Going Big Again
With my friend Mat Marrash opening his gallery show at The Aperture Photography and Variety Store in Tremont, Cleveland, OH this past weekend, I decided to bust out something completely new—my 4×5 sheet film holders that were loaded with (gasp!) color film.
I had obtained this free pack of 10 sheets of Kodak Ektar 100 thanks to the generous staff of the Kodak booth at last year’s PDN Photo Plus Expo. I took two shots – one of Mat and Lauren (which came out fuzzy due to a loose rear element on the wider-angle Komura lens), and this one of Mat and Mike:
Camera: Toyo D45M (4×5); Lens: Schneider Symmar-S 210mm f/5.6; Exposure: 1/4 second @ f/8; Film: Kodak Ektar 100, courtesy of Kodak.; Processed at home with the Unicolor C-41 kit.
I processed this using the Beseler color print drum (gift from Mat) on a Unicolor motor base (from eBay). I have tried a lot of different sheet film processing methods, but this one is by far my favorite. The only downside is that you can only process two sheets at once. This is hardly detrimental, as I don’t shoot very much large format, and I can do other things while the film is processing. Contrast that with the taco method (accidental light leaks) and tray processing (needs total darkness).
Hopefully this shot will start helping to convince people to let me take their portraits with my 4×5 camera.
Sorry for the brevity of the update. What I really want to do is record some Youtube videos, but those take some time to set up, record, and edit down. Patience, dear readers!
Simple Tips for Developing Color Film At Home
A number of film shooters know that the best way to develop black and white film is to do it yourself at home. You save so much money, you’re in full control of your development, and you (hopefully) have a bit more fun than you would otherwise. I’ve developed tons of rolls of my own film and I still get a bit giddy whenever I’m pulling the reel out of the tank and getting my first glimpse at the negatives. Honestly, why would you ever want to let someone at a lab develop your film for you?
Color film is quite different. The processes are all standardized, so it doesn’t matter where you take it, and labs offer color film development very inexpensively. While black and white film development costs mere pennies at home, sometimes the cost and longevity of C-41 and E-6 kits can leave you wondering whether you’d be better off sending the film out. After all, a place like Sharp Photo and Portrait will charge you less than two dollars to develop a roll of film, and if you want, you can even pay them to scan the roll, which can save you time and effort at home.
But in the end, you can end up saving money (especially on E-6) if you’re willing to get the color chemistry yourself and change your methods of developing slightly. You’ll also have mastered a new aspect of your craft, and you might even enjoy the process. Rather than walk you through every step to get you started, though, I will offer some simple tips to keep in mind when developing either C-41 or E-6 film so you’ll be less likely to screw up, and ultimately more likely to stick with it if you make a mistake.
1. Save that chemistry!
You might be used to dealing with as little as one storage bottle for your black and white fixer. If you use the Unicolor C-41 kit or the Arista E-6 kit, then be prepared to store three different chemicals for each chemical process. Opaque plastic bottles work well, but you don’t need to invest in the fancy accordion-style bottles. The 1-liter kits, for example, fit quite well in Delta Datatainer quart-size bottles, which you can squeeze lightly on the sides to get all the air out. All the chemicals in these processes are able to be reused for quite a few rolls—maybe 20 or even more—to the point where the investment in the kit will have paid for itself.
And since you’ll be keeping the chemicals for quite some time, go ahead and pay the extra 89 cents to get some distilled water for mixing. You don’t want any tap water impurities to end up ruining your chemicals prematurely.
2. Get ready to warm things up.
As you may know, C-41 and E-6 take place at elevated temperatures. My C-41 kit needs a developer temperature of 102ºF, and E-6 needs 105ºF (That’s about 39 and 40.5 on the Celsius scale, respectively.) The temperatures don’t have to be spot on but drift more than a few degrees in either direction during the development stages, and you might get color shifts.
So, I would recommend that you get a soda cooler that will hold up to all three chemical storage bottles. As long as you have access to tap water that’s hotter than the temperature you’ll need, you can use it to warm up the chemicals. The soda cooler (such as a Coleman) will keep the hot water insulated and make sure most of the heat transfers to your chemicals and not the air in the room.
On that note, you’ll ideally want two thermometers: one for the hot water bath, and one for the first developer bottle. Make sure that the hot water stays above the target temperature. If it doesn’t dump the water and replace it with warmer water. Once the developer thermometer reads the target temperature, you’re ready to start developing.
Personally, I try to get the water coming from my sink faucet to right around the target developer, then I fill my sink with a water bath. When I’m not agitating my tank, I’ll put it in this warm water bath to ensure that heat isn’t lost too quickly. And I’ll use my plastic tanks, not my steel ones, because plastics are a bit better at keeping the developer insulated.
As you can see, though, you don’t need a high-tech setup with a bunch of heating elements and super-tight control of your temperature. A simple, cost-effective approach will work just fine.
Developed in Unicolor C-41 Kit
3. Read the instructions.
Sounds elementary, but the instructions that come with these kits are really helpful when it comes to developing. Once you read through the process, you may want to write down the whole process on a “cheat sheet” that you keep handy while developing. Maybe even laminate it to protect it against water damage. Nothing is worse than forgetting, for example, that you were supposed to wash the film in between the two developer steps of the E-6 process, or that the Blix is the second chemical step in C-41, not the third.
While we’re on that note, I would suggest labelling your chemical bottles thoroughly. For example, don’t just put “Developer” on the first bottle of your C-41 kit. Also label it “C-41 #1.” Put the appropriate time the chemical will be in the tank, and what temperature it’s supposed to be. Sometimes the individual steps can be over before you know it, so take as many steps as you can to prevent thoughtless errors. My first batch of chemistry was ruined, for example, after I started pouring stabilizer into the blix bottle.
If all this sounds too complicated, remember…
4. Don’t be intimidated.
Apart from having to warm up the chemicals beforehand, there’s nothing more difficult about C-41 development, or even E-6. The basic skills of pouring chemicals and agitating the tank are all the same. Many people are needlessly intimidated for a variety of reasons. Maybe they think the temperatures have to be accurate within a single degree, or that the times have to be accurate to within two seconds. In fact, in my experiences, color developing is pretty forgiving if you treat everything with the same careful deliberation that you give your black and white development.
For whatever reason, E-6 seems to have more of a stigma of intimidation than C-41, despite being just as easy to do. Maybe it’s because the cost of the film stock and chemistry are slightly higher, or that you have to gradually add additional time to your first developer. But either one should be easy enough to do. If you feel the need for a confidence-builder, some cheap drugstore film makes for a nice way to get used to C-41 development.
5. Know what you will get in the end.
Be aware that when color film comes out of the tank, it won’t look quite right. When color negative film is hung to dry, it may look a little “milky,” like black and white film that has been improperly fixed. Similarly, color transparency film that I’ve developed has appeared milky blue on one side and milky yellow on the other side. Let the film dry overnight (or at least a few hours) before passing judgement on the success of your development session.
Developed in Arista E-6 Kit
In closing, let me know via comments if you found this encouraging, or if you have more questions about developing your color film at home. I could end up editing this post if need be.
From Hasselblad…
First in a two-parter. I recently sent my faulty Hasselblad film magazine to David Odess for repair. Very not-cheap, but I sold a friend my Canon AE-1 to help pay for it. Why would I sell my AE-1 you ask? Well, when I bought it I had definitely NOT done my research and thought it was a mechanical camera. Turns out it needs a battery to function, and I’ve had a beef with it ever since I bought it. And I was sick of it sitting there asking me why I didn’t love it properly with it’s accusing eyes. Anyway.
The problem I was having was the occasional overlapping frame on whatever roll of film I’d put through the Hasselblad. I noticed that this happened once or twice, so I stopped using the camera until I had the cash (more than a hundred, but not quite two hundred) to get the magazine fixed. Fortunately, a call to David confirmed that the film back was all that I needed to send in – the problem is apparently never with the camera body.
Well, I got the magazine back on a Friday and shot a roll of film in it that night. It was a poker night in Stormstown, and I hadn’t had the pleasure of a poker night in a long time. Much to my dismay, however, the frames were still closely spaced. Not overlapping, but closely spaced. I even took the time to measure them, the average being 3.7 mm, translating to a 1.85-mm border for a roughly 60x60mm image. In my opinion, that’s too close for comfort. My latest camera, a Yashica Mat-124G, produces a much more comfortable frame spacing.
So I e-mailed David and he explained that he replaced some parts that ensured the frames wouldn’t overlap. But unlike the old Kiev camera I performed surgery on, there’s no adjustment for spacing the frames farther apart. You have to start replacing parts at that point, and it can get very expensive. Since the original frame overlap problem was fixed, I’m going to just consider the matter settled, even though I thought the frames were going to have a bit more of a buffer between them.
Of course, I’m going to keep my eye on the film that comes out of this camera, and hopefully there won’t be any problems.
Shots from the first test roll, for which I finally used my Unicolor C-41 kit:
Home Black and White Developing 101
I put together a very long and hopefully detailed primer on what you need to do if you want to develop black and white film – 35mm or 120 – by yourself. This is meant to be a pretty straightforward guide that will lead you developing your first roll of black-and-white film successfully
Brace yourself for a long read after the cut…
(more…)
Caffenol – Developing Film in Coffee
Want to develop film in common household items? well, here’s a good recipe for a developer:
Caffenol C-M
1. Measure out 500mL water.
2. Dissolve in 27g of washing soda (NOT baking soda)
3. Dissolve in 8g of Vitamin C powder (check a health food store)
4. Dissolve in 20g instant coffee (the cheaper the better)
Let sit for a few minutes to let the bubbles settle, but use the developer within the hour. Generally, 15 minutes of development with 10 seconds agitation per minute is a recommended starting point. For more details, you can check out Reinhold’s Caffenol Blog (caffenol.blogspot.com) but it’s so simple, I just wanted to post the recipe so you can try it out.
Also, of course, some results of my own on Ilford Delta 100:
How I Screwed Up and How I Fixed It
I screwed up my first roll of B&W film since I started developing. And that’s been almost a year, so at least I had a good streak going.
So what happened? I bought some new Rokunar reels. I felt like more plastic reels were in order, since they need to dry completely before you can reuse them, and you never can tell when I’m going to want to do a marathon developing day. OK, so that’s unlikely, given how much I love developing. Odds are that sensitized but unprocessed film rolls aren’t going to stay around for very long. But maybe someone will want me to shoot an event or wedding someday, and I’ll have to plow through several rolls of film. Anyway… for whatever reason, I wanted more reels. Well, just my luck that my camera shop had some Rokunar reels in stock. These are different than the Patersons that I have, but they have the distinct advantage of having big thumb rests or tabs on one part of the reel, meaning it’s easier to find out the point where you start loading the reel by touch.
So, I loaded my Kodak Plus-X Pan in the reel, put the reel in the tank, and started developing. Well, once I was done with the processing, I got shots like this:
What caused this? My educated guess, though I’ll never be 100% certain, is that the reel wasn’t at the very bottom of the tank. Instead, it must have gotten lifted up so that one edge (the dark one) progressively got more and more elevated out of the developer. This could be caused by the rotating motion of the agitation wand that I use in the Paterson tank. The Paterson tanks have a tighter grip on the center post, so they don’t slide up and down very easily.
So, the most logical thing to do would be to always use two reels so that there’s no room to slide. This is absurd, because if I had two different films, I’d need to use all four of my reels – two for developing film, and two “spacer” reels. And then, my purchase is nullified.
So instead, I noticed that the diameter of a plastic 35mm film canister is slightly larger than the diameter of the Paterson center post, and a bit taller than the height of a plastic reel set to accept 35mm film. It makes sense, right? It’s got to be at least as tall as the film cartridge, which is of course wider than the film. So, I measured how much I would have to cut off the end, and I made a hollow cylinder. Once the reel is loaded on the center post, this spacer goes on top so that the reel stays on the bottom, in the 300 mL of chemicals. I may make a tiny ring for 120, but I think the weight should help hold it down.
Future crises averted!
