The test was not really successful, as after about 8 minutes I didn’t see any changes in the left piece, even if I waited another 15. But first the leader test: In the photo below you see two parts of the same leader tested in two different chemicals: Left was put in a bowl of old fixer from the Digibase kit, the right part was tested in a bowl with fresh blix from a Tetenal kit. To make that happen I cut a film in two, put the two halves on different reels and in different tanks, and developed them separately. My next move was to do a proper test with a leader, and compare old chemicals to fresh ones with one roll of film. What I want to say is that you might make a mistake every now and then, but the results may surprise you! You can see the light-stripes induced by the structure of the reels, and for some images this turned out pretty nice. But, I was still able to get some images from this film with my flatbed scanner, as you can see below. Obviously, this extra light exposed the film making it impossible to see the effect of changing the fixing period, as the negative was very dense due to over-exposing (see lowest strip in the photo with examples of Ektar, the chemicals were 82 days old). I decided to carry on anyway, and see what I would end up with. Or: I let light into the tank before I developed the film. Here’s what happened: for some reason unknown to myself I opened the patterson tank after pouring out the water that soaked the film. I want to share my mistake to show that that can also lead to some nice unexpected results, one of the things that makes shooting film magical and exiting. This of course is a risk of developing at home, and something that might put people of. The first time I tried to adapt fixing times to compensate for ageing chemicals I made a mistake. I thought that this might also work for C-41 chemicals, so I decided to give that a go. The fixer time should then be about 2x this amount for proper fixing. The suggested approach was to drop a piece of the leader in the prepared solutions of fixer, and time how long it takes to become clear. As I mentioned before, I found it difficult to find information on this, but I did find a conversation on Flickr regarding chemicals for developing black and white. How do I know if the chemicals have gone bad, because the specified shelf life seems rather on the safe side.
C 41 developing kit how to#
Kodak Portra 400 developed in 75 day old Tetenal C-41Īfter realising that the chemicals were to blame for the dark negatives (for a while I thought I over-exposed everything) I searched for information on how to act on this before developing. I use a wine thermometer that has enough precision and that I can stick directly in the bottle of developer (in the photo the bottle sits in the sink as it is ready to use, but to get it to this temperature I use a bucket with hot water): How to Develop Color Negative Film at Home in 10 Minutesĭeveloping the first rolls were scary, but I found it not too difficult, you just have to be precise and be patient. I will just share the link of my favourite, not only because it is useful, but this one is very funny too: I don’t want to make this into a tutorial on developing colour film, as there are a lot of good tutorials online.
I started with black and white, but as I mostly shoot colour film I soon after decided I should try to do that myself too. So back to the beginning: after purchasing a scanner at the end of last year, I didn’t have an excuse anymore not to develop film myself.
I will share my results, and my current solution, but I am hoping for some input from readers with more experience. My biggest struggle is dealing with chemicals going bad: how to recognise it, how to deal with it, and how to prevent it. But to start with my conclusions: I don’t have a fool-proof strategy yet. 1 My second year of shooting film – Part 16įor about nine months now I have been developing colour film at home, so I thought it was time to share some experiences.
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