6 oktober 2014

Homemade developer: Caffenol-C-M and Fomapan 100

I developed a roll film in homemade Caffenol-C-M for the first time this weekend! I read several times about Caffenol and saw some interesting images. So I wanted to try this myself for a long time and finally got to it. 

I only had one BW roll film lying around still to be developed, but didn't want to risk to lose these images due to an uncertain experiment with a homemade developer. So I quickly shot an extra roll film of Fomapan 100 with my Woca 120G. The Woca camera (plastic fantastic) is the predecessor of the Holga and has only one shutter speed, somewhere between 1/60 and 1/100. Not the best camera for testing film, but what the heck. I just wanted to see if I could develop the film at all. I was pleasantly surprised with the results, despite some light leaks. A bit (too?) contrasty maybe, but that might be an effect of the scanner as well. The light leaks didn't help either. However, the results are good enough to make some serious images with my Bronica RF-645 and try again. 

I used the Caffenol-C-M recipe and developed for 15 minutes. I used 40 grams of coffee (espresso powerful and dark), 16 grams of pure vitamin-C and 146 grams of soda in 1 liter water (no salt) and developed for 15 minutes @ 20 degrees Celsius. As Soda I used "Natriumcarbonate Decahydrate". This means there is also a lot of water in it (over 50% ??) so I used 2.7 times the needed amount to compensate (see http://caffenol.blogspot.nl/2010/03/soda-myth-and-truth_07.html).

Developing method used: 3 minutes prewash, develop 15 minutes (agitate first minute, then 3x every minute), rinse once, 1 minute Maco Ecostop, rinse 4 minutes, 4 minutes Maco Ecofix, rinse 14 minutes + 1 minute water with wetting agent.

These are the 14 test images (under-, overexposed, out of focus, light leaks and all). All comment are welcome:




(light leaks from camera, not developing)







(fog due to light leak)


(double exposure: can you find the horse?)
(triple exposure in the shadows)
(straight into the sun)