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Lost the nerve to develop 120 at home
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Hello,
After an initial mishap with a roll of 120 film (that’s easter out the window) I developed a roll of 120 at home. I enjoyed the experience, but it kind of unnerved me, and I haven’t done it again.
Below are two of my scans from the first roll. Do many of your guys develop at home? I found that I didn’t develop the film for long enough, I’m using Prescysol EF, and I think I did it for about 8 minutes. Followed up with a water stop bath, and a alkaline fixer.Any advise you guys can give me? How badly wrong can the results go if I say leave the film in there for 30 seconds too long? As you can see the grain has been brought out a little too much, because I had to tweak it a bit in p/s
You have used a film designed to be developed in C41 colour chemistry and developed it in a B&W staining developer so you are making your venture into developing film harder on yourself. Pick and real B&W film with an ordinary developer and try again.
Peter
thefizz wrote:
You have used a film designed to be developed in C41 colour chemistry and developed it in a B&W staining developer so you are making your venture into developing film harder on yourself. Pick and real B&W film with an ordinary developer and try again.
Peter
would have to agree-
unnecessarily complicated-
and bound to put anyone off-
except wonka, maybe…Sorry to read you’re unhappy with results.
The first bit of advice I would give you is to shoot a roll or two of stuff easily redone in case of problems. There is nothing so miserable as losing something important. I’ve been burned myself there.
The second would be to choose a regular black and white film and to choose a liquid developer that the manufacturer of the film recommends. Dont worry about staining devs and alkaline fixers for the moment.
BTW XP2 is a real b+w, it’s a fantastic film but it was made so it can be developed in a color process like your local mini-lab uses. Developing it otherwise is into experimental stuff.
Well, I really like both those pictures, I think they’re great, really relaxed and natural.
The Massive Development Chart is a good resource for finding out about developer/film combinations and times, temps etc.
I looked your developer up and couldn’t see that it matched any films, apart from Delta 3200 1600.After a very quick google, there is some additional information about it here interesting reading…
Maybe give it another go with a different film/developer combination.
I use Kodak HC110 developer, I can’t advise on any other as I’ve never used any other, but, I like this one, works with most films, at most speeds, have had to improvise a few times too,
(Delta 400 3200, no times available on the massive dev chart, so guessed 20 mins, and it worked okay, the negs had something that looked like images on them and I managed to get a
nice print from one of them. :) ) and it still worked well.
Maybe others could suggest other developers? I know Rodinal is popular around here too.With regard to film, maybe something like Neopan 400 or Kodak Tri-X 44 would be a good place to start, if your a little bit off with your process, you’ll still get workable negs.
(spoken from someone who has been more than just a little bit off, on more than one occasion… *sigh*)Sinead
Thanks for the pointers people, jb7 I didn’t realise I was heading into unknown territory for Prescysol EF and a C41 film… Ooops!
Seeming as I have a bucket of the developer left, what film would you recommend? Althought I do have a half dozen rolls of XP2 super I’d like to use up.
Need to find a right footing to start from :D
XP2 super is C41 process as well.
Best go with something simple like Rodinal (Developer) and any of the films for which it has prescribed dilution ratios and developing times on the bottle e.g. Fuji Neopan 400.
If you don’t feel confident with that chemistry,
you should use up the film, and leave it in to be processed-
anywhere that develops colour film will do it for you-You could develop it yourself too,
but I don’t know much about C41-
though Martin and The Fizz do it-
perhaps they can give some pointers-b&w needn’t be difficult, and getting repeatable results will make it less intimidating-
The question you asked earlier about an extra 30 seconds in the developer-
it’ll make a difference if your dev time is short, 3-5 mins,
less of a difference for longer times-
though the process should be a repeatable one for consistent results-XP2 to the lab.
Read this first if you want to use up the developer. Peter is a nice guy and a friend of a friend so to speak.
http://www.monochromephotography.com/section255920_83799.html
jb7 wrote:
You could develop it yourself too,
but I don’t know much about C41-
though Martin and The Fizz do it-
perhaps they can give some pointers-I don’t do C41.
everyone that has posted here dev’s at home.
It is really that simple, if you leave the film in for 30 seconds too
long or short to the untrasined eye, like mine there wont be toooo
much of a difference.I develop b+w from lo-fi cameras so 30 seconds here or there is not
a make or break scenario.Sinead has posted a very usefull resource there [Massive Development Chart]
that will sort you out on times per film and chemical.
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