over the last 10 years i have grabbed the caffenol c bull by the horns and wrestled it to the ground. soon after i was given the “teaspoon” recipe i added a tiny bit of print developer and modified the developer so i could use it as my main go-to film developer. eventually i changed how i processed film again, by splitting my development like a divided developer / alkaline bath and began using the print developer i had always been using for film ( first ansco 130, now dektol ) and the caffenol c ( with a splash of print developer in it ) one after the other. i began doing this first for prints, to jump start the developer so it wouldn’t take as long for the caffenol c to work. from my experiments i learned it took 2 or 3x the normal developing time ( 1 min rc, 2 mins fiber ) for prints in caffneol, and i really am impatient and don’t want to wait 3 mins ( or 6mins ) for prints. i shuffled the prints between print developer and coffee, until it was done .. and i figured, why not try this with film, so i began doing that.
i tend to not make developer often. the sumatran caffenol lasts for hundreds of films and hundreds of prints. i have a tub with 6L of developer in it, and usually take 1L out and put a new L in. last night i got rid of my 6L and made 5 fresh with old instant coffee i had lying around. we drank some of this instant on camping trips and when we had a power outage this summer, it didnt’ taste very good, so it makes more sense to me to make developer out of it 🙂 i free-poured the coffee, and carbonate and vit c as i always did, and i made 12 cups (around 1L) of sumatran coffee and added it in.
i’ve decided to use the developer 1-shot for now on.
i’m also almost done with all my film, only a few boxes left, and a few bottles left of liquid emulsion. 1’ve purchased denise ross’s book ( she runs the light farm ) on emulsoin making, and price some silver nitrate for when the magic day comes. while i made emulsion as a wet behind the ear college student, i figure a good instruction book from someone who knows what she is doing isn’t a bad place to start. as i plug through these last boxes of film, and bottles of emulsion i’ll be thinking of my new adventure, making my own emulsion for use in-camera and under-enlarger. i’ve mised some tintype reversal developer ( i hope this home brew recipe works ! ) so i am running on all cylinders again after a year or 2 of back-peddling.
i’ll post more often as i finish all these things, and start making my own.
