The various development bits and pieces i used.
So I FINALLY got around to developing some of my own film. Yes a lot of people have made the assumption that because I shoot solely with film nowadays that I also develop it all myself, well they are very wrong. All of the images I’ve made over the last few years have been developed by AG Photolab, I was first told to try them out by a friend of mine years ago and have never used anyone else since. However since we’re all stuck indoors at the moment hat with the whole global crisis that’’s going on I thought I’d give it a go myself.
Now I only had to buy some developing chemicals as I have had both a Lab Box developing tank/box thing for a while ever since I backed them on Kickstarter and the scanner I use for scanning prints can also scan negatives (it’s an Epson V370 in case you were wondering). I decide to give a go using the Cinestill Df96 monobath as I’d heard it was very easy to use and I bought it from Analogue Wonderland.
The packet of Cinestill df96 Monobath chemicals.
So how did it go?
Well it was actually as easy as I had been led to believe.
The Monobath chemicals are as easy as mixing to packs of powder together and making sure they are between 20-28 degrees centigrade (they work colder but just take longer) and the lab box was incredibly simple as well, just pop a roll of film in, close the lid and wind a knob until it pulls the film onto a reel inside itself. In fact the most difficult part was using a film retriever to get the end of the film out of the film canister in the first place, it took me around 15 mins to get the first roll of film out then 15 seconds for the second one (must have been doing something wrong).
The final part of the process. Scanning the negatives.
The results weren’t bad either. I specifically shoe to develop two rolls of Fomapan 100 black & white film I had hanging around, I couldn’t remember what was shot on it so if something went wrong I didn’t lose any important images for a project or something. Yes a few have come out a bit odd with light leaks and scratches but that is very likely more down to me ruining the film trying to get it out of the canister in the first place and my poor shooting conditions. One roll of film has a few of these issues, the other has nothing at all so I put that down to me rather than anything to do with the chemicals or Lab Box itself.
I think this is something I will be doing a lot more often now, the only thing that has been slowing me down from shooting more has been the cost of development so now that this has been sort of solved I guess I’ll be shooting a lot more just regular everyday stuff on black and white film from now on. I’ve already bought a ton more black and white film online and waiting for delivery of it.
Anyway it probably doesn’t mean an awful lot to tell you what I’ve been doing, the whole process and then not show you any of the resulting photograph’s does it? So below are a few of the images after I finished scanning them into my computer, i think for a first attempt some of these aren’t half bad at all.
Let me know what you think. about them and as always;
Keep Shooting Film Everyone.
The 6 Million P Man
