any advice on doing your own b&w would be appreciated :)

joel
 
Hi,

I too would like to know what items and costs involved in developing your own B&W prints.

Michael.
 
So there are two processes to think about -
developing the film to get a negative
projecting the film onto paper with an enlarger and developing that to get a print from the negative.
developing film to get a negative is easy and it can be scanned, making prints in the darkroom requires much more equipment.
 
Hi,

For me it would be the process of develping the film to get a negative as I have a scanner that can scan negatives.

Michael.
 
Michael,

You would need a universal developing tank Patersons Super System 4 is a good one, a changing bag (to get the film into the tank), a slection of 1 ltr bottles (old milk containers will do), a graduated measure (for mixing the chemicals to the required dilution), some means of hanging the film up to dry (film clips although pegs over a shower rail will do), a thermometer (very important) and a large container for your washing water (I use an old 5ltr mineral water bottle).

Chemicals you need are developer (I use Ilford ID11 at 1+3) and fixer (I use Ilford Rapid fixer at 1+4). You should ideally use an acid stop bath between the developer and the fixer stages of the process, but a few water washes will suffice (in fact, this can allow a bit of extended delvelopement of the shadow areas to take place increasing the dynamic range) although the slight carry over of some developer will hasten the demise of your fixer.

Stages to delope a B&W film are:

Make all required chemicals up to the required dilution and correct temperature (I then place the containers in a washing up bowl of water at 22 degrees which is 2 degrees above the required temperature of 20 degrees.

Make up 5 litres (minimum) of wash water to about 20-22 degrees.

Move film in light tight conditions from cassette/roll to developing tank

Taking a note of the time, pour developer (at working dilution and temperature) into tank, put lid on and invert 5 times (about 1 inversion per second) and then tap tank twice on counter top (to dislodge any bubbles from the emulsion).

Every minute until the end of the development stage, invert the tank twice, for the first 5 minutes I also tap the tank twice after the inversions (after that the emulsion should be saturated and not require it anymore).

At the end of the development time, pour out the developer (discard if one shot use) and pour in some wash water (put the lid back on), invert the tank vigourously for about 20 seconds and then pour out the wash water, if you have some stop bath, introduce the stop bath into the tank (put the lid on and invert the tank slowly for 30 seconds) pour the stop bath back into ints container and give the film aother quick wash.

Pour the fixer in to tank, put the lid on and invert for about 5 seconds, leave to fix for about 5 minutes giving 2 inversions every minute, at the end of the fix stage, pour the fixer back into it's container and start to wash the film.

I currently wash the film by using tanks full of water, with 20 seconds of swift agaitation, discard, then another at 25 secs of swift agitation and discard and so on until all the water in the 5 ltr bottle has gone increasing the time by 5 secs at each fill.

Then you can either use a rinse aid or not and hang the film up to dry.
 
I have to agree with some of the other guys on here. Developing the film (to get the negatives) is fairly simple and doesn't actually require a dark room as you can put the films in the tank in a light proof bag and then you can take the tank out into the light (as its light proof), you can even add the chemicals into the tank in daylight.

Once you have the negatives you can then scan them at home, or if you don't have the money for a decent film scanner you can take them to a Tesco Lab who will put your negaives on a CD for 97p, if your nice to the people at the lab they will also put multiple films onto 1 CD for the same price (they come up in seperate folders on the disc)

Hope this helps
Jym
 
that does help a lot guys thanks :)

i think i may have some of some of these things around that my granddad left. theres certainly a lot there (see my other post).

joel :)
 
The chemicals arn't that expensive either, Ilford Dev & Fix come in at about £6 each for a 500ml bottle and you only use appox 30ml of Dev and 75ml of Fix per film (plus the fix can be re-used)

Jym
 
Hi,

Thanks for the detailed reply in what items I would need and how I would go about processing the film for negatives. I guess I'll have to checkout my local camera shop that sell's all types of lenses and film gear etc unlike the rest local to me that only sell digital camera's etc.

Michael.
 
Drpepper99uk said:
Hi,

Thanks for the detailed reply in what items I would need and how I would go about processing the film for negatives. I guess I'll have to checkout my local camera shop that sell's all types of lenses and film gear etc unlike the rest local to me that only sell digital camera's etc.

Michael.
Click to expand...

Hi, another good place to check if they don't have what you are after is http://www.freecycle.org/group/UK, it's an online recycling community where people give away there unused stuff instead of throwing it out.

When I first started developing from home I was lucky enough to get a complete B&W developing set from there (minus the chemicals), plus some advice from the previous owner!

Jym
 
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