Develop Your Own Film
Developing Your Own Film
Can't find a good lab in your area? Feeling adventurous? Want to develop your own film? I do it all the time. Here are some useful links to help you start developing film right away.
What You Need To Start!
You will need a room that is completely dark in which you can load your film into a light tight film developing canister. You can get a canister for 35mm or medium format film pretty inexpensively. To develop film that is larger than 120 you will need a different setup. I recommend sacrificing a roll so that you can practice loading your film developing canister.
How To Develop B/W Film
Digitaltruth.com hosts the massive dev chart which is the ultimate list of black and white film development times. Pretty much every film and every developer is covered. This is the first resource I look at before developing film. It never fails me and they even have an iPhone app!
Chromogenic. net has a good guide to developing b/w film.
Black and White Developers
Acufine
D-76
I learned how to develop film using Kodak D-76 in a darkroom in rural New Hampshire. I remember claiming that it smelled like rotting tuna fish and how annoying it was to clean up. Alas, a lot of people like D-76 because it works well with faster film and has fine grain.
Diafine
Diafine is a two bath developer that is famous for being time and temperature independent. It usually increase film speed a few stops and produces negatives that high contrast and grainy. A lot of people like the increase in speed this developer provides and the contrasty look.
HC-110
I have recently been using HC-110 and it works ok for some slower films but I have been disappointed with it for HP5+ and other older films like Fomapan. It is a cheap developer and great to use one stop.
Rodinal
Everyone loves Rodinal! Rodinal is the oldest continuously sold film developer in the world. It makes grain that many people find visually interesting. You can get Rodinal in other forms like RO9 one shot! I have started using rodinal with tri-x and I like it.
Black & White Film Developing Supplies
Freestyle is a leader in online black and white photograph sales. They also roll their own Arista brand products that are easy on your budget.
You can also use coffee to develop film.
You can find plenty of inexpensive b/w supplies one ebay such as HC110, diafine
, tmax
,kodak developer
, ilford developers
.
How To Develop Color C41 Film
Home developing of color c-41 films is not as popular as developing black and white film at home but it is possible and can be relatively inexpensive.
C-41 Development Supplies & Kits
The venerable Freestyle Photo & Video offers a large supply of c41 chemicals.
How To Develop E6 Slide Film
Yark has a good guide to developing E6 film.
Another guide is the Lightcatcher's guide to E6 processing.
E6 Supplies & Kits
Freestyle Arista brand E-6 developing kit.
Alternative Processes
Interested in processes beyond C41, BW and E6 than this is the section for you.
Alternativeprocesses.com covers most types of alternative photographic methods
Photographer's formulary has hard to find b/w processes.
