Darkroom: Processing Film

I was recently asked by Steve in comments if I’d share my work flow for scanning. I’m happy to – but that got me thinking that I’ve never actually thought about what I do and why, it’s just a process that has “developed” (pun intended) over the decades!

I’ll do two posts – one about my method of film processing then another about the scanning. Sometimes my posts are mostly images and few words, this will be the reverse!

At present I do not have a darkroom. I do have a room that can be converted, but the effort of doing so AND putting it all back again, is such a bother I never actually do it! What I do, is sit on the bed with a dark bag (changing bag). In there I load the films onto the spirals, and move to the kitchen for the wet bit!

I start, in daylight, by trimming the end of the film square and just taking the corners off, then still in daylight, I pull out enough film to load the film onto the spiral, just past those ball bearings. Then it all goes into the dark bag for the good bit of the film to be loaded into that spiral. I usually develop two films at a time, so as I put the two loaded spirals into the tank, I check to make sure that the open gap created by the end of the film, is pointing so that if I turn the “twizzle stick” clockwise, the developer will be pushed into the spiral.

Dev: While I’ve been doing this, the set up in the kitchen, pictured above, has been sat there with the temperature stabilizing. I mix the chosen dev first, stop and fix are usually saved from the last session, if not I mix more. I half fill the yellow plastic container with water, as close as I can get to 21°. The chemicals are usually at room temp, so they sit there and all stabilize. Unless it’s a hot day, they usually end up at at 20° or 20.5°. Close enough , and even. Having poured in the dev, I start the clock, agitate for the first 30 secs, then for 10 secs at the “top” of each minute thereafter. Pretty much “Ilford Agitation”. Halfway through whatever the time is I give a good “twizzle three turns clockwise, one back”.

Stop: I start to pour out the dev 10 secs before the desired time, and by the time I’ve done that and poured in the stop, it’s usually about spot on. I use an indicator stop bath, simply because I have some, and it seems to last ages. I’ve developed at least 16 rolls in the current batch and there is no sign whatever of it even starting to change to purple yet!

Fix: I test my fix before I start processing using the bit I cut off from the leader. Regular films should clear in 2 mins in Ilford rapid fix, while T grain films like Delta often take 4mins. Eagle eyed viewers will notice there are four bottles. The extra one is Fix #2! I use my fix well after it’s started to show lengthening times. When the original fix has hit about twice the clearing time when originally mixed. I don’t dump it, I mix more fresh (Fix#2). I continue to use the original for about the clearing time as indicated by my clip test. I let this mix take the hit of removing most of the silver and dyes coming off the film. I then pour out and pour in fix#2. This gives a good active fix to complete the job well, but stays good for much longer. When the 1st fix is taking too long, and not doing much – fix one is dumped and fix 2, becomes fix one, and I mix new fix#2.

Wash: I use 600ml for two films in the tank. After fix, I pour in about 300ml of water, slosh it around as a quick wash. I think this removes a large percentage of the fix remaining. Then I proceed with “Ilford Wash” – fill the tank with water invert 5 times, change the water then 10 times, change again then 20 times. In my case I don’t quite fill the tank, instead I use about 500ml ish, rather than 600ml. This gives more room for the water to slosh about. I also do at least that number of inversions rather than exactly. Often I go well beyond that number as I’m chatting or thinking about something else or listening to music and loose count! To save water, and the planets resources, and keep the temp even I use the water from the yellow container. I have seen you tube videos of people just running water from the tap into the top of the tank using gallons of water, most of it never even getting to the film – what a waste!

At the end of this not only is the film well washed – so is the tank! I set aside everything except the spirals, centre column and tank to drain and dry. I pour in enough water to cover the film and spirals by 1cm (ish) add a few drops of wetting agent. Mix it by moving the spirals up and down, not too much to cause too much froth, but enough to mix well. I let it soak for a couple of minutes, then hang to dry.

I’m sure that this is mostly a “teaching my grandmother to suck eggs” post. That said I hope someone may take something useful from it. Do you do anything different? If so why? Let me know!! I’m happy to adopt or change a method if it can produce better results or reduce waste!

A similar post on scanning will follow in a few posts!