{"id":13550,"date":"2014-12-13T09:34:06","date_gmt":"2014-12-13T17:34:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/?p=13550"},"modified":"2014-12-13T09:34:06","modified_gmt":"2014-12-13T17:34:06","slug":"home-developing-c41","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/?p=13550","title":{"rendered":"Home Developing C41"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a teen I converted the family camper into a darkroom and even did some colour printing from slides, that was a long time ago, but the closing of yet\u00a0another camera store that\u00a0handled my film has prompted me to begin developing my own C41.\u00a0 I’m glad camera stores havent determined that my stepping through their door is the harbinger of doom, but I digress.<\/p>\n

\"_K3_9660\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

After amassing 12 rolls of colour film, and all the necessary items I needed to process them, it was time.\u00a0 There was no more ‘Oh I just need this’ there were no more reasons to procrastinate.\u00a0 Here are a few things I learned.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. You really do need to have the temperature higher than you will process at when you mix your chemicals (The Blix\u00a0powder did not\u00a0dissolve easily at 102’F, I had been hoping that it would so that I only needed to use one temperature).<\/li>\n
  2. Leaning into a tub for hours is hard on the back<\/li>\n
  3. Squegeeing the film is necessary to reduce the chances of water spots<\/li>\n
  4. Thermometers for film developing are slow to react to changes, the digital thermometer I also used allowed faster checks and setting the wash temperature.<\/li>\n
  5. Be safe around electricity. All of this goes through a GFI outlet, the controller is fused and I have double sealed the heater because of its age.<\/li>\n
  6. Developing your own film is time-consuming but awesome<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    What you don’t see in this picture is a critical component, my changing bag.\u00a0 The film needs to be put onto the reals and loaded into the tank in complete darkness of course.<\/p>\n

    The\u00a0key thing that made this marathon developing session possible though is my modified aquarium heater controller.\u00a0 It works with a thermister that changes its resistance based on temperature.\u00a0 It’s an inverse relationship, the higher the temperature the lower the resistance.\u00a0 So to hack it to run at a fish cooking 102 degrees Fahrenheit I increased the resistance therefore changing the range it runs at.\u00a0\u00a0 This kept a bath of water and the chemical bottles floating in it\u00a0at the required temperature by turning on the heater any time the temperature dipped.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \"_K3_9666\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

    While I had plans to make an Android app to assist with the timing I ended up using Lab Timer on my iPad which allowed me to easily set up 4 timers for the major processes I needed to do.<\/p>\n

    \"_K3_9662\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

    Here is the distilled water I used for mixing my chemicals coming up to temperature<\/p>\n

    \"_K3_9661\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

    Here you can see the heater keeping everything at the right temp, for hours.\u00a0 As a side note it is plugged into a GFI outlet and I completely resealed the heater with new high temperature gasket goo for vehicles and topped it off with a silicone high temperature grease sealant. You can never be too careful around electricity and water.<\/p>\n

    \"_K3_9667\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

    After a few fumbles getting the film on the reels I managed to get pretty good at handling the film inside the bag… by the 12th roll.<\/p>\n

    Not having to worry about the temperature allowed me to concentrate solely on the timing so I was able to do all my agitation and chemical changes accurately and consistently.\u00a0 There was far more variation in the film that I had used than in the processing.\u00a0 The worst offender was some outdated Polaroid 400 that nearly turned my developer black.<\/p>\n

    \"_K3_9665\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

    To finish each pair of rolls I hung\u00a0the film to dry in the shower, a very dust free location.<\/p>\n

    It was all well worth the effort and if you discount my time it was about half the price of the cheapest place I have available to me for developing.\u00a0\u00a0 I also squeezed in one more roll of Ektar\u00a0120 film the next day\u00a0pushing it\u00a0from\u00a0100 ISO\u00a0to\u00a0400 by increasing the development time.\u00a0 The chemistry may not be as exhausted as I was but I will start fresh the next time I have a pile of film.\u00a0 That shouldn’t be too long.\u00a0 Update: in the time since I first wrote this I’ve sucessfully processed another batch of 13 rolls.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

    I’m also planning to recover the silver so it doesn’t end up in the environment using the metallic replacement process outlined\u00a0in Kodak j300 Environmental information from Kodak<\/a><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    And everything fits in a Rubbermade container<\/p>\n

    \"filmkit-1957\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    As a teen I converted the family camper into a darkroom and even did some colour printing from slides, that was a long time ago, but the closing of yet\u00a0another camera store that\u00a0handled my film has prompted me to begin developing my own C41.\u00a0 I’m glad camera stores havent determined that my stepping through their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,39],"tags":[342,161,64],"class_list":["post-13550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photography","category-processing","tag-c41","tag-colour","tag-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13550"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13550"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14089,"href":"https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13550\/revisions\/14089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}