Caffenol vs ID-11!

Ilford HP5+ ISO 400.
Caffenol recipe from here.
ID-11 followed the box time.

 Caffenol

ID-11

Caffenol is darker and a little more contrasty. ID-11 has finer detail.

Thanks for reading

Caffenol with Tea

It's been ages since I posted on this blog, so I think it's time I got moving again. In my "caffenol experiment" I have been working on lately (and finished) I compared Caffenol (using coffee), Caffenol (using tea) and Ilford ID-11. I shot 18 exposures of the same thing, on a tripod, same exposure etc. I cut the film into strips in the darkroom, and processed them in their respective developers. I won't be going into the full results today, however I will reveal the results for tea. I was actually quite surprised it worked, though the developer is clearly very weak and it is possible it will never work properly at all, no matter how much time you give it in the tank. Here is the shot. Note the disgusting particles on the scan, possibly dust, more likely tea. The tea was developed for 9 minutes at 20 celsius and agitated 10 times per minute. Film was Ilford HP5+

Very crap indeed. Could possibly be improved, though using 7 tea bags of my favourite tea hurts enough...

Push Processing with caffenol

Yesterday I exposed a few shots of nothing in particular onto some 1 year expired Fuji 400 C-41 film. I developed this for 17:30 mins at 24 centigrade. The negatives looked fairly OK"ish", however for some reason my scanner refused to scan the film. I am thinking maybe the negatives were too dense. The problem is, I now cannot say whether it was the expired film that let that let the side down, or my processing.
I know that Reinhold of caffenol.blogspot.com often pushes his film, so maybe it's the fact that I used colour film.

Caffenol Results!

I have finally dried and scanned the film I developed yesterday. Remember, the film was Fujicolor Superia
X-Tra 400 c-41 colour film. For the recipe and processing details etc, see my previous post. Overall, I was fairly pleased with the results. A lot of the quality loss and noise you see I put down to my low quality scanner. Some of the images you see have been adjusted in Adobe Lightroom, with noise reduction, sharpening etc. Please check out the other photos I have on flickr. Some of the photos are from this batch, too.

My first attempt at caffenol.

Today I tried processing with caffenol for the first time. In fact, this was my first time processing film with anything. I loaded a roll of Fuji Superia X-tra 400 (C-41 colour film). I developed for 11:32 minutes at 23 degrees Celsius (I used a temp/time converter built into the "Massive Dev Chart" app on my Ipod Touch.) The negatives are drying now, and I will post the photos after scanning.

Recipe:
350ml Water
5tsp Coffee
3x 1/2 tsp Washing Soda
1/2 tsp Vitamin C

Develop for 16 minutes @ 20 Celsius
Agitate for first minute, then 3 times per minuter thereafter
1x Stop bath (vinegar diluted 1:4) 6 agitations
2x Rinse bathes with plain water, 6 agitations

I used Agfa AgeFix fixer diluted 1:7 for 6:30 mins

Then

Fill, agitate 3x
Refill agitate 6x
Refill agitiate 12x
Refill agitate slowly 24x with soapy water

All done!
Negatives drying

Caffenol with Tea

If you are reading this blog, chances are that your already know what caffenol is. In case you don't, it is a developer made from a mixture of coffee, washing soda, and sometimes vitamin C. You might already know that in this "recipe", you may substitute coffee for tea. Some on the interwebs have done this before, however the quality of the results has never really been established. So I thought I would have a little science project, comparing caffenol with coffee, caffenol with tea, and standard Ilford Id-11 developer. More on this experiment later.

Another Caffenol Blog

This blog is dedicated to the use of Caffenol, a developer based on coffee and washing soda. I know this has been done many times, however it is important that as many of us as possible record our endeavors for others to learn from. This blog also covers other aspects of photography such as films, other processing, classic cameras, and digital photography.
If you are looking for a post on a specific topic, please see the "labels" section in the sidebar on the right.
Please stay tuned.