reuse or not?

Hi,

sometimes I reused a caffenol batch. Up to 2 weeks of storage I could not find any major drawbacks, maybe a slight loss of contrast. Here I reused an only 2 days old one, one 24 exp. 35mm film was developed with it. The negs were underdeveloped remarkable, the border printing was faint and overall density quite low. So I had to brighten up the images and work on the curves quite a lot. Fortunately there was still enough substance to do that. It whould have been a shame if this picture would have been ruined. So I stay on the safe side in the future and will discard the developer after a single use like I did in the beginning. But there's no need to hurry, the developer will remain usable at least some hours without degradation.

Rollei RPX400 @ 800, Caffenol-C-L with 1.5 g/l pot. bomide. 90 minutes 22 - 23 °C stand development. Presoak 5 minutes, constant agitation in the first minute, 3 gentle inversions at 2, 10 and 40 minutes.

Cheers - Reinhold

Vit-C worldwide seller

Hi,

since Vit-C is difficult or not available, or only very expensive or in poor quality in some parts of the word, I thought it might be useful to post here a wordwide supplier of affordable 100 % pure ascorbic acid (Vit-C). It's a family owned business in the 4th generation, located in Germany and usually supplies bakeries and grain mills with bigger quantities. Smaller quantities he sells via an ebay.co.uk shop worldwide. Mr. Breinbauer's answer on my email inquiry was very fast and friendly. Prices and worldwide shipping are very attractive, no additional taxes.

breinbauerrohstoffe

You should store the Vit-C in the dark and in airtight boxes or bottles.

Added to the link list. I'm not related in any way to the owner of the shop, I just post the link for your conveniance.

Infrared: Efke IR820

Hi,

things "develop" more and more. Today I got a message from Gerald (Nashville, USA) about successful developments of the Efke IR820 in Caffenol-C-L. To be honest, I've seen some really ugly pictures (from a technical point of view) with this film souped in Caffenol. Gerald demonstrates impressively what's possible. WOW! Also you might want to have a look at his magnificent flickr stream:
Gerald @ flickr















Here's what he wrote:

"These images were taken with a Yashica Mat 124G loaded with medium format Efke IR 820 film. Exposures were in bright sun at f-16 for 1 second on a tripod, using a Hoya R72 deep red (infrared) filter, making the effective exposure index about iso 3.

The film was processed in a daylight tank using Reinhold's Caffenol-C-L recipe without modification for a 70-minute stand development at 20 degrees celsius after a 5-minute presoak in distilled water. Initial agitation was for 45 seconds (about 12 inversions) and then I did not touch it for the rest of the time. I used a plain water stop bath and Ilford Hypam to fix.

My source of sodium carbonate (washing soda) was Spa-Kem pH Plus (100% sodium carbonate) from Kem-Tek (http://www.kem-tek.com). I used crystalline ascorbic acid and Folger's Original Instant Coffee. The potassium bromide came from Photographer's Formulary.

Cheers,
Gerald"

Thank you very much, Gerald, for the detailed explanation, the supply sources and of course the beautiful pictures. I'm really proud I can post this report here.

BTW, I'm not related in any way to any of the merchands, producers etc. mentioned here on my blog. This blog is and always will be free of advertisements as long as the hoster supports that. I don't sell my soul ;-)

Best - Reinhold

Ilford Delta 400 @ 800 - Caffenol-C-L

Here's a report from Kyle who got nice results with the Delta 400. Let's read what he writes:

"Hello my name is Kyle LeNoir. I have been doing film photography for 6 years. I currently work freelance as an event digital photographer and film photography tutor in chicago (USA). Stand processing is my preferred way to process film since I darkroom and alternative print or scan depending on the print size. So far I have done 10-12 rolls with C-C-L. I found the results comparable or better to standing in rodinal 1:100 or GSD-10. I am thinking of changing my times to 60min to ease printing in wet darkroom.

Caffenol C-C-L @70 degrees Fahrenheit
nescafe clasico instant coffee
jacquard soda ash (anhydrous)
Vitamin Shoppe C-1000 Powder (Ultra-fine ascorbic powder)
photoformulary potassium bromide ( I used 1.5g per liter)
Ingredients weighted with black box jewelry scale
Camera was an agfa isolette II with apotar lens and metered with a sekonic studio deluxe (incident)
Epson Perfection V750 (no post processing except for cropping,setting white and black points,resizing)

slow agitation for first min (15 tilts) left still for 60min.

Ilford Delta 400@800 was a pleasant surprise. I have never been a fan of the look of this films tonality. I decided to give it another chance while on my local film store visit. The results were better in C-C-L than any other developer I used with this film so far. I got the tones I wanted from the film finally. The roll gave an good amount of overall detail and printed in the darkroom very well. I feel pretty confident that it should do pretty well at @1600."


Thank you very much, Kyle. Indeed looks like EI 1600 is very possible.

Cheers - Reinhold