My recent acquisition, a Fujica half 1.9 was used to expose a Fomapan 100 b&w-negative film. The film was exposed too ISO 100. The film is currently drying, I will show scan/prints in future posts, stay tuned.
I do actually not claim the following recipe, I adopted Jon Caradies' volumetric version of caffenol (see "The Caffenol Cookbook") to volumes to work with the 240ml Jobo 1510 developing tank.
Measurements
Something important about volumetric gauges, such as TBSP or TSP. Although TBSP bears the meaning of "table spoon", while TSP would refer to "tea spoon", such measures are actually referring to small hemispherical measuring devices and not to actual table or tea spoons. The actual spoons may vary in volume, so, please don't use those as a reference. For more info, check wikipedia.
Temperature
The following happened at July room temperature (26°C).
Developer
Here it comes, 2 vessels required:
- dissolves 2 TSP of washing soda in 100ml of water
- add ¾ (3 quarter) TSP of vitamine-C to the washing soda solution
- dissolve 2½ (5 half) TSP of (cheap) instant coffee crystals in 140ml of water
- => wait until dissolved or bubbling stopped
- pour the coffee solution slowly into the soda/vit-C solution
- add ¼ TSP of iodized table salt
- => wait for at least 5min, or activity stopped (no more froth)
Process
- Soak film in room-temp water for 5 min.
- Developing for 13min, 10 inversions during the begin of the first minute, 3 inversions at the begin of every other minute.
- Stopping by 3× rinsing with room-temp water.
- Fixing using Ilford Rapid 1+4 for 3min.
- Washing according to the Ilford scheme:
- 1 inversion - flush
- 5 inversions - flush
- 10 inversions - flush
- 20 inversions - flush
- 40 inversions - add some dish-washing agent - rest for some minutes - flush
- Hang to dry.
I previously developed films in caffenol and was surprised by the quality. However, all previous attempts were using C41 color negative films.
The film that hangs drying has got 82 photos on it, yep, I got 10 more exposures as one would expect from a half-frame camera... and the negatives look amazing!
This was the first time in decades I developed a b&w-negative film. I loved to do this when I was a teenager. It seems I rediscovered this love.
