how to develop black and white film–its super easy, don’t not do it ‘cos you think its hard



women looking over that way at night on a different roll of tri-x film that was pushed, taken with canonet QL17GIII, originally uploaded by jon madison.

a quick reference. i guess i should say what you need

get a funnel, some bottles for developer, a stirrer (wooden spoon or something) fixer, photo flo solution. just really try not to get the chemicals on stuff you shouldn’t. they’re probably dangerous :)
you’ll also need a developing canister, and go ahead and get a changing bag, unless you want to be stuck having to always wait until night or go into your garage (or both :) and load your film

i sent this to one of my flickr contacts so i figured i’ll regurgitate it here. it took 5 minutes to write. i’m telling you, once you do it about 2 times it’s super simple. loading the film onto the reels is probably harder. and pretty much gets only marginally easier ‘cos you have to do it in the dark. anyway:

0.
35mm soak 1 min
120 soak 5 min
diafine DONT SOAK AT ALL

pour in developer, time it for whatever time you need to for your film (instructions are on the developer itself, more times at www.digitaltruth.com)
diafine — 3 minutes A, pour it back in its bottle, 3 minutes in B. no exception, DO NOT GET B IN A (it’s okay to get some A in B, though, and it’s gonna happen anyway by virtue of the film itself having some A on it when you throw B in the canister)

dump developer (or pour back into bottle–if you do you have to adjust dev times by i think 10% each time each reuse), “stop bath”, pour in fixer. i use ilford rapid fixer…starts at 2 minute fixing.

after fixing is done open up the canister to take a look. if its still purplish quickly put it back in and do another few minutes of fixing.

if its all good, rinse for 5 minutes

pour out rinse, dip in photo-flo solution, and hang to dry until they’re dry.

feel free to ask questions. i post this up ‘cos i always have trouble now finding the chromogenic.net article that i first learned from.

  • jon
    i think most people haven't tried, 'cos they (like i had) tend to lump developing and printing together. printing takes an enlarger and a running water source (unless you want to do contact printing, in which case, from what i've read is pretty easy, but i haven't gotten myself around to doing it yet).

    it's not hard; at worst its inconvenient. you gotta mix the chemicals, and find a place to store your chemicals, is the extent of my troubles...oh, well, i also have to make sure there's not a bunch of other crap in the sink when i want to develop (don't tell anyone but i use the kitchen sink, which gareth was pretty adamant about not using...he used the bathroom instead :)

    if you use diafine, you'll mix two jugs of solution, then never deal with it again (seriously, diafine lasts *forever*). and it's super easy to remember--3 minutes A, 3 minutes B. and even from what i've been reading, you can shorten the B developer time to make sure it doesn't push as much! why doesn't the world use diafine? well...personal preference...but i'm not a pro, so i can't tell many of the nuances after i've developed, and tweaked them during the scanning process anyway :)

    oh, and diafine just gets kinda gross after a while, too (but trust me, it's still working:)

    oh, and check "dev" below, under possibly related posts. it shows a picture of all the stuff i used for my first batch.

    j.
  • thanks for this

    I still haven't tried, because I think it's hard!
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