arhphotographic

I’ve been been looking forward to trying caffenol developer for some while but if I’m honest I was sceptical. There seemed to be so many variables to me that I wasn’t convinced that I could be successful. But then I was reminded of my feelings towards black and white developing, and now there’s no stopping my enjoyment.

So I decided on using the following procedure that appeared to offer the best possibilities of enjoyment and success for me. I would take two sets of about five images. I would develop the first, let them dry and then scan the negatives. Depending on the results I could then alter the developing time for the second set of the negatives.

I had an errand to run so, I ended up taking one set of images on the outward journey and then the same on the home ward journey.

My ingredients

Mixing the 24g of Soda Crystals into 700ml of room temperature water

Then, stirring in 45g of instant coffee (a cheap brand)

Finally, desolving the 20g of Vitamin C

The first half of the caffenol developer was poured into the film tank, at 20°C, and stirred continuously for 1 minute and then for 4 seconds every 1/2 minute thereafter untill the full 12 minutes had elapsed.

After emptying the tank of the developer, I used tap water as a stop for approx 5 mins. Then for 7 minutes the film stood in Ilford fix, after which I washed for a final 3 minutes.

I was greeted by the image below. My worst fears looked to have been realised😒 But there was an image in the middle of the negative strip that seemed to offer some glimpse of hope for me.

By using the manual selection mode in the Epson software for my V370 flatbed scanner there was indeed a faint image.  After a serious case of dust measles was removed, the image below appeared. I did have to do a levels adjustment as well.

In fact all five images I shot were there. But certainly not usuable. So the developer had worked, otherwise there wouldn’t have been any images. So it would need longer developing time, but how long?

I settled on increasing the time to 22 minutes for the developer, the water stop and fix remained the same.

That’s better☺️

The Epson V370 didn’t have to work so hard, this time, to get the image off the negatives.

Once again I removed the dust and did a levels adjustment to ‘lift’ the images. One observation to come from this experiment, is how the caffenol handles the grain of the Fomapan 400. Compared to my R09 developer the Caffenol is not as ‘aggressive’ and has rendered the images smooth while retaining the sharpness in the images, as particularly seen in the image above.

There clearly is still a way to go to getting the kind of results you can with this home made developer. I still need to increase the developing time. 30 minutes?? There is more dust on the negatives than I would expect. I’m not sure of the reason for that!

However there is one thing for sure it works!

This has left me thirsting for more… coffee..and developing with caffenol