Developing Test 4

It’s been a long time between writings. I’ll just say that I’ve been busy, and most of the business hasn’t been to my liking.

In a previous post, I laid out a bunch of photo-related things I’d done, and mentioned replenishing the to-do list. One of the things added was getting together the means and skill to develop my own film negatives. Again, amongst the the large group of contacts I know through Flickr is a gang of film devotees who masterfully process their own stuff, and they’ve served as inspiration. My father-in-law had been threatening to unload his darkroom supplies on me for a while, so the time seemed right.

I had a friend in high school who developed and printed, and he let me sit in as he used the school’s darkroom facilities a few times, but I’d never tried it myself. I’d done a fair amount of reading about the process, and academically, it seemed pretty straightforward. This was confirmed by my father-in-law as we went through the cache of items he had to offer. I walked away from his garage with (among other things) a Paterson double-reel tank and the idea that this was possible.

I was still without some of the supplies I’d need to make a run at it, so I visited Freestyle Photographic on Sunset on a lunch hour to acquire the rest. I picked up a changing bag, the basic chemistry, a set of beakers and jugs for mixing, and some odds and ends. I topped that off with a few cheap rolls of their house-brand black & white film and I was ready to roll.

On Saturday morning, I loaded the AE-1 with Arista Premium 400 and snapped off 24 quick exposures of things around the house and yard that I thought might hold some decent contrast and depth. I was eager to process it, but had some things to do. Mid-afternoon, I had a block of time I could devote to the work.

I loaded up the bag with the tank, reels, scissors, a bottle opener borrowed from the kitchen, and my film. I hadn’t worked in a changing bag since the Panavision camera assisting course I took through UCLA in the mid-90s. It felt familiar still, and wasn’t all that different from loading the 16mm and 35mm film magazines for motion picture cameras. It took a little effort, but I cracked the film cartridge and easily worked the strip into the reel. I sealed up the tank and breathed a sigh of relief. Light-safe!

I took over the upstairs bathroom and turned it into a chem lab, mixing the stop bath and fixer and storing them in brown jugs. The developer took a while because the high ambient temperature of the house made getting the solution to the proper temperature difficult. Experimenting with ice cubes did the trick, and 68°F was finally reached. Once I had everything set, I kicked off the process and followed the steps that I’d researched – soak, develop, stop, fix, wash – and everything just flowed as it was supposed to. I remembered the smell of the fixer from those high school days.

After the first bit of washing was done, I looked at the reel and saw the purplish negative wound around it. It might have worked! More washing was needed, so I remained patient. When that was through, I twisted the reel apart and unfurled a strip of what appeared to be good exposures. I got a chill, and a felt like I’d really accomplished something. I wasn’t expecting much from my first try, so I wouldn’t have been too disappointed either way, but now I was excited to see the final results.

I hung the strip in the shower and waited the long four hours for it to dry, checking it periodically as it hardened and lost its purple cast. If anything went wrong in the process, I think this is where it happened. Most of the final product shows specks of dust or tiny bubbles (I’m not sure which), so in the future I’ll need to take more care with the last couple of steps in the chain.

When the time had passed, I carefully cut the negative into 5-exposure strips and dutifully encased them in protective sleeves. I carried them to the scanner, loaded the first strip into the negative carrier, and… I had images! Not bad ones, either. Some showed scratches, and most had some amount of the speckling, but the contrast and sharpness were nice, and those meant to show texture really did it well. I was pleased with the output, and after a little work in Lightroom, I posted a third of it (not a bad ratio for me).

I’m looking forward to the next batch, and I’ve added a new item to the to-do list – printing!