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
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
6 Kommentare:
indeed a great shot!
actually i am developping my summerholidays-pictures. altogether 10 rolls need to be worked out. therefore i was thinking of reusing the soup as well.
i wonder, if a loss in Contrast might be fixed by enhancing temperature or increasing processing time. maybe only a small part of the solution has to be replaced in some kind of a fresh-up. Did you try any of these?
Yes I tried it and more or less it works with both time and/or temp. Here I increased the agitation to compensate, usually the RPX400 is developed full stand by me. So I don't recommend it. At least the low-pH Caffenol-C-L seems to be more critical. Why sacrifice one of the biggest advantages, to have always a fresh and 100% reliable developer with ever same perfectly reproducable results? Any of the rolls I shoot is important enough for me to stay on the safe side. So should probably be your holiday pictures. But it's up to you to decide - as always ;-) Depending on where you live, 3 bucks for developing 10 films is peanuts, isn't it?
Wow! I never thought to reuse Caffenol because of all the warnings about using it quickly after mixing. I'll have to try this with some batch processing some time!
I´ve reused Caffenol several times. To begin with I added a teaspoon of coffee, or a minute or so between each. But have dispensed with that. I develop up to three 120 films in the same soup. The main difference to Reinhold´s approach is that I do it straight away, I do not try to store the soup until the next day.
Thank you Eirik/Ezzie for the additional info.
@ all: here you can read more about how Eirik works with Caffenol-C: http://on-your-kitchen-worktop.blogspot.com/
i live right around the corner - seen from Heidelberg.
speaking of prices: I calculate 16 films out of a 3 eur pack 200g Instantcoffee. add a little soda and Vit C and dont forget the KBr (I bought 1Kg for 10 eur, the Idea about using iodized salt came too late for me) and you get to 4 to 5 eur for 16 rolls. that means 35ct per Roll. that really sounds affordable.
but as a child of the 80ies i am used to always keep an eye on the environment. why throw away what i could reuse?
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