how to develop black and white film–its super easy, don’t not do it ‘cos you think its hard
Monday, August 13th, 2007
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.
