Today I finally developed my first roll of film. It took much longer than I expected; based on what I'd read, I was expecting to spend about 30-45 minutes. Actually, I started around noon and finished at 6:30pm. Of course, about four of those hours were spent mixing the chemicals from their initial powder form, which only has to be done once every few months. Also, I took my time with every step, carefully washing every container and funnel between each use to avoid contamination, and rereading instructions repeatedly to avoid mistakes. I guess it's similar to the way my first engine swap took me three weeks to complete, but the second one was done in a weekend. I imagine the next roll of film I develop will go much faster.
I didn't want to risk ruining a real roll of pictures I actually liked, so I took the Holga out to the front yard and shot a quick roll, then went back inside and got started.
The first step was mixing the chemicals from powder to their stock solution (the liquid-but-concentrated form in which they're stored). The developer has to be mixed at 125°F, so I put a gallon of water in the microwave for a few minutes and laid out the necessary implements. When the water was at the right temperature, I started pouring and stirring until the powder was fully dissolved. Once it was ready, I poured it into soda bottles and set them aside.
The fixer was a similar process, except that it has to be mixed at 68°F, so I put a gallon of water in the fridge and watched an episode of Stargate SG-1. Once it was cool enough, I mixed it and poured it in soda bottles as before.
Once I had the stock solutions mixed, I then had to dilute them with purified water to obtain the working solutions. These are what you actually use when developing. It's done at room temperature, so it was a straightforward process.
Well, except for the stop bath. This is essentially just acid — it's used to neutralize any remaining developer on the film to stop development. The stop bath is distributed in concentrated liquid form, so there's no heating and pouring and stirring — you just dilute it (significantly) and you've got your working solution.
When I opened the bottle of stop bath, I noticed a strong odor. It was somewhat unpleasant, but I was curious, so I moved closer and took a big whiff. Immediately my nostrils were aflame. When I could see again, I looked more closely at the bottle and saw a warning that basically says "Don't inhale the concentrated acid, idiot." Oh. If I had continued reading, I'd also have seen the part about wearing gloves when handling it. Apparently it stains the skin. Oh. I imagine now I'll get digital necrosis and my left hand will become a permanent set of metal devil horns or, if I'm lucky, a shocker.
Anyway, once I had my working solutions prepared, it was time to seal myself up in the darkroom and load the film onto the spool for development. I first set the bottle of developer in an ice water bath to start bringing down its temperature, and then closed and taped up the door to the bathroom. Masking tape is not very opaque, so this really wasn't very light-tight, but I didn't want to wait another few days to find a better solution. I can always just develop future rolls at night to avoid any problems with light.
When everything was finally ready, I laid everything out in a logical order, turned off the lights, and unspooled the film. As I started loading it onto the spool, I was surprised at how papery it felt. When I tried to wind it on the spool, I found that it kept crinkling up and folding, doubtless leaving creases. I accepted this and kept going, but it got harder and harder as I got farther down. At one point, I felt it tear. I didn't even realize film could tear. In frustration, I pulled it all out of the spool, and then realized that there was another part of the roll that felt much more "film-like" — apparently, what I'd been trying to wind was just the paper backing. Oh :) I knew that medium format film has a paper backing, but I assumed it was attached to the film all along the length of the roll. I didn't realize they were separate components.
Armed with this new insight, I ripped off all of the paper and started loading the actual film. This was much more straightforward, and it went on smoothly. By this point my eyes had adjusted, and I could see that it really wasn't fully dark at all (not to mention the glow from the hands of my watch — oops). Once I finished winding the film onto the spool, I placed the spool in the developing tank, sealed it, and turned on the lights.
Now came the tricky part — keeping everything at a constant temperature throughout the development process. The developer works faster at higher temperatures, so you need to keep things consistent in order for your calculated development time to be accurate. The standard developing temperature is 68°F, but in a tropical climate, I figured it'd be hard to keep everything that cold. The manufacturers provide charts showing how to adjust your development times for different temperatures, so I decided on 75°F, the warmest temperature listed in the chart for my film. That gave me a development time of 14:15. However, when I was about to pour the developer into the tank, I checked the temperature of the water bath again and found that it had dropped to 68°F. I checked the chart for the appropriate development time for that temperature (22 minutes), reset the timer to match, and poured the developer into the tank. I then placed the tank in the water bath where I had kept the bottle of developer
Five minutes into the development, I checked the temperature of the water bath again and found that it was now even lower — it had fallen to 55°F. I took the ice out of the water, but it didn't make much difference, so I pulled the tank out of the water bath and left it sitting on the counter. I debated whether to adjust the development time even longer to compensate, but finally I decided to just do the 22 minutes and see what happened. I assumed the roll would be ruined, but I was curious to see in what way it'd be ruined — would it be creased from loading, or fogged from the light in the room, or underdeveloped from the temperature variations?
When the 22 minutes were finally up, I poured out the developer, poured in the stop bath for 15 seconds, then poured that out and poured in the fixer. I let it sit for five minutes, then poured that out and opened up the tank, finally getting my first sight of my film. I pulled the spool out of the tank, unwound it, and hung it up to dry. I was surprised that despite the incomplete darkness and my shoddy temperature control, the negatives still turned out quite recognizable. They do look a bit dark, which means they will print too light — I assume that's due to the light leakage in the room while I was loading the roll. Still, it's a better first attempt than I expected.
I'll take the roll to the lab to get printed today when I go pick up the New Orleans roll they've been processing for me. I'm eager to try another roll now and see if it goes any better.
Posted by Antonio 4 hours, 1 minute later
I like the 6th step: Watch Stargate SG-1.
Posted by Bryan 8 hours, 48 minutes later
If they're dark, it means you left them in the developer too long or your exposures were too short. If light leakage were a factor, the film would be too light. Remember, they're negatives. Exposure to light burns the film light but prints black.
Posted by Bryan 1 minute later
Also, a red light helps in being able to see in the dark room :)
Posted by Bryan 14 minutes later
After looking at the picture of your negatives, they actually look pretty good. There are a few frames that are realy dark but that is most likely due to a short exposure. You can make up for that on the enlarger with a longer burn.
You could have developed the film for a shorter period to have darker frames lighter, but that would mean that the lightest frames would be even lighter. That's much harder to compesate for because you have to do realy short burns on the enlarger and less contrast.
Sometimes you get uneven developing, but that is ussualy from the top of the frame to the bottom because of the way it sits in the developer. I was taught to shake the canister every few minutes durring developing the be sure this didn't happen. The spool should help seperate the film but the shaking also helps to make sure that the inner and outer frames of the spool get developed equaly.
Posted by Bryan 1 minute later
Edit:
That's much harder to compesate for because you have to do realy short burns on the enlarger and end up with less contrast.
:)
Posted by Dan 9 minutes later
"There are a few frames that are realy dark but that is most likely due to a short exposure."
Are you sure about that? I thought negatives start out clear and get darker as they are exposed to more light. Light causes the particles in the film base to turn into silver particles, which are opaque. So more light = more opaqueness = darker, no? It seems like that would make sense too since printing paper starts out white, and places that are dark on the negative will remain white on the paper, whereas clear parts of the negative will get dark on the paper. So clear in the negative = dark in the image, and dark in the negative = white in the image. Or at least, it all made sense until you started making me question my understanding :)
"I was taught to shake the canister every few minutes durring developing the be sure this didn't happen."
Yeah, I understand that the reason you agitate the film is because as the developer works on the film, it gets used up, and then you've got an area of inert liquid around the film, doing nothing. So you agitate to stir the developer around and be sure the film stays exposed to fresh developer. I agitated for 5 seconds every 30 seconds, as suggested in the instructions for my developer.
In my case, the enlarger techniques you described don't apply because I'm not making prints. For now, I'm just taking my negatives into the photo lab to get prints made, and they'll probably do some corrections themselves. Eventually, I'll be getting a scanner and scanning my film, so I'll be making those corrections in Photoshop. Of course, hopefully by that point my negatives won't require much correction :)
Posted by Bryan 25 minutes later
You're right. I was thinking backwards. Dark negatives would be result of a long exposure which in turn results in very little contrast or no image.
Light leakage would have produced a uniform burn and made the shots muddy (assuming that each frame was exposed to the same light for the same or similar amount of time). There are plenty of frames in that roll with great contrast.
Aside from all of that, my original point was that longer development = darker neagtives. There is a possibility that it wasn't a result of light in the room.
Posted by Dan 23 minutes later
Ah, OK. Yeah, that makes sense. Longer time in the developer = more time for particles to turn into silver. Well, yeah, they certainly got a long development, so that might be part of it. Tomorrow I'm going to try another roll in a different developer that's supposed to work better at room temperature (exactly 80°F here). We'll see if that goes any better.