arhphotographic

Having enjoyed developing Fomapan 400 with Caffenol for the first time last week, found here, I wanted to try to perfect the process and establish a developing time this week.

So I essentially repeated my experiment by going out with two short rolls of film and then developing at diiferent times.

From the first experiment, 22 minutes was near but not quite long enough. So, for this second experiment, I decided to develop the first film at 30 minutes and the second at 35 minutes.

Voila!

The top negative has been developed in Caffenol for 12 minutes, the next one down 22 minutes, then the third 30 minutes and finally the bottom one 35 minutes. The final two are definitely where I want to be in terms of image density. But what about when the negative is scanned?

Just to make things interesting the batteries in my Nikon FE decided to die. Actually what appears to have happened is that the FE couldn’t get enough power to actuate the shutter but the light meter was still functioning. One of the features I like about the FE is the inclusion of a manual shutter speed of 1/90th. So it took a while for me to realize that what I had to do was alter my aperture until it hovered between 1/125 and 1/60 and then take the image.

During the course of this confusion and changing over film I must have partially exposed my film as evidenced below. This may have caused my results to become slight skewed. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it!

Developed in Caffenol for 30 minutes

Developed in Caffenol for 35 minutes

Developed in Caffenol for 30 minutes

Developed in Caffenol for 35 minutes

Conclusions?

I like the appearance of the images at both 30 and 35 minutes.

However I need to be decisive. The ones at 35 minutes do appear more crisp and I like the blacks. I think I have arrived at 35 minutes for developing Fomapan 400 with my Caffenol developer.

But then…….to be continued.