I detail here my first steps in developing with caffenol and Fomapan 400. From that experiment I discovered that for my particular caffenol mixture 30 minutes seemed to give me the kind of results I was looking for.
Now it was time to try Fomapan 200. I used three small strips of film and shot a series of images during a walk around Pennington Flash, Leigh, UK. It seemed logical, at least to me, to try 30 minutes as my starting point. I then reduced the time to 25 minutes for the next film and finally 20 minutes for the last.
Now, can you tell which is which in the image below???
There seems to be very little difference in the quality of the negatives from the 30 mins, 25 mins or the 20 mins. Does this mean that after 20 minutes the caffenol developer has become exhausted and so increasing the time makes no difference? Whatever the reason, if I use 30 minutes as my time for Fomapan 200 I know I should be ok.
Here are the images developed for 20 minutes.
Now for the images developed for 25 minutes.
Finally the images from 30 minutes developing time
I’m intrigued by the variety in the images. Some appear sepia/caffenol toned and others very black and white looking, even on the same test strip with the same amount of developing time.
Some would find this inconsistency disconcerting. Personally I rather like this unpredictability. The picture of the fence post I ‘saw’ as a black and white image. However I really like the sepia toned version, something I had not considered.
Of course another reason could be that the scanner, an Epson V370, could be doing something behind the scene I’m unaware of. I will investigate this.
Oh, I nearly forgot to tell you. The Negative at the top was developed for 20 minutes, the next one down for 25 minutes and the bottom was developed for 30 minutes.
There is a reason for my interest in using caffenol as my ‘regular’ developer. I have started a new project for 2023. I’ll let you know more about that next week.
arhphotographic 