I know that most here aren't crszy into photography and the pIcs posted today are just really incredible with high resolution, autofocus, high speed image capture and incredibly fast ISOs. Most people can make stunning pics now with their phones. Its that "easy" . I have alot of my hobbies, and yes, photography is one, but theres another one, its kind of a DIY thing. So Black and while Film photography and development was obviously good hobby to try. During the Pandemic I did that.. I am no stranger to film, as I shot color, black and white and slides before digital, But I never developed and printed myself, photo labs were everywhere.
I thought since I was restricted from the pandemic, good time to try developing black and white which meant dusting off my film cameras, researching reagents to develop the film in, making a dark room ( in my case-the bathroom). Film had died largely by then due to digital, but surprisingly enough there were still quite a bit being made. I stocked up the freezer. I then looked at chemicals, again alot were being made still, so I bought some to try and then came across a weird reference to developing film with Coffee??? So I dug deeper and find a website dedicated to this new developer,Caffenol.. literally instant coffee with added vitamin C. The experimenter in me had to try Caffenol and amazingly it really worked!
I ended up shooting Black and white and developing alot of film that year and really enjoyed the challenge. So why is it my nemesis? Because 99% of what I shot was utter garbage. Lol. Going from a high tech camera where I shoot big lens at high speeds with incredible autofocus to film cameras made 50 years ago is a huge learning curve. If you manage to take good images because the planets aligned correctly and you set the exposure right and held the camera steady you then had to develop the film correctly, rinse it correctly, dry it in dust free environment. I have 3 cats and our windows are always open. Dust free doesn't exist here LOL
I really have a huge respect for artists that work with Film. I stopped because of family matters and lack of time, .and probably because its incredibly frustrating when most of time the end product is not what you are used to. Its humbling.
Still this thread came about because I found my black and white images on an old hard drive so I thought I would share them, I may have posted some before.. Some are good and some are really grainy and bad. Most of these are developed with Caffenol.
I'm not expecting people to reply here, lol. Its hard getting feedback on good images these days when we are inundated with them in social media and our phones. But maybe someone will remember old family images with new respect.
I thought since I was restricted from the pandemic, good time to try developing black and white which meant dusting off my film cameras, researching reagents to develop the film in, making a dark room ( in my case-the bathroom). Film had died largely by then due to digital, but surprisingly enough there were still quite a bit being made. I stocked up the freezer. I then looked at chemicals, again alot were being made still, so I bought some to try and then came across a weird reference to developing film with Coffee??? So I dug deeper and find a website dedicated to this new developer,Caffenol.. literally instant coffee with added vitamin C. The experimenter in me had to try Caffenol and amazingly it really worked!
I ended up shooting Black and white and developing alot of film that year and really enjoyed the challenge. So why is it my nemesis? Because 99% of what I shot was utter garbage. Lol. Going from a high tech camera where I shoot big lens at high speeds with incredible autofocus to film cameras made 50 years ago is a huge learning curve. If you manage to take good images because the planets aligned correctly and you set the exposure right and held the camera steady you then had to develop the film correctly, rinse it correctly, dry it in dust free environment. I have 3 cats and our windows are always open. Dust free doesn't exist here LOL
I really have a huge respect for artists that work with Film. I stopped because of family matters and lack of time, .and probably because its incredibly frustrating when most of time the end product is not what you are used to. Its humbling.
Still this thread came about because I found my black and white images on an old hard drive so I thought I would share them, I may have posted some before.. Some are good and some are really grainy and bad. Most of these are developed with Caffenol.
I'm not expecting people to reply here, lol. Its hard getting feedback on good images these days when we are inundated with them in social media and our phones. But maybe someone will remember old family images with new respect.
Attached Files
There are a few in the Group I really like alot , others I had issues with the developing and printing... It took a while to come up with a processing method that worked well , and I really had to pay attention to the lint and dust removal which is not really easy here lol... you can see a few images where I didn't. I was more interested at the time at trying developers.
Comment