Darkroom Process Notes

Many notes about process live on paper sheets or the whiteboard in the darkroom itself, but more useful/long-term things will be copied here for future reference.

(Notes to be copied from the sheets in the darkroom next time I'm there -sen)

Processes

• Tetenal Colortec C-41 86°F Process - First done 2015-02-15, no issues
  • Make sure all chemistry is at 86°F before starting.
  • 1min pre-rinse
  • 8min in CD
  • ~30s in stop bath
    • Not absolutely required, but extends the life of the BLIX
  • 6min in BLIX
  • 6min rinse in film washer
  • 1min soak in STAB

Homebrew Chemistry

• Coffee-based Caffenol
  • Smells extremely bad, avoid doing this again until the darkroom has improved ventilation.
  • First two 8x10 prints came out great, then there was an hour delay due to other things coming up, then we did two prints that were very dark and very low contrast no matter what we did. Unsure if it was the time delay causing the developer to break down, or that it was exhausted after two sheets.
• Green tea-based Caffenol
  • Worked great, doesn't smell nearly as bad as the coffee-based solution.
  • Part A
    • 450ml water
    • 10 bags of green tea
  • Part B
    • 600ml water
    • 4 teaspoons of sodium carbonate
  • Mix parts A and B together
    • If you mix all the ingredients at once rather than as two parts, it's very hard to make the sodium carbonate dissolve
  • Add 3 teaspoons of vitamin C
  • Development time on paper has been ~120s

Tea offers better contrast than Ilford devs and the tea variant does not have a 1/4 of the pungent smell that the coffee did. If you make it though, mix 10 bags into 1L of 22C water, let steep with moderate agitation for at least 15 minutes, then mix in 3x the specified amount of sodium carbonate and vitamin c.

120 second dev time for paper. Have not tried Caffinol-C with film yet, that's to come.