Developing Black And White Film At Home
Difficulty: Intermediate
While digital photography gets more and more popular and ordinary, analog photography refuses to die. It’s sticking around although most of the local photography labs and services have given up on film development. Luckily there are still a few places to get your films developed, and many of the smaller local photo labs use the remaining film developing labs as subcontractors.
Of course one option is to develop films at home. If you develop your films by yourself you are able to control the results more powerfully – you can play around with dilutions, temperatures and developing times (and styles) which all affect on contrast, bokeh and grain, among other things. After practice the developing process is quite easy and with black and white film it’s very affordable. The chemicals you need for developing one black and white film at home will cost you less than 50 cents.
There are many comprehensive tutorials (and even books) about film development available but here’s one more for black and white film with basic steps and information. I’m quite new to this so feel free to comment and ask questions.
You will need:
- A film developer, for example Agfa Rodinal or Ilford LC 29
- A film fixer, for example Agfa Agefix (Fix-Ag) or Ilford Rapid Fixer
- Water for stopping and washing
- A digital thermometer
- A film tank and reel (make sure you’ll get one that suits for your film format, usually the same tank/reel set suits for 35mm film and 120 rollfilm)
- A jug or two with deciliter scale (1-1.5 liters is good)
- A smaller graduated beaker
- A room that can be made totally dark, for example a bathroom or storage room without windows
You might also consider getting:
- A wetting agent, for example Ilford Ilfotol
- A stopwatch or an smartphone application to track the time. I’m using Time Machine with my Symbian 60 phone.
Tips and good to know:
Practice with test roll how to put the film on the reel and into the tank. Once you know how to do it in day light and eyes closed (or in dark room), do it with the real film (in the dark room).- Always check the temperatures, dilutions and other information from the bottle label or from manufacturer’s web site.
- Writing a timeline down beforehand makes it easier to keep up with the durations.
- Keep the same temperature through the process.
- The developing time depends on the film, the developer and the temperature. Check the developing time from The Massive Dev Chart, you can search either the film or developer to get the correct developing times. If you want to use a temperature which is not mention in the dev chart, you can use Ilford’s table (download PDF) to convert the developing times. For example, if the dev chart instructs to use developing time of 10 minutes in 20°C, but you want to use 24°C water, the Ilford table helps you to convert the developing time to 7 minutes for 24°C water.
- Some film developers can be used more than once but not all. Same with fixers.
- After fixing the film, the film should be washed for 15-20 minutes. It is recommended to wash the film under running water. But instead I have filled the tank, shaked it for 20-30 seconds and swapped the water to fresh (and continued this for 15-20 minutes). Update: The Ilford Washing Method goes: fill the tank, agitate five times; refill the tank, agitate 10 times; refill the tank, agitate 20 times.
The basic developing process:
Put the film on a film reel and into the tank in total darkness. I’m using our storage room in the basement for this.- Pour the diluted film developer (20-24°C) into the tank.
- Agitate (turn upside down and back) the tank for the first 30 seconds and then for 5 seconds every 30 seconds.
- Pour the film developer out of the tank.
- Wash the film for 1-2 minutes (water into the tank, shake and water out x 3-4 times).
- Pour the film fixer into the tank.
- Agitate the tank for the first 30 seconds and then for 5 seconds every 30 seconds.
- Wash the film for 15-20 minutes.
- If you want, you can use a wetting agent after the final wash. Let the film soak in the diluted wetting agent for 1-2 minutes and then hang the film without washing it with water.
- Hang the film to dry. Use something as a weight so that the film dries straight.
You can pour the chemicals down the drain with lots of water.
