#thetoadmen

Caffenol developer - homemade for the first time

I developed a roll film in homemade Caffenol-C-M for the first time this weekend! I read several times about Caffenol and some some interesting images. So I wanted to try this myself for a long time and finally got to it. This is one of the images, it's a double exposure (can you see the faint horse?). To see the other 13 images, check my blog: http://thetoadmen.blogspot.nl 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 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/caffenol-c-m-recipe.html and 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 images are made with the new "old school" Petzval portrait lens. See this Kickstarter Project for more info. It's a "Medium format Petzvar f/3.8 120 mm Petzval fine art portrait lens", fitting for like Hasselblad, Kiev and Praktisix and other PENTACON SIX (P6) mount cameras. Also, different types of adapters are available from different manufacturers. They allow the use of P6 lenses on Mamiya 645, Pentax 645 and Contax 645 medium format cameras, Canon EF, Canon FD,Nikon F, Minolta AF, Minolta MD, Contax/Yashica, Pentax K, M42, and Leica R 35 mm cameras, as well as Lumix and Olympus micro 4/3 (m4/3), 4/3 system. 

There are already 50 backers (including me) and they need only 4 more backers to get the project funded. 

NASA made a nice film explaining how this famous and iconic image 'Earthrise' from Apolla 8 in 1968 was made. See also this article.

The photograph was taken from lunar orbit on December 24, 1968 with a highly modified Hasselblad 500 EL camera with an electric drive. The camera had a simple sighting ring rather than the standard reflex viewfinder and was loaded with a 70 mm film magazine containing custom Ektachrome film developed by Kodak. The Ektacolor 70 was still in prototype then so they used a special run. The film was coated on extra thin Estar support so more film could be fit into one film back and thus more exposures per unit weight. The Ektachrome film was processed by Kodak and then internegatives were made. The images were printed on 16x20 Ektacolor 70 paper processed in a junior Calumet basket processor. (Source: APUG.org)

"Perspective"

I made this image with my iPhone 4. It was chosen “photo of the month” by my local photo store.

I photograph with analogue and old cameras and build wooden pinhole cameras myself. So no view finder, build-in light meter or LCD-screen to check histograms: only my mind to see the image.

I’ll see the results after developing and printing the film. Light metering is often done by guesstimation.

Sometimes I use my iPhone to make an instant image to check for composition and lighting with my analogue photography - like we used to with a Polaroid camera in the old days.