Caffenol

happy new year

2012-01-01T11:19:00.000+01:00

I wish everybody a happy new year 2012 filled with love and peace

Reinhold

HP5+, Caffenol-C-L

problems with blogspot.com

2011-12-23T00:41:00.000+01:00

Sorry, but I'm going completely mad, Most of the times I can't comment on my own blog and answer inquiries. Sometimes it helps to log out and log in again, sometimes it doesn't. I'm tired to find a workaround, the hoster doesn't seem to be able to solve the prob. BTW, I'm using an always updated Firefox.

If anybody knows a solution please let me know.

Update: problem obviously solved with new interface

200000

2011-11-05T00:43:00.000+01:00

.... clicks in about 1.5 years. Time for a little celebration and - above all - to give credit to everyone who encouraged and supported me or contributed with her/his knowledge here or elsewhere. Also the film donations I received were extremely helpful, so THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

White rose shot with 3.5/50 Canon FD macro lens, illuminated with a 40 watt clamp lamp, exposed on long expired Kodak Technical Pan, stand devloped for only 12 minutes in Caffenol-C-L with 0.1 g/l pot. bromide at 20 °C, gentle agitation 1st minute cont., then let stand.

Cheers - Reinhold

first exhibition

2011-10-19T02:57:00.003+02:00

Since last sunday, more than 30 of my pictures, mostly portraits of musicians, are exposed in the Jazzhaus Heidelberg. Most of them are shot on film that was developed with one of my Caffenol variants. Thank you Peter Antony for capturing this kind of "interview" :-) and sorry for the typo.

microfilm or high res low speed film

2011-09-18T15:41:00.001+02:00

To be honest these are my first experiances with this kind of films. Resolutions of about 600 - 800 linepairs/millimeter at 1:1000 contrast and a gamma of about 3 in their typical applications are the benchmarks. For regular photography they need to be developed very compensating, often used are special developers. But also high diluted Rodinal can be used, f.e. 1:100 and a very short dev time below 10 minutes.

I was given a big box of long time expired films like Kodak Technical Pan, Kodak Imagelink, Agfa Ortho etc. in 35mm format and the first result with Technical Pan in Rodinal was very promising.for the second try I used Caffenol-C-L and it came out even better. 15 minutes with regular agitation (initially 10 times, then 3 times every minute) at 20 °C and with 0.4 g/l pot bromide, because I read that streaks are a common problem with this kind of films. I exposed at EI 50, but 25 or so maybe would have been better, but I need more data for this rating. As the negs were slightly underexposed, I had to brighten the images a bit in postprocessing, but not too much.

I am very pleased with the results, no fog at all, perfect even development, crystal clear transparent base. The TechPan with the panchromatic sensitation (up to 700 nm) has a nice tonal rendering, the grain is invisible and not resolvable with my scanner, sharpness is extraordinary. A pity this film is not available from new production. Despite of strong backlight no tonal rendering probs and no halation effect at all, the tiny cables are resolved perfectly against the bright sky even in the distance. That's really something!

If you want to go into high resolution film based photography I recommend that you try Agfa Copex Rapid, that is made by Agfa-Gevaert in Belgium. Drawback is the PET filmbase, so the film must be loaded/unloaded in almost complete darkness. The ESTAR base of TechPan is easy to handle besides a strong ugly curl.

Inportant note: I found that using demineralized water is necessary for the developer and the final rinse and I very gently wipe the wet film, otherwise I get masses of small dots on the film. Treated as described here and the dots are gone completely.

Cheers - Reinhold

it's so easy

2011-08-25T04:46:00.006+02:00

Hello coffeeholics,

some new interesting facts from the still growing worldwide community using coffee as a main agent for b/w-film development. I was never really satisfied with TriX in Caffenol, but when I saw the fine results of Thomas I had to think over my estimations. Secondly his system for developing at boxspeed and a 2 stop push with Caffenol-C-L is simply brilliant. You mustn't tweak your developer depending on the used film brand or desired speed, simply adjust the dev time. He did it with great results and many different films at different speeds and temperatures and his method is incredibly easy. Let's read what he wrote:

-------------------------------------------------

i did develop my b&w films for quite some time using highly diluted rodinal and stand development and was very happy with the results and especially also with the uncomplicated way of doing it: one developer for normal and push development, no tweaking for film type or room temperature. the only problem i got was uneven development, especially in medium format. as i was not able to solve this problem i looked around and at that time - about a year ago - i read about your stand- and semi-stand development experiences with caffenol and gave it a try. i wanted to try this strange idea of developing films anyway. i just followed your caffenol c-l recipe and it worked perfectly for me (prewash for 5min, agitating 30sec at the beginning and then 3 times at 2, 4, 10 and 40 minutes and dumping the develper at 70min). the results were amazing and had much of what i liked about the rodinal stand development. at some point i also wanted to be able to use the films not pushed at box-speed and tried to reduce the development time to get there. after some experiments i ended up with 5min prewash, 30sec agitation at the beginning and then 3 times at 1, 5 and 15 minutes and dumping the developer at 30min.

these two strategies for developing film at box speed or with a two stop push i'm using since and it always worked. and that at temperatures from 20-25 degrees celsius and films varying from acros (100+400), agfa apx 100 (100+400), kodak tri-x (400+1600), tmx (100+400), tmy (400+1600), ilford fp4+ (100+400) and some others (the numbers in brackets are the filmspeed i used the films at). the results were always very good. to see some images developed that way, you may have a look at my flickr stream

vielen dank und liebe gruesse

t

---------------------------------------------------

Thank you very much, Thomas, for these easy to follow instructions. I have no doubt a similar procedure would work f.e. with Caffenol-C-M, maybe 7 or 8 minutes for boxspeed and 15 minutes for a push +2 development and regular agitation.

Cheers - Reinhold

Rollei Retro 80s again

2011-07-12T04:37:00.011+02:00

Hi everybody,

the Rollei Retro 80s, that in fact is an aerial film from Agfa-Gevaert/Belgium, I used it once before and the film shows extraordinary sharpness and finest grain together with an unusual tonal range. The 80s is extended sensitized for the near IR-range, not as much as the Efke, but still shows the typical IR effect. I supposed that optimal results would be achieved if an EI of 50 - 100 will be used at about 40 - 50 minutes stand development and it seems to be the sweet spot for this film. Gerald already has shown beautiful infrared pictures with this film on flickr, and Yannick uses a slightly different setup with a IR-filter that probably is not as strong as Geralds, and also does fine regular, non-IR photography with this film. It's a matter of taste, but I prefer the decent wood effect over the one from the Efke. The latter may look a bit overdone, the 80s has a more "natural" look imho.

Also non-IR photography works beautiful with the 80s, due to it's sensitization it's predestined for landscapes, but also portraiture works very nice and eases some skin irritations due to the low blue sensitivity. So this film behaves quite contrary to an orthopanchromatic film. A great film for many purposes and with a unique look. But now let's read and see what Yannick did with
this film. Thank you very much for your contribution, Yannick. Cheers - Reinhold

"Thanks to Gerald Figal, met on Flickr, I decided to use Rollei Eetro 80s film as he did, with an infrared filter and then developed in Caffenol-C-L. For this try, I wanted to use a twin lens reflex in order to see exactly what I wanted to photograph. I used a Rolleiflex old standard from the mid thirties because I had a push on infrared filter made by Agfa for Rollei in the thirties to.

I shot with the IR filter during a sunny day, at f/16 and 1 sec exposure (actually near 2s because the shutter is a bit tired). It means that the film was exposed for 3 iso. On the same roll, I exposed the RR80S without filter at 80 iso. The sniper was shot at f/8 and 1/5 sec, camera on a table. I stand developed the film as Gerald did, in Caffenol-C-L, at 20°c for 50 minutes.

Washing soda"Phoenix" (not waterfree!) : 20 g

Vitamine C : 6 g
KBr : 0,6 g
Instant coffee Granarom (Lidl market) : 24 g

Kind regards from Troyes/France.

Yannick"

Note: Yannick uses a hydrated washing soda. He determined the water content and recalculated the needed amount. So it's a standard Caffenol-C-L recipe with 1 g/l pot. bromide. If you want to use iodized salt I suggest starting with 10 g/l (Reinhold)

the salt in the soup

2011-07-11T03:00:00.008+02:00

Hi coffeeholics,

good news, using regular, non-iodized salt works as a restrainer and can replace iodized salt or potassium bromide.

For the test I made a demanding setup, Rollei RPX 400 @ 800 stand developed @ 24 °C in Caffenol-C-L urgently needs a restrainer, without you will have huge problems concerning massive fog and uneven, cloudy, streaky development. Last afternoon I shot the 35mm film and cut it into 3 peaces. One was developed with 20 g/l regular non-iodized table salt aka sodium cloride. For the second piece 12 g/l iodized salt (0.0025 % iodate) was added and the third piece got the addition of the well working 1.2 g/l potassium bromide aka KBr.

Regular table salt without iodine (20 g/l) works good enough to prevent any streaks or uneven clouds in the image, that you will get with stand development if no restrainer is used. Yellowish stain and quite a lot base fog can be noticed. Again, base fog is not as evil as often told as long as the develoment is even. I guess that 30 or even 40 g/l will be fine for fast films.

Iodized salt (12 g/l), although much less is used, works slightly better with a bit less base fog, but still even enough developed that the image is not disturbed, only some unevennes at the borders where the spiral covered the film during development. And the stain is also less. Iodine does a good job. I would now adjust the salt to 15- 20 g/l for fast films, slow films need less salt.

You can see that KBr (1.2 g/l) gives the least fog and no stain, perfectly even developed, no surprise at all.

I couldn't notice any significant differences in grain or effective film speed. EI 800 was fine.

Here's an example with the regular table salt, no post processing exept a bit unsharp maskening and scaling. The neg was really quite dark due to the high base fog level. Do you notice any drawbacks? I can't. And increasing the amount of salt will probably reduce the fog. But most important, the development is even, no streaks, no clouds, simply fine.

It was a rainy day, so an orange filter was used. Probably I overdeveloped a little bit. It was really war in my lab and temp increased up to 25 or 26 °C during development. There's a break point in time and temp, if you exceed it, the RPX 400 shows immediately increased fog and grain. So that was probably a little bit too much. But all three chunks were developed simultanously under the same conditions.

These are my very first experiances. Go and try regular table salt and let me know how it works for you. It will work with other Caffenol variants to. Sharing your experiances via The new Caffenol Home on flickr is much appreciated.

Cheers - Reinhold

important update: my flickr buddy Rob showed that salt (sodium cloride) causes dichroic fog. Since iodized salt is widely available it's recommended to use it because you need much less salt and dichroic fog is less. Adjusting the amounts for your needs is quite easy. Potassium bromide still is the best restrainer but I love the idea of using commonly available agents.

reuse or not?

2011-06-28T13:34:00.008+02:00

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

2011-06-19T17:12:00.012+02:00

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

2011-06-16T00:19:00.014+02:00

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

2011-06-15T17:23:00.007+02:00

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

iodized kitchen salt can replace bromide

2011-05-31T02:37:00.002+02:00

Hi folks,

good news. Thanks to Rob (Robbek) for his inspiration. I used iodized kitchen salt as a restrainer substituting potassium bromde. About 6 g/l may be a good starting point for medium speed films, and 10 - 12 g/l for high speed films. No need to adjust anything else, the pH remains the same. Also much cheaper than peanuts. Bingo.

The blackpoint was misadjusted during scanning by intension to show the perfect even development and not only black borders.

I guess that's a real breakthough for people having problems getting bromide. And the FP4+ and RPX 100 had a very clear base, almost as clear as a transparency film. Semi stand developed like here would have been desatrous if the iodate wouldn't have done the job so excellent.

Since I use about 0.5 g/l pot. bomide compared to 6 g/l iodized salt for medium fast films, and 1 - 1.3 g/l pot. bromide compared to 10 - 12 g/l iodzed salt, the conclusion is to recommend about the tenfold amount of iodized salt compared to pot. bromide as a good starting point. Adjust for your personal needs, more iodate will cause speed loss. So far I have great results with PanF, FP4+, HP5+, Rollei RPX 100, and RPX 400 (see image below) even at 24 °C full stand development. These are all classic emulsions, maybe flat crystal emulsions like Tmax or Delta need an adjustment, maybe less salt? And if you use another salt with another iodate concentration you of course have to recalulate the amounts to.

The salt I used was a very cheap one from the supermarket, 500 g for 29 Eurocent. it contains 0,0025 % potassium iodate. The very small amount in the salt is sufficiant. For the experts: the iodate is probaly reduced by the developer to iodide that's known as a strong restrainer in literature since decades.

There's also a salt with iodates and fluorides. I didn't use that, but only iodized salt. Fluorides might cause some trouble, maybe more trouble than benefits, but I don't really know.

Cheers - Reinhold

some pictures - Caffenol-C-H

2011-05-02T17:48:00.002+02:00

Kodak Tmax100 @ EI 400 (image above) and Rollei RPX 100 @ EI 400 ( image below), developed in Caffenol-C-H with 0.5 g/l potassium bromide. 12 minutes @ 23 °C regular agitation, equaling about 15 minures @ 20 °C. EI 200 would have been better for both films.The Tmax additonally was quite underdeveloped. Bought short before the expiring date he was stored in a small shop at probably unsuitable conditions some years without any cooling. During summer that could have been easily much more than 30 °C, the shop has no air condition. Seems he didn't like that too much. Anyway, I like the pic.

Cheers - Reinhold

next new film - Rollei RPX 100

2011-04-12T22:43:00.002+02:00

Hello again,

here's the 2nd new film from Maco/Germany, the Rollei RPX 100. Like the RPX 400 it is made in Europe, a classic cubic emulsion with 100 ASA boxspeed and shall replace the old Agfa APX 100. To say first things first: this film in my opinion is far better than the old APX 100 and much more than a substitute. The RPX 100 is a very fine grained, easy to handle and easy to develop film with excellent tonality. Speed in Caffenol-C-L is enhanced and grain is still very small, almost invisible. Again Maco brought us one of the best classic emulsions available today, it could turn out that this beautiful film will be my first choice for medium speed films in the future. Available in the US as the RPX 400 about end of April, 35 mm earlier than 120 format. Here we go with progressive exposures from EI 25 to 400.

Semi-stand developed in Caffenol-C-L, 0.8 g/l potassium bromide, 20 °C, 70 minutes. No presoak, agitation first minute continuosly, then 3 times at 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32 minutes. Perfect even development, very fine grain. EI 25 to 100 are overexposed, EI 200-400 is perfect for scanning purpose. Maybe a bit too contrasty for silverprints, so I would reduce the dev time to about 40-50 minutes at EI 200. I have no doubt this film will also perform very well in Caffenol-C-M at about 10 minutes developing time. Look at the following scan, exposed at EI 400!

The scan almost didn't need any postprocessing, only a very slight contrast adjustment was necessary. When I took the wet film out of the tank I immediately said "WOW". The rest of the film exposed at EI 100 was very dense, still scannable without probs but probably too dense for silver prints. So expose sparingly and/or reduce dev time. This film has blown me away. Attractivly priced, perfect quality. Drawbacks? I haven't seen any.

Cheers - Reinhold

new film - Rollei RPX 400

2011-03-31T13:31:00.011+02:00

Hi everybody,

the german distributor Macodirect.de - well known for the Rollei films and developers - introduced 2 new films in late 2010, the Rollei RPX 100 and Rollei RPX 400. Both films are produced in Europe and are classic cubic emulsions. We were waiting a long time for a replacement of the Agfa APX 100 and 400. and Maco finally succeeded. A test with the 100 ASA film is intended for April by me and I could get first impressions of the RPX 400 in 35 mm format. 120 format is also available In the US the films will be availavle at Freestyle in a couple of weeks, 35 mm earlier than 120. The films have a regular panchromatic colour sensitivity.

Improvements are said to be made with the new films and I can confirm that the RPX 400 is really a great new film and works very fine in Caffenol-C-L! Aren't that good news?

So lets have a closer look. The first batch was devoloped with my standard routine in Caffenol-C-L 70 minutes semi-stand at 20 °C. In the first row you see exposures from EI 400 - 3200 without any postprocessing in brightness or contrast, the second row is edited as I thought it looks good and tried to make them all look as similar as possible. Already the EI 400 picture needed some brightening and contrast enhancing, indicating that the development was not powerful enough. Nevertheless the results at 400 and 800 are very pleasing, at EI 1600 you see some loss in shadow detail, and the 3200 exposure is quite bad if you look at the 5x5 mm crops (neg size), where the grain is only pretending non existable shadow detail. Obviously the film needed more development. In every other relation the film is very easy to handle. Scratch resistant, good halo protection, perfect film flatness etc.

For the next test I've choosen a more delicate subject with a rather big contrast due to the strong side light and a dark surrounding. I didn't care for an EI 400 exposure but started with EI 800 going up to EI 3200. Development was 80 minutes in Caffenol-C-L with 1.2 g/l potassium bromide, 5 mins presoak , 24 °C pure stand development and agitation only for the first minute. Yes, 80 mins @ 24 °C! To keep the temperature I used a mantle bath with water of the same temperature. The stronger development should give the best film speed and more contrast, and the lack of any agitation after the first minute should avoid burnt highlights. When I took the wet negs out of the tank for drying I immediately knew: yep, that's it! The EI 800 exposure is spot on, almost no postprocessing needed, the grain is very fine for EI 800 and the contrast is simply perfect. No blown highlights at all. Base fog is still low enough for easy to enlarge wetprints, perfect even development. I was amazed. Rarely I've seen such fine negs at that speed. EI 1600 is still usable when enhancing the shadows a bit at the price of some more visible grain in the dark areas and a very slight shift of tones. Again EI 3200 was unusable with very ugly grain in the shadows and it's not displayed here.

The last batch I tried with 90 minutes @ 24 °C and that was too much. Increased base fog and grain and no speed gain. This image was exposed at EI 1600 and it seems, that for finest results EI 800 or maybe 1200 are the limit.

Conclusion: the Rollei RPX 400 is a great new film and competes best with all premium films available at a very attractive price and is very suitable for developing in Caffenol-C-L. The film seems to need and can manage without drawbacks a forceful development. I have no doubts that the film will also perform beautifully at lower speeds with adjusted development and we have a handy film for speeds of EI 200 - 1600. Very high and affordable quality, what do we want more?

Cheers - Reinhold

sidestep - hot soup

2011-03-10T12:05:00.001+01:00

Ilford HP5+ @ EI 2000

Caffenol-C-L with a few drops Rodinal added (1:200 diluted not in water but Caffenol), 1 g/l potassium bromide, 60 minutes semi-stand development, 20 °C, 5 minutes presoak, agitation continuosly the first minute, 3 times at 2, 4, 8 and 16 minutes. Fog is very low, negs are quite thin, lights are dense but nice shadows anyway. Maybe 75 or even 90 minutes full stand would be optimal. Can we gain 3200 with good shadows? Probably not, but 2500 could be possible.

available light - HP5+ @ 1600

2011-03-08T04:17:00.002+01:00

Hi again,

after Wolf got fine results with the Ilford HP5+ at EI 1600 in Caffenol-C-L and I had splendid shadow details in Caffenol-C-H at about EI 800 I gave HP5+ another try as 35 mm film in Caffenol-C-L because I'm still looking for a replacement of the Neopan1600. HP5+ could be the film I will stick with. I could verify exactly Wolfs results, nice fine grain and still acceptable tonal range.

Minolta X-300 with Rokkor 2.8/135, 1/30 at f/4 handheld. Simple average metering. Amazingly I almost got no camera shake.

Caffenol-C-L with 1 g/l potassium bromide, 5 minutes presoak, semi stand development 75 minutes at 20 °C, agitation first minute constantly, 3 times at 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32 minutes. Very low base fog level, very easy to scan from negative (Canoscan 8800F + Vuescan Pro) with only minor postprocessing.

Compared to Neopan1600 grain with HP5+ is smaller, tones are a bit more compressed and Neopan1600 easily goes up to 3200. As a replacement for the discontinued Neopan 1600 I like the HP5+ most so far. Tri-X was really disappointing @ 1600. But EI 1600 is probably end of the line for HP5+ if you want some shadow detail. TMax 400 could be a second choice, but I prefer the look of HP5+.

Cheers- Reinhold

PS: fixed the mistake, of course I used Caffenol-C-L, not -C-H for the semi stand development.

large format on Fomapan 100

2011-03-06T13:26:00.005+01:00

Hello coffeeholics,

I asked Gerald - http://figalfoto.com/index.html - for a contribution when I saw his pictures taken with a large format camera and a 150 years old lens. Isn't that really frugal? He immediately agreed and here I proudly present his contribution. Thank you very much, Gerald.

Click on the images as usual for a bigger size.

Best - Reinhold

---------------------------

Dear Reinhold,

Please find attached as requested two Caffenol-C-L developed photos, the one you liked and the companion shot of the skyline. I thought the pair had good tonal range with the Caffenol. These are the straight scan black-and-white versions.

Tech details:

Both shots were done in the mid-morning facing west with a 4x5 Speed Graphic mounted with a E.&H.T. Anthony & Co. Single Achromatic No. 2 barrel lens (a landscape meniscus) that probably dates from 1860-70s. Skyline shot was at f-22, shutter 1/50; the scrap heap shot was at f-18, shutter 1/50.

Film was Arista Ultra 100 (= rebranded Fomapan 100). 5 minutes preasoak, developed for 70 minutes with Caffenol-C-L in Nikor daylight tank., agitated initially for 45 seconds (= 12 inversions), then let stand for entire remaining time. Water stop, Ilford Rapid Fix.

Scanned negative straight as is on Epson Perfection V700. No post processing on these version (except to crop scan and remove a little dust from scan).

Coffee used was Folger's Classic; Arm & Hammer Washing Soda, powdered Ascorbic Acid, and KBr from Photographer's Formulary. Followed Caffenol-C-L recipe but used 1.5g KBr in 1000ml water.

Vita:

Day job is as university professor (Modern Japanese history and culture) at Vanderbilt University. I've authored Civilization and Monsters: Spirits of Modernity in Meiji Japan (1999) and several articles.

After many years of digital photography as a hobby and work tool, I began film photography about 18 months ago in the fall of 2009 with my deceased father's medium format Brownie Hawkeye Flash and with homemade pinhole cameras (paper negatives and medium format film). At the same time, I taught myself black-and-white film processing and began collecting old cameras of various formats, 35mm to 4x5. After obtaining a 1949 Speed Graphic, I started to acquire vintage lenses for it, conventional and non-conventional ones to experiment with. Lately I am shooting majority LF 4x5 black-and-white alongside medium and large format pinholes. Occasionally I take out my Yashica Mat 125G TLR (which I love), and for "snapshots" I tend to use a 35mm Pentax MG and Pentax Super ME. My "special occasion" camera is a 1926 Kodak Autographic 3A that I modified to take 6x14cm panoramic photos with 120 film.

My aesthetic tendencies are sympathetic to the Pictorialists, but I also appreciate good straight photography. I try to do both.

I love Rodinal, but lately it is getting jealous of my affair with Caffenol-C-L. Like many Caffenolholics, I like the idea of mixing a developer from common substances that are eco-friendly. I also like that it is very inexpensive, but that would not matter if it didn't produce good results. I have had such consistently good batches of 70-minute stand developed Caffenol-C-L -- no fogging, no uneven development, and great tonal range -- that even if all developers disappeared from the world I would be happy to use only Caffenol (okay, I would miss my beloved Rodinal).

Thanks again, Reinhold, for researching these recipes!

Cheers,

Gerald Figal

-----------------------------

Finally a beautiful portrait taken with a 240mm Voigtländer Heliar at f-5.6 on the Speed Graphic., developed in Caffenol-C-L as above. Extremely fine tones and note the clever diagonal line of sharpness only possible with the sophisticated settings of such a professional large format camera. Impressive work! Thank you very much, Gerald.

Best - Reinhold

trouble shooting

2011-02-28T11:45:00.011+01:00

Some people report of problems with coffee based developers and I get some inquieries every once in a while, but not very frequently. You can get very reliable and reproducible results with Caffenol developers if you know what you are doing.

First of all the basic darkroom techniques are exactly the same as with any other developer. If you are a newbie to film development, look for instructions you find a lot of in the web or very often in public libraries. It doesn't matter if the book is 50 years old. If you can develop a film with proper results in Rodinal f.e., you also can with Caffenol. And vice versa :-)

What are the special items to notice for a proper Caffenol development? It's the kind of "agents" you use and the kind of measuring.

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Different coffee brands aren't so different as some people might think. Even expensive coffees work, I got reports f.e. for Nescafe Gold, but why wasting money? There may be very few exeptions, but if any other step of your procedure is OK you will get something and may eventually have adjust the amount of coffee slightly. By the cheapest "strong" or "classic" instant coffee available. Don't use deacidified coffees that are frequently branded "mild" and don't use decaffeinated coffee at all. Use pure instant coffee, no mixes with surrogates etc.

Vitamin-C (ascorbic acid) doesn't make any problems if you get pure one. Crushed pills or something like that may be another thing, try to get pure ascorbic acid. Here in Germany we are lucky to get it in any pharmacy at a very low price.

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Soda definately can make probs if you don't know exactly(!) which kind of soda you have in hands. Please read this post first: http://caffenol.blogspot.com/2010/03/soda-myth-and-truth_07.html

I asked in some discussion groups for veryfied data concerning the quality of soda they use. I didn't get too much feedback and I must believe that many users don't know what they have. But that's important to know, and demanding to know for developers containing a low amount of soda like Caffenol-C-L.

So dry your washing soda in the oven and meter the weight before and after. The loss of weight is the water that was in the soda before drying. All my recipes and most others are based upon anhydrous, waterfree soda. When you know the water content, it's easy to recalculate the amount of soda.

Verified data i have got for different brands of soda:

"Holsten reine calzinierte Soda" (and most other brands in Germany) is anhydrous/waterfree, containing neglectible 2 % of water. So far I didn't hear from a hydrated soda sold in Germany.

"Arm & Hammer washing soda" (US) is also anhydrous/waterfree with 2 % of water.

Update: Jeff reports that his recently bought A&H soda contains about 9 % water, so better check yourself if using low pH mixes like Caffenol-C-L

Senzora Soda (Netherlands, Ukraine) 20 % water. Monohydrate as stated by the manufacturers lab.

"Soude cristeaux" (France, Belgium) contains 50 % water. You need the doubled amont measured in gramms! It seems to be neither a monohydrate nor a decahydrate but something in between.

These are only examples showing that it's important that you determine the water content if not absolutely 100 % sure. There are different kinds of hydrated soda with different water content. Store the soda in an airtight box, otherwise it will attract water from the air. BTW, anhydrous, waterfree soda is a very fine white powder.

If you can't get washing soda (sodium carbonate, Na2CO3) you can use baking soda (NaHCO3, also known as Natron) but you must heat it in the oven or a pan and not only water but also CO2 gas will evaporate in quite large quantities. No warrenty for your safety if you inhale a lot of CO2 gas!!! You will end up with waterfree washing soda. How long it takes? No clue. Heat above 120 °C until it doesn't loose any more weight as you do when drying a hydrated washing soda.

You can use hydrated washing soda once you know how much water it contains. You can't use baking without transforming to washing soda, it will fail.

Don't use any other washing additives like bleech.

Dilute always in given order, first the soda, then Vit-C (let bubbles clear), coffee at last, let stand for some minutes and stir gently.

------------------------
------------------------

Last and winning hands down as a source for trouble is measuring. I highly recommend using a scale/balance. Digital kitchen scales are fine for measuring 100 gramms or so, but may have a big deviation at low weights like f.e. 10 gramms. My digital kitchen scale is unusable below 50 gramms but precise above 100 gramms. I bought a cheap lab scale for about 12 Eur with a resolution of 0.01 gramms. If you have no scale precise enough you may use premixes with larger quantities that are easier to measure. Ezzie explains how to do this on his fine, fine blog:

http://on-your-kitchen-worktop.blogspot.com/2010/11/does-caffenol-expire-or-can-it-be.html

Thanks a lot Ezzie for your invaluable support. And maybe you find the idea of premixed dilutions to be very charming.

If you stick to volumetric measuring it's important to determine the density of the agents you have in hands Scientific density data are absolutely useless. Believe me. You must do it yourself. That's why recipes based on volume are so unreliable. They are only suitable for the agents you use. Different brands of coffee, Vit-C and Soda can vary extremely regarding the volume, but not the weight. 1 gramm is 1 gramm. Always. But also pay attention to the water content of your washing soda. Once you determined the densities for your agents you may use your now individually calibrated teaspoons.

-----------------------
-----------------------
-----------------------

So as an extract : Know which kind of soda you use. Use a scale/balance. Or at least calibrate your teaspoons for each agent. A scale is better ;-)

Happy developings - Reinhold

lab gear

2011-02-16T06:34:00.002+01:00

All I need for my "R+D". The lttle scale is the most important tool, it did coast me about 12 Eur and has a resolution of 0.01 gramms. All mugs have ml-calibration.

sidestep: direct positive paper

2011-01-31T23:55:00.000+01:00

Hello,

I received a message from Anton, who developed the Harman direct positive paper in Caffenol. Read the french report here: http://www.galerie-photo.com/positif-direct-papier.html

translate.google is very funny, but you will understand the sense.

Best - Reinhold

Confusion

2011-01-19T02:17:00.017+01:00

I found this recipe and it's one of the best examples why I only use international standard units:

I do not recommend using this recipe! Does it deserve the name "recipe"?

300ml water with 12 scoops of Instant Coffee
400ml water with 8 scoops of Soda Wash
2 tsp of Powdered Vitamin C

Developed @ 70 C for 9 Minutes
Kodak Stop bath for 1 minute
Kodak Fixer for 5 minutes
10 minute water wash.

He mixes scoops and teaspoons (tsp). What the heck is a scoop? And he mixes scoops and teaspoons, ha??? Does he boil his films in 70 °C(elsius) hot coffee, or does he mean 70 °F(ahrenheit)? Other authors use tablespoons, knife tips, taels (???) and everything else you can imagine.

In anglo-american cultures 1 teaspoon is defined as 5 ml (milliliter). But that is not obvious for the rest of the world. What, if my teaspoon is 3 ml and yours is 8 ml? It makes a huge difference and will spoil the cake. If using 35 or 45 grams instead of recommended 40 grams because of unprecise measuring probably will not spoil the cake. 1 gram is 1 gram, whether you sit in NYC, Rio de Janeira, Paris, Capetown, Beijng or Tasmania.

Everybody uses measuring mugs for fluids, so why not at least use them for volumetric measuring instead of teaspoons and others? The rest of the world will be grateful. For some more precision buy a weight scale. They aren't expensive anymore. Mine did coast 10 Eur.

Beeing creative is cool. Measuring with obscure methods isn't creative at all if you do it all the way wrong. That's totally un-cool. Please understand that I don't want to blame or offend anybody, but also pleeeease, hear my prayings.....and be gentle with comments. Please use international standard units like liter, milliliter, grams, °C (degree celsius). Shouldn't we all be a big family? Worldwide like the www? That would be cool. Very cool.

Thank you very much for your patience and best regards - Reinhold

Lucky SHD 100 - Caffenol-C-M

2011-01-12T08:32:00.005+01:00

"Hi,

my name's Frank and I started developing film about 1.5 months ago. I have developed various drugstore C41 films with B/W-chemistry to be familiar with the development (it was just cheap) and to test my analogue cameras. Then I developed some APX100 and TMax100 using Rodinal.

Being a lover of drinking coffee I immediately was enthusiastic about developing film with coffee as I heard about it. Searching the web I found Reinhold's blog and was grateful for the recipes in grams and liters. Looking for cheap films to experiment with I got notice of the Lucky SHD 100. The film has no halation protection and is said to produce what sometimes is called an "aura" effect.

The images shown were taken with an Olympus 35 RC rangefinder at EI 100 and developed in Caffenol-C-M for 15 minutes at 20 °C. The first minute I agitated constantly, thereafter 3 times per minute. Fixing was 4 minutes in Tetenal Superfix (1+3).

Subjectively, I would say that the film can be compared to Caffenol-C-M developed APX100. A strong aura effect is not noticable, but I had exposed the critical subjects sparingly.

I also shot at EI 200 up to EI 800. EI 800 was unusable. EI 400 still seems to be working well. Since I have not documented the settings and I'm not so sure I don't want to make an "official" statement.

Frank"

Thank you very much, Frank. Again the pictures show all the good properties of Caffenol. Excellent contrast handling, awesome shadow details, sharpness and very nice grain. And the good quality of the film is quite a surprise for me. Read more (german language) about Franks very first experiances with film development and more: http://www.frank-eberle.de/ Well done, Frank

Best - Reinhold

Eiriks blog

2011-01-03T23:33:00.000+01:00

Have a look at this fantastic blog. Eirik from Norway uses premixed dilutions of coffee, soda and Vit-C. And he's a gorgeous photographer, livin in one of the most beautiful countries.

http://on-your-kitchen-worktop.blogspot.com/

Thank you very much for your awesome research and my highest appreciation, Eirik.

Best regards - Reinhold

Happy New Year 2011

2011-01-01T09:14:00.005+01:00

May your butts always stay warm - Reinhold

Polypan F and Caffenol

2010-12-19T12:33:00.023+01:00

Hi coffee junkies,

it's good to have friends and besides my regular life I found some friends in the www, some of them supporting me with my blog. Here we have two contributions concerning the Ilford Polypan F film. It's a cine film with almost the same emulsion as the regular Pan F, so boxspeed is 50 ASA, but missing a good halo protection and its available awesome cheap as 35 mm bulkware. Both, Wolf and Mike, exposed the Polypan F with EI 100, Wolf (Lupo914 @ flickr) developed the film in Caffenol-C-L, Mike (Mikeinlagardette @ flickr) in his own Caffenol-C variant that is quite similar to Caffenol-C-M. So let's see their results:

"Hello guys,

time for a new Caffenol experiment. For those „nickel nursers“ out there, it must be an incredible bargain, 90m 35mm film for 22 Euro resulting in 44cent per 36er roll of film. I´m speaking of the Polypan F, rated 50ASA, rumored to be a kinefilm made by Ilford. In fact its a very thin, polyester based film with less than optimal anti halo protection. But it has its own kind of old fashioned look.

For me, I´m using it for quite a while, exposing my second 90m roll of the film. In the past, development was done with Rollei RLS or Rodinal with decent results but only at 25 – 50 ASA, making it a film for sunny days only. Using Caffenol-C-L with Shanghai GP3 100, resulting in very good images rated at 400 ASA, I was curious trying Polypan F in the same soup. For the first attempt I´ve loaded a roll of Polypan F in my Pentax MZ-5n and exposed it like 100 ASA. Development 5 mins presoak, 60 minutes at 20°C in Caffenol-C-L, continuos agitation for the first minute, two gentle agitations at 15, 30 and 45 minutes. The results are very promising.

Happy experimenting!

Wolf"

Below are Mikes results, portraying a Komaflex S for 127 film (4x4 cm) with a Minolta Dynax 600si and a 35-70mm Minolta zoom lens, cropped to square size:

Polypan F 50 @ 100asa in Caffenol C: Instant Coffee granules 12g, crystalline Washing Soda 10g, Ascorbic Acid powder 4g, water to 300ml. 5 minutes pre-wash, 10.5 minutes @21C, 30 secs continuous agitation, 2 inversions every 15 sec thereafter. Regard the unusual and fast agitiation rhythm.

Again, the Caffenol-C-L images seem to be a bit more on the finer grained side, the Caffenol-C produces some more "grainy character" and the slightly glowing highlights are fitting beautifully to the subject imho. Not to bad for a less than 50 euro-cents/roll film. Well done guys. Thank you very much.

Wolf @ flickr, Mike @ flickr

Best regards - Reinhold

HP5+ @ 1600 and Tmax3200

2010-11-29T06:46:00.004+01:00

Hello everybody, Reinhold invited me to write something about my latest Caffenol results.

After using the Shanghai GP3 100 at 400 ASA in Caffenol-C-L and Reinhold´s pleasing results with T-MAX 400 @ 1600 ASA I was curious to use some films in the 400 ASA+ class.

The first picture (engine of an shot down WW2 plane) was taken with my Seagull 4A TLR on Ilford HP5+ film. In fact it is labeled as Adox CHM400. I gave it a try at 1600 ASA developing it 70 min at 20° in Caffenol-C-L using 1 - 1.3 gram per liter potassium bromide. I call it a "semi stand" development, agitating every 10 - 15 minutes. I was very pleased with the result and the amazing fine grain. Second picture (a set of gauges in an old submarine) was shot on 35mm HP5+. Bevor insolvency Ilford sold lage amounts of master rolls to other companies, so this film is labeled as OrwoPan 400. The film is rather old, being expired in 1996. Like the MF version it was exposed at I.E.1600. I was really amazed about the nice grain at this speed and format. In other developers, I´ve got more grain at box speed.

OK, Caffenol-C-L is very useful using expired high speed films, I thought. Let´s try something special. By chance, I´ve got some rolls of long expired (1997) Kodak T-MAX 3200 years ago. Never got any usable reults with this films, too old. So I grabbed one of the films, threw it into my Pentax Spotmatic and exposed it at I.E.1600. Surprise, the whole film was usable! Here is one of the results. As you can see, the grain is very pronounced.

Both 35mm shots were developed 70 minutes as described above. Click on the pictures for a bigger size.

Happy experimenting!

Wolf

Wolfs pictures @ flickr

More Tmax400 - Caffenol-C-L

2010-10-28T03:32:00.004+02:00

My Caffenol variants deliver reproducible results and I use them for even the most delicate jobs. Here again 2 samples with the Tmax400 in Caffenol-C-L with 1g/l KBr, semi-stand development, 60 minutes at 20 °C. 5 minutes presoak, 10 inversions initially, 3 inversions at 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32 minutes. Left image exposed at EI 1600-3200, right one at EI 800. Don't use at EI 400 or less, will be overexposed with blown highlights, or reduce dev time! 800 - 1600 will produce best overall quality. If not pushing too heavy, the tonal range is comparable to Acros100 at EI 200! Both are ideal for scanning and highest subject contrast range.

Caffenol-C-L has proven to work greatly with high speed films. So it's usable for almost any kind of film.

Best - Reinhold

Tmax 400 @ 1600 - 4800 in Caffenol-C-L

2010-10-13T14:30:00.001+02:00

Hello again,

good news from the coffee. For the appearance of this Salsa rock band I needed a fast film but only had Tmax400 available. First tests in Caffenol-C-L from 200 to 800 ASA showed overexposed and overdeveloped negatives, EI 200 and 400 were so dense that they were practically unsuable. 800 was OK, but still quite dense. So I thought that EI 1600 would be possible at least, maybe more even if I reduced the dev time or temperature slightly.

The picture of the drummer is exposed at EI 1600 and is very fine imho. The singer/guitarist was poorly lightened, so the same settings as in the first pic lead to EI 4800. Exposure for both was 2.8/60 with the fabulous Rokkor 2.8/135 mm lens for my Minolta SLR, of course using a tripod. Grain is still quite small for these speeds and base fog low for a fast speed film.

Developed semi-stand in Caffenol-C-L with 1 gramm per liter potassium bromide (KBr). 5 minutes prewash, 60 minutes development at 18-19 °C, agaitation 30 seconds continuous initially, 3 times after 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32 minutes. Still low base fog, perfect even development. For EI 1600 - 3200 I would probably prefer 20-21 °C and 60 mins. Maybe even EI 6400 is possible. Maybe lowering the KBr to about 0.5 g/l could help, but watch the base fog.

Best regards - Reinhold

Shanghai GP3 - Caffenol-C-L

2010-09-22T09:24:00.002+02:00

Reinhold asked me to write about my experiences with Caffenol-C-L and Shanghai GP3. I´ve used caffenol-C-M with different films and found it useful. Caffenol-C-L seemed to be promising, so I tried it the first time with a Shanghai GP3 that was pushed 2 steps from the normal 100 to 400 ASA.

Data for the first try: presoaked for 6 minutes (I was busy...), 60 minutes standing development with gentle agitation in the first minute and three turns after 30 minutes. I used 1.5 gram/litre potassium bromide in the mixture. The result with the pushed GP3 is very pleasing for the first attempt. As you can see in the pictures, the GP3 took the treatment very good. I took the pictures with my trusty Seagull 4A (Rolleiflex clone), not the first choice for a quick shot. When the old bus appeared, I simply estimated time and aperture and hoped the best. Must be 1/8 second with aparture around 5.6, if my old mind serves me right. You can take these long times with a TLR hanging on a neckstrap and a little luck.

The Shanghai GP3 100 ist the cheapest medium format film available at the moment. You pay around 18 Euro for 10 rolls on ebay. Please do not mix it up with the Lucky films, this is a different story. The GP3 has a reasonable fine grain, a good tonality and, as you can see, could be used not only at 100 ASA. It is not a perfect film. Being an old type emulsion, you should use hardener and should avoid toching the emulsion when wet. It is prone to failure when stored to hot or in a humid environment. If this happens to you, its possible to read the numbers from the backing paper on your pictures. And of course the small tape at the end of the film has no gum on it...

If you want to see more pictures, look at my flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/24469035@N02/

Wolf

Rollei Universal 200 - the first film to fail in Caffenol

2010-09-13T00:11:00.006+02:00

"Reinhold asked me to write about my experiences about Caffenol and Rollei Universal200 in Caffenol and I would like to thank him for the inviation. Thank you Reinhold for this Blog and for sharing your Caffenol Experience !

The first time i heard about Caffenol was in March 2010 when Reinhold started his Blog. At first I thought this would be a nice experiment and very cool to mix up your own developer by ingredients that can be found in most of out households. So I started my first trials with Fuji Acros 100 and Caffenol C-M. The results were pretty good and I decided to give the Rollei Universal200 a try, a film with beautiful fine grain and impressing sharpness.

That said and done I first tried the Caffenol C-H recipe, which ended up in very dense and foggy negatives with almost no picture to be seen on the film. I tried several shorter times, but the negatives stayed very dense and kept foggy. So the time had come to ask Reinhold for help and I sent him a few rolls for his own trials. Sadly that Reinhold has stated, that the Universal200 refuses to get developed in Caffenol. Though you can get a picture with a good scanner like the Nikon 9000 ED being able to read also high densities, these negatives won't be useful for printing in your darkroom.

Regards

Ralf"

Thank you very much, Ralf for your investigations and sending me the test rolls. Negs are really quite unusable, no matter what I tried with Caffenol-C-L. I increased the bromide and decreased developing time, always with the same results as Ralf describes above. Either the fog is low, but then the image is almost invisible, or you have negs of usable density, then a huge base fog covers every detail and destoys contrast, see the sample below. You can get viewable scans with some effort, but it's no fun at all. I was uncredibly surprized because the RR 80s was a decent film in Caffenol-C-L. Not easy to handle, but with some very nice results. First I thought that the production was faulty. I made a development of the Universal 200 at EI 200 ASA in Rodinal to verify this. I was even more surprized that the Rodinal development was without any fault. Perfect clear, sharp, with a pronounced Rodinal-type grain.

All the aerial films by Agfa are way of "divaesc". 120 film should be loaded/unloaded in almost complete darkness, because the light is guided by the polyester film base. Really bad for shooting abroad. Exposure latitude is low, sharpness and contrast high. Speed loss of at least 1-2 stops in the shadows because of the low blue sensitivity makes things really complicated. What a recreation after testing it was to go back to "traditional" films like Tmax, Acros or APX.

With a lot of postprocessing I could get these 2 Caffenol-C-L developed images, the negs look horrible.

Regards - Reinhold

large format photography - Caffenol-C-L

2010-08-28T19:30:00.009+02:00

Hi there,

large format sheet film seems to be a little bit more sensitive for uneven development, as you can see in the first image, developed with Caffenol-C-M. I discussed that with Bo aka Fiatlux at Apug, and he did some helpful research and found that Caffenol-C-L finally was the breakthrough. Perfect even development, no more bromide streaks at the edges. All images by Fiatlux on Tmax100 4x5 sheet film with a Linhof Tecknika IV, Voigtländer Apo Lanthar 150. Unedited but resized, haha, original scans must be huge! Landscape developed in Caffenol-C-M, portrait in Caffenol-C-L. Thank you very much for your contribution, Bo. Here is what he wrote:

Hello everyone, my name is Bo and I´m a photography addict.. :)

I originally started taking photos as a serious amateur back in the early 80´s, my first camera was a Olympus OM10 but I soon found that it was a bit too automatic so I got hold of a full manual Olympus OM1 and also adopted the zone system to gain some serious control over my B/W negatives and prints.

I learned the darkroom techniques the hard way by reading tons of books, the Paterson system with the awful multi reels and a used Durst M605, mostly by trial and error during those early years in my little make do darkroom @ my parents house.

Anyway, as the years passed I started working for several photographers as an assistant and darkroom-slave :) gaining loads of valuable experience until I finally took the big jump in the late 80´s and became a pro, earning money on my photography mostly doing commercial studio stuff and interiors for magazines etc.

Well, I grew out of that eventually.. I got tired of book-keeping, discussing prices and other mondane stuff at every shoot, so I quit the pro career in 2001, got myself another job and went back to shooting for passion and not for petty cash.

And here I am today, I have a passion for portraits, love landscape photography and now with the Caffenol-C-L I´ve found a developer that has everything that I´ve been looking for: Cheap, easy to mix, environmentally safe, extreme contrast range, perfect grain structure and a wonderful stain.

Happy experimenting
/Bo

Rollei Retro 80s - Caffenol-C-L

2010-08-22T03:48:00.004+02:00

Hello,

news from the coffee game. A friend gave me 2 rolls of Rollei Retro 80s as 35mm film to test it with my ugly tasting coffee brew. Thanks a lot , Nils! The RR 80s is known as a slow speed, extremely fine grained and somehow delicate to develop film. It also has an extended colour range up to mild infrared sensitivity. I never did IR-shots before and probably won't, so I decided to to see how it works under daily use conditions. No filter was used for the shots!

Exposed from EI 80 to 320, and developed in C-C-L stand development for 60 minutes at 21 °C. Sidestep: I get a lot of inquiries like "film X was bad in C-C-L at 60 minutes developing time". Pleeeeease, these questions are completely useless without specifying the temperature and agitation regime! Allright? OK, back to the theme. The RR 80s came out quite contrasty - means overdeveloped - and not too much shadow detail and very dense highlights. Fog free and perfectly even developed. EI 320 is unusable, 160 works better if the shadows are brightened during post processing, EI 80 is quite nice but for my taste still a bit too much for darkroom prints. Scanning is OK. I guess that best results will be achieved with EI 40 - 64 for wet prints with reduced development time, maybe 40 - 50 minutes at 20 °C stand development.

The tonal characteristics are very special. Blue is rendered darker, clouds and blue sky are seperated nicely without filtering. The look is like using a light orange filter. Sharpness is extraordinary as is the almost unvisible grain. The 5x5 mm crop from the negative at 2400 DPI clearly shows the limitations of my scanner. Having no experiance with real slow films of 25 ASA or so, these are the finest grained and sharpest images I ever took, even at EI 160 for the RR 80s! If someone wants to support me, donate a Nikon Coolscan *lol*

The Rollei Retro 80s must be exposed and developed carefully. If so, you are rewarded with the finest grain and sharpness you maybe ever saw with 50 - 100 ASA speed films.It works great in Caffenol-C-L when regarding the notes above. Dont't push too much or even pull, develop at less time as shown here.

Best regards - Reinhold

Recipes

2010-08-17T01:39:00.002+02:00

Welcome everybody,

after more than 15000 hits and readers from more than 60 countries in less than 5 months, here's a chart for your conveniance. You may use it free without any permission for non-commercial purposes.

Again, click on the image for a bigger size and for saving.

Thank you for all contributions and feedback. It's just a beginning .....

I love coffee - Reinhold

Caffenol-C-L stand development

2010-08-16T00:17:00.010+02:00

Real stand development with TMax100 as 120 type film. Shot with my 65 years old Bessa 66, vignetting of the first picture caused by filter (old fashioned yellow-green) and lens shade. Coloured with Gimp. First image EI 400, second EI 100, same roll. Click on the images as usual for bigger size.

Recipe as posted before, but only 1 g/l bromide. 5 minutes presoak in tap water, 10 gentle turns at the beginning, then let stand without further agitation. 60 minutes at 22 °C. Stop, fix and rinse as usual.

BTW, C-C-L has a pH of about 9.0

Perfect transparent film base, no fog, very little yellowish stain from the coffee. Usable on the same roll from EI 50 to EI 800.Scans very easy and surely will print at EI 200 - 400. For wetprints from EI 100 and below you should reduce dev time, otherwise negs become very dense, but no blown highlights!

My best Caffenol so far.

I love coffee - Reinhold

Caffenol-C-L + high speed film

2010-08-12T11:09:00.012+02:00

Recipe and semi-stand development as in former post. 50 minutes at 22 °C. Remember to adjust dev times as usual for differing temperatures.

Neopan 1600 exposed at about EI 1600, difficult to tell with night photography. I'm confident to gain real 3200 with longer development.

Shot with a 35mm SLR and very cheap telezoom lens. Crop 10x10 mm negative size

Caffenol-C-L is a breakthrough with high speed film imho. Very low fog level, sharp, nice and small grain for 1600, very wide tonal range, perfect even development.

I love coffee - Reinhold

perfect development with Caffenol-C-L

2010-08-04T18:22:00.003+02:00

2 posts belowyou can see the effects of different agitation. From extreme uneven development with stand development to a dramatic improvement with standard agitation.

When adding the restrainer potassium bromide (KBr), we see perfect even develpment up to the reel covered borders - even with minimal agitation as shown here. With intension I made no proper black adjustment here to show the improvement in the clearest possible way.

So here's my recommendation:

If you are satisfied with "regular" Caffenol-C like C-C-M, be happy. If you experiance uneven development, agitate more (you will have to adjust developing time). If still not satisfied use Caffenol-C-L.

The benefit of C-C-L besides the 100% perfect even development are reduced grain and almost fog free negatives.

Caffenol-C-L will be my standard in the future. My 100 g box of potassium bromide will last for a couple of films ;-) Caffenol-C-M will still be my standard as an easy to use and easy to get developer with enhanced film speed..

So if you can get KBr for a resonable price in your country, buy it! You won't be disappointed.

Cheers - Reinhold

Caffenol-C-L

2010-08-01T16:07:00.012+02:00

First results, Minolta X-300, 50mm Rokkor, orange filter, APX 100 in Caffenol-C-L

Recipe:

16 g/l washing soda waterfree, 10 g/l Vitamin-C, 40 g/l instant coffee, 1,5 g/l potassium bromide (KBr)

Use 1 - 2 gram/liter KBr, 1,5 seems to be a good idea. Do not use more than 2 g/l, it will restrain development too much up to blank negs.

40 minutes semi-stand development at 24 °C. Agitation first minute continuos, 3 inversions each at 2, 4 and 8 minutes, then let stand.

No fog, fine grain, perfect even development, about boxspeed.

Maybe some minor tweaks in the future, but looks fine so far.

Maybe not everybody is able to get potassium bromide easily? I got it from my next door pharmacy. It's not toxic and environmentally safe with the used quantities.

Looks promising that C-C-L may also be good for high speed films.

Do not try (semi-)stand development without a restrainer like KBr -> agitation is the key!

PS: I didn't use semi-stand development for another reason than comfort, I don't like shaking for half an hour. ;-)

Cheers - Reinhold

uneven development

2010-08-01T14:16:00.011+02:00

click on the picture for bigger size

Some people report uneven development and/or disturbing fog. That effect appears almost always with classic (cubic crystals) emusions like Ilford PanF+ or Agfa APX 100. Not enough agitation is the cause. A drastic example is stand development with Caffenol-C, as you can see in the image above.

What is happening? Lets regard the left picture. Stand development makes it visible. Classic bw-emulsions contain a lot of silver-bromide, the silver is reduced by the developer to form the blacks, and the bromide is set free. Bromide is a strong restrainer, but without or too less agitation it sinks down in the tank and produces less development, marked with a red "x" in the left picture.Also below parts of high exposure more bromide is set free and causes streaks. Below the sprocket holes, less bromide is set free leading to stronger development. Finally the bromide accumulates at the bottom and there we find the least development and - the least fog!

In the right picture with regular agitation we see no eneven development or fog at all exept for the small upper and lower parts covered by the reel during development. The bromide is dispersed evenly and so we have a constant restraing effect over the whole area. The uncovered upper and lower borders are developed evenly with low fog level, see the red "x"-es.

So agitation is the key for even development. Of course there is some remaining general fog, but doesn't disturb because it is spread evenly over the whole film. If you get uneven development or disturbing fog, agitate more! Try the heavy agitation regime recommended f.e. for Xtol, 5 times in 5 seconds every 30 seconds. That's almost shaking! And reduce dev time when doing this! Time, temperature and agitation are closely related, keep that in mind always.

My trial with stand development was very revealing. It was done when experimenting with low-pH Caffenol-C. As the development times with low-pH will increase and I didn't want to shake the tank for 20 or 30 minutes, I gave stand development a try. With the shown faults. But - when adding the bromide in a good amount from the beginning as a separate agent, unevenness and fog will be gone! So stay tuned and await a new Caffenol-developer by me, it will be named Caffenol-C-L. Only a little bit of fine tuning necessary. Compared to C-C-M it will have a bit film speed loss, but probably still boxspeed, finer grain and fog free even with stand development!

With "modern" medium speed films like Acros100 or Tmax100 things are different. They contain much less bromide and are much less fog sensitive and show perfect even development with C-C-M. Maybe C-C-L will also be recommended for high-speed films. So some things to do in the future, it doesn't get boring at all.

Time for a cup of coffee - cheers - Reinhold

3200

2010-07-23T10:42:00.007+02:00

Fuji Neopan 1600 @ 3200, Caffenol-C-H. First trials @ 1600 showed that there is still some headroom for underexposure. Yep.

my dream team

2010-07-05T07:52:00.006+02:00

Pentacon Six 6x6 SLR, Carl-Zeiss-Jena Sonnar 2.8/180, Fuji Acros100 EI 200, exposure f5.6/250 handheld, Caffenol-C-M, 24 °C, 10 minutes, crop 10x10 mm negative size.

The 25 MP scan (3 MB filesize) can be seen here: http://img126.imagevenue.com

The scan was done as always with a modest Canoscan 8800F. With a professional print service or a good enlarger you can make huge, wall-sized prints.

Cheers - Reinhold

Reducing pH for highspeed films? Fomapan 400

2010-06-17T00:46:00.019+02:00

I decided to delete the recipe, since Caffenol-C-L is much better.

PS: I also deleted the recipe because my notes about it were not correct, as I said here before. Restoring impossible. That was never a reliable recipe. So save any angry comments. Sorry for any unconveniance. I don't follow this path any further. But general thought here still might be of interest.

Some people suggest reducing the pH to reduce fog and grain. Borax is suggested as a mild alkaline. My first trials with borax were not encouraging, but why not reduce the soda? So I made a somehow "lighter" Caffenol-C-M, hoping to tame the developer with highspeed films. No scientific approach at all. I took a Fomapan 400 as 120 film, loaded my 65 years old Bessa 66 and shot the roll without metering the exposure. To be honest, I forgot my meter at home. All 12 images were nicely usable, though about 1/2 was overexposed. I estimated for 400 ASA, maybe the Fomapan 400 should be rated higher. OK, only one film, and my first Fomapan400 in Caffenol.

This pimped Caffenol-C-M contains 1/2 of the Vit-C and much less soda, but the same amount of instant coffee as before. pH is 9.2 instead of 9.7 before. If we go below a certain pH, development will probably stop completely. This point I still have to examin. For low pH-Caffenol it is more important to measure the soda exactly and use the right one, be it anhydrous or hydrate with recalculated amounts - see "soda-myth-and thruth"-post. Because the lower the pH, the smaller the different amounts of soda to make big changes. I hope you got a weightscale in the meanwhile ;-)

Results: low fog level, grainy but "nice" grain, sharp, wide tonal range, probably more than boxspeed.

Click on the images to enlarge as usual. Crop is 10x10 mm neg size. 3 more images on Flickr.

Have fun with coffee - Reinhold

Who invented coffee based development?

2010-06-12T07:19:00.005+02:00

When asking myself who invented Caffenol, I stumbled across an article by Dr. Scott A. Williams Ph.D., Rochester Institute of Technologie (R.I.T.). The Technical Photography 1995 Class under the leadership of Dr. Williams should research non traditional developers based on household ingredients and after some unsuccessful trials they decided to test drinks with caffeine like tea or coffee. Coffee was the winner and that was the beginning of coffee based developing. They used baking soda and potassium hydroxide for buffering the pH of 9. The name Caffenol wasn't yet created. We now use the more conveniant washing soda as pH adjusting agent, and the later addition of Vitamin-C since about the year 2000 improves the image quality dramatically. If you want to read the whole article, look here: http://people.rit.edu/andpph/text-coffee.html

The article is pure text without images, but refers to images that once must have been attached. I searched the web to find the lost images, but couldn't find them. So I decided to contact Dr. Williams via email and he sent me the original article, published in "Darkroom and Creative Camera Techniques", issue Sept/Okt 1995, with the kind permission to publish the images here on my blog. I don't want to bore you with scientific figures of molecular structures, but I'm pretty sure that you are curious who the people were and looked like. So here we go:

THE INVENTORS OF COFFEE BASED DEVELOPMENT:

You deserve our highest appreciation

Thank you so much. Best regards - Reinhold

next summary

2010-05-24T03:17:00.007+02:00

Hello again everybody,

the blog develops more and more, thanks to anyone who contributed with submissions and comments. More than 5000 hits and 70 comments in less than 2 months, wow! That's much more than I ever expected. Good to see that so many people are interested into coffee development and film based photography in general. Analogue photography becomes again more and more respected after a long suffering time, gently ridiculed. Self-confident again we enjoy our passion.

There are many ways to become happy with coffee development. My way is to prove that coffee and Vitamin-C can deliver the best of the best. Therefore only recipes I'm convinced of myself will be published here. The best overall way is still Caffenol-C-M as a speed enhancing developer with medium speed films of 100 ASA in my opinion. Easy to use with great and very predictable results. Other recipes and more experimental kinds of developing are frequently discussed at the caffenol group of flickr. A great ressource you shouldn't miss with many highly respected members participating.

It's just a beginning - cheers - love and peace - Reinhold

Tmax100 @ EI 200, Caffenol-C-M, 65 years old Voigtlander Bessa 66 with Skopar lens and yellow filter (2x)

Caffenol-C-H "highspeed"

2010-05-11T11:28:00.017+02:00

Hello coffee junkies,

a new chapter of Caffenol development is ready to be published. I was not satisfied with Caffenol/C and high speed films and I didn't recommend it. Too much fog, flat in contrast, poor usable speed, ugly grain. but I constantly thought of trying to modify Caffenol-C-M for these films. Potassium bromide (KBr) is well known as an anti-fogging agent, but I thought it would mess up the concept of great shadow rendering. I was wrong. So good and bad news: KBr works well with Caffenol, but it is not available in regular supermarkets. In Germany a pharmacy in my neighborhood was able to deliver it within a couple of hours, 100 gramms for 15 Eur. Quite expensive compared to the other ingredients, but it will be good for 100 litres of developer and some hundred films. So the additional coast will be about 4 - 8 Euro-Cent per development. Potassium bromide is not toxic and doesn't spoil the environmental friendly coffee soup.I don't know how easy potassium bromide is available in other countries, reports are welcome. The german name is Kaliumbromid, or you may ask for the scientific latin name "kalium bromatum" in pharmacies.

Crops 10x10 mm negative size, Neopan 1600 @1600 ASA left, HP5+ @ 400-800 ASA right :

So here's Caffenol-C-H, "H" for highspeed, recommended for 400 ASA films and faster. There is considerably less fog, although there will be still some, but not any more disturbing. Tonality, contrast and shadow rendering are amazing for available light with lot of shadow areas. On the minus side we have still quite big grain. For example, the Neopan1600 developed in Diafine produces much nicer grain and was my preferred developer. But I never got better shadow details as with Caffenol-C-H. And I slowly begin to love the bigger grain, together with the wide tonality it gives a special look. Boxspeed or pushing is possible. More detail for exposure index must be evaluated, rating under available light conditions is difficult and I made no densitometric tests. Try boxspeed or +1 push.

How to: I made a stock solution of 10 gramms KBr in 300 ml destilled water, stored in a glass bottle. It will last almost forever. 1 ml contains 0,033 gramms KBr. 250 ml developer need 7.6 or easier 8 ml of the stock solution. This equals 1 gramm per litre KBr. Simply add the 8 ml to the ready mixed 250 ml Caffenol-C-M and voila: Caffenol-C-H. Be sure to do the math right! I'm sorry.

Edit: if still too much fog, use 2 g/l of potassium bromide.

So far I used HP5+ and Neopan1600, both with excellent results. 1gram per liter KBr was added to the Caffenol-C-M recipe, no other changes. Developing time was 15 minutes like before, or 30 minutes stand development with agitation first 30 seconds and 3 minutes presoak in tap water.

Thank you very much Caro and Chris for allowing me to publish the images. Finally an example of the Acros100 in Caffenol-C-H, also works perfectly. But for 100 ASA films I still recommend the simple Caffenol-C-M because the KBr isn't really needed.

Best regards - Reinhold

Acros 100 in Caffenol-C-H, 15x15 mm negative size, the bromide doesn't disturb

FP4+ by Khoa

2010-04-25T20:43:00.008+02:00

Khoa sent me two images and said: „These two photos were taken on two separate recent visits to Montréal. The first is of the Cathédrale Marie-Reine-Du-Monde, taken with an Olympus XA, and the second was taken in a downtown hotel room with a Leica IIIc and Summitar 50mm f/2. Both were shot on Ilford FP4, exposed at its box speed of ISO 125 (though with the Leica, having no internal light meter, I "guestimated" with an old selenium meter somewhere between ISO 100 and 200). Development was in Caffenol-C-M, as in Reinhold's blog, at 12 minutes and 20 degrees centigrade. I find that Ilford FP4 gives me surprisingly much larger grain than Kodak TMAX 100 and Fuji Acros 100 (which I now prefer using and can get finer grain having pushed them even to ISO400), but in certain applications, it gives an unmistakable grainy film look.

The negatives were copied with a Nikon compact camera and the Nikon ES-E28 slide copy adapter, and adjusted in the GIMP.

To be honest, Caffenol C-M is the first and only developer I've used as an adult (my last film developing experience having been in high school as a teenager in the mid-1990s), and, well, I'm convinced, as I find that with a bit of care, I can get better results than the majority of "non-pro" labs.“

Thank you very much Khoa.. More of his images you can see here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/khoa_sus2

Other photographers confirmed me that the FP4+ is not as fine grained as expected with a Caffenol development.

Best regards - Reinhold

2 women passing

2010-04-14T02:22:00.005+02:00

The homework is done. I saw lots of images of all kind made with CCM, all proving that this developer belongs to the elite of b/w film developers. Now I can focus again more on what is the real fun: taking real pictures. Click on the images for bigger size.

Here's a scene from my hometown, I also like the detail as a unique image. TMax100 @ 400 in CCM as described.

first summary and why fog is good

2010-04-09T13:12:00.010+02:00

Hi,

after more than 1 month here's my first summary. What happened? When starting this blog, I wanted to share my experiances with Caffenol-C as a high grade b/w-developer. made with household ingrediants. My approach is not experimental, I use it as any regular developer and it should produce outstanding results. Caffenol-C-M (CCM) does! You can make up your own mind by reading this blog, watching closely the displayed images or simply and best by doing yourself. If you are new to the Caffenol developement, I suggest you start with the first post.

CCM is the best developer for slow to medium speed films I ever used. CCM produces sharp, fine grained negatives with an extraordinary good tonal balance and extremely wide exposure latitude. CCM enhances film speed without any drawbacks. CCM developed negatives are easy to print in the wet darkroom and easy to scan. CCM does not work well with high speed films.

So how can this be? One of the most discussed items about Caffenol in general is fog. Caffenol produces always some base fog and it is regarded as something you should avoid if possible. That's the reason why CCM does not work well with high speed films of 400 ASA boxspeed and faster. The base fog is much too intense, the negs are flat in contrast and the usable speed is more than poor. But with slower speed films it seems to be the reason for the outstanding quality. Fog means that unexposed silver is developed as if it were exposed. But it also means that every silver particle exposed with the smallest amount of light needed for exposure also will be developed. The result is the best shadow detail you can imagine. Most (every?) commercial developers use a fog restraining agent, that will also restrain the low exposed silver developement. By adding some anti-fogging agent to caffenol we would probably end up with an average good developer like so many others. Not so for CCM: without a special pushing procedure you can underexpose up to 4 stops (depending on the used film) and still get very good negs. Don't stress it too much, especially when beginning with Caffenol development. For stress-free easy CCM-development simply double the boxspeed and you will be fine, be it for scanning or wetprinting purpose. Enjoy the results and have fun.

The images displayed in this post are from Hansi, another friend from an analogue photography forum. He used an APX100 35 mm film developed in CCM as outlined here on my blog. Taken with a Nikon F80 with a dedicated 90mm Sigma macro lens. Showing clearly the advantages of a real macro lense. And the first class developement with CCM ;-) Thank you very much, Hansi.

I want to thank everybody involved with this blog. Thank you for all the helpful comments and contributions. Since about 15 years people are using coffee for developing film. I feel that it is still just a beginning....

Best regards - Reinhold

Interview with Stephen Schaub

2010-03-19T14:21:00.006+01:00

R.: Dear Stephen, I'm very proud to have on my blog one of the very few professional photographers in the word who is developing film with Caffenol-C. You are the leader of the figital revolution (figitalrevolution.com), you combine analogue, film based photography and digital editing and printing.

There are many great working commercial developers outside, does the world really need another, an experimental B/W-film developer?

S.: Caffenol and Caffenol C have several advantages from economic to environmental and depending on the film it can have a wonderful ability to help control tonality for scanning purposes. I have tried many, many different developers over the last 20+ years and Caffenol C as I use it has been one of the most rewarding.

R.: Do you use both, Caffenol and Caffenol-C and what makes the difference?

S.: I have tested both and in the end settled on Caffenol C for two reasons:

1. The processing times are much shorter... in the range of 10-20 minutes whereas Caffenol is more like 20-40 minutes depending on the film.

2. Caffenol C negatives do not have as much of a brown stain as Caffenol negatives do, in fact some films have no stain at all... I found no real advantage to this stain unlike the stain from a developer like PMK Pyro and as such it just made my negatives more dense and harder to scan.

R.: One of the most discussed themes about Caffenol and Caffenol-C is fog. With medium speed films it is not a big thing, even when they are pushed, as far as I can say. But with higher speed films, 400 ASA and above, my trials were more or less disappointing because of too much fogging and a poor usable speed. What is your experience?

S.: About the same. Caffenol and Caffenol C in my opinion work best with slower speed films. My favorite films are Tmax 100 and Fuji Acros... both are fantastic in Caffenol C and both scan quite well.

R.: Are there any other drawbacks?

S.: Not really... the smell is easy to get used to and I sorta like it now. It is not perfect for all films as mentioned before and I don't know how it would be for wet darkroom work but for the films I use day in and day out it is now my go to developer.

R.: You shoot EI 25 to 1600 with 1 film, 1 developer and 1 processing time. The images look top-notch. That sounds too crazy. Are you kidding?

S.: Some films with Caffenol C have a tremendous latitude for scanning. This of course depends on the quality of your scanner, I use an Imacon- and it also depends on the range of the scene. I have found that films like Fuji Acros can indeed have a usable EI from 25-1600. I have now tweaked my process for two different times for this film.... one time for 25-400 and then a second time for 400-1600... it just makes the scanning a bit easier and will make it possible for users who don't have a scanner like an Imacon to fit the range of the film within the range of their scanner. But in a pinch as the test images show, yes one film, one processing time and EI 25-1600 is very possible. It does sound crazy but fantastic as well.

R.: Stephen, thank you very much for this interview. I highly recommend your website figitalrevolution.com. and caffenol.com for more details. Is there anything you still want to tell my readers? And all the best for your ongoing caffenol and future projects.

S.: Always remember why you got into photography in the first place... because it was fun! and Caffenol is not only fun but also amazing for the hybrid workflow... what more could you ask for.

Viva la Revolution!

Micha's first

2010-03-15T20:59:00.006+01:00

I received a submission from Micha, a friend from a german analogue photography board.

The 2 images were shot during a walk in the city and later in a small cafe. It was his very first Caffenol development, using the standard Caffenol-C-M recipe described here in a former post. Micha reports that developing was easy and the negs are great. He especially emphasizes the good shadow and highlight rendering and the suitability of Caffenol-C-M for high-grade B/W photography.

I love both images. Perfect composition and craft.

Hasselblad 500 C/M, CF 150mm, Fomapan 100 exposed at EI 100, both shots handheld, scanned from negative, CanoScan 8800F. Click on the images for bigger size.

Thank you very much, Micha, for your submission.

Best regards - Reinhold

Juliette

2010-03-14T16:11:00.009+01:00

...is a charming young french jazz singer. After the show I could shoot this portrait. Lit only by one small lamp, not brighter than a couple of candles.

Minolta X-300, Rokkor 1.7/50 open stop, Fuji Acros100 @ 1600(!), Caffenol-C-M, crop 15x20 mm neg size, scanned with Canoscan8800F and Vuescan, edit with The Gimp.

The Acros 100 was exposed at EI 1600, developed in Caffenol-C-M for 20 minutes at 21 °C. I added +10 % of each ingredient. The neg is thin and needs some edit work. I would not recommend this 4 stop push for daily use. But not too much noise and very small grain here. Probably the smallest grain I ever saw with a 1600 ASA exposure. Watch the bigger size!

Best regards - Reinhold

rotation development, sample from Harald

2010-03-13T11:07:00.012+01:00

I'm glad to present a report from Harry about rotation development with Caffenol-C-M and scanning from a wetprint made with Agfa MCC baryt paper.

"Inspired by Reinhold´s Blog, I was curious, whether the described recipe would bring me similar results with my accustomed developing procedure. I am using a Jobo ATL-1500 processor for convenience and to get always reproducible results. The ATL-1500 can run only by 24 degree Celsius for B&W mode, and it is a rotating processor. Usually, I begin processing with 5 minutes predunk, so certainly I had to adjust the given developing time of 15 minutes to something less. So I started the first example by using the Agfa APX-100, ISO setting 100 and a developing time of 12,5 minutes.

The results where good, but the density was a little bit high. So I reduced the time to 11,5 minutes for the next film and found it to be perfect. The negatives looked very good and I could not see any drawbacks in terms of quality, compared to my standard developers. The next example I did with a middle format film Agfa APX-100, same processing as before, but I mixed the soup only for 250 ml and I was not very accurate in scaling ... The results, again, where very good. Now I wanted to test the negatives against a print on the very nice Adox MCC baryt paper. What should I tell ? Results where great as you expect it from a good negative.

So my conclusion: This recipe can be used as a serious developer with reproducible results without any drawbacks.

Thanks to Reinhold for this useful blog :-)"

Thank you very much, Harry.

Soda: myth and truth

2010-03-07T08:31:00.012+01:00

Sometimes I get messages about not successful Caffenol developments. It almost always turns out that the used ingredients are not suitable! "Better" coffees like Nescafe, or labeled "mild", "100% arabica", "gold" etc may be not suitable. But most confusion is about soda. In some countries it seems to be difficult to get the waterfree one. How can you determine which kind of soda you got?

First of all, waterfree soda is provided as a white powder. If you have small crystals, it will be either the monohydrate or decahydrate. Take an amount of your soda, determine the weight and put it in the oven above 120 °C. If it looses weight after some time, you have a hydrate. I tested my waterfree soda and it only looses about 2 or 3 gramms of 100 gramms, neglectible. If you loose about 20 %, it's the monohydrate. If you loose more than 50 % of weight, it's the decahydrate. Above 34 °C the decahydrate turns to monohydrate, above 107 °C the monohydrate turns to waterfree soda. When you don't loose weight anymore, all the water has evaporated and you now have pure waterfree soda. It might take hours, I have no clue how long.

Once determined which kind of soda you have, you can also use the mono- or decahydrate. Take 1.2x the weight (!) for mono- and 2.7x the weight (!) for decahydrate. Volumetric measuring is not possible, I don't know the specific densities and the scientific determined densities are not usable because they don't regard the huge amounts of air between the crystals/powdergrains.

So you can use the other kinds of soda than the waterfree, anhydrous one, but it makes things complicated. Btw, if you have a pH-meter, the final mix must have a pH of about 9.7. Using the wrong soda or miscalculating will result in a lower pH and reduces the developers activity dramtically.

References:

http://www.seilnacht.com/Chemie/ch_naco.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_carbonate

The image was shot on TMax100 35 mm film @ about 800 ASA without any change of the process. The negs are quite thin and you have to do some adjustments during and after scanning, but it works - not too bad as you can see ;-)

Important note for recipes: when I say "XYZ" I mean "XYZ" and not "ABC".

Cheers - Reinhold

Caffenol-C-M details

2010-03-04T12:40:00.010+01:00

1. picture: Fomapan100, EI 400, whole image
2. picture: EI 400, crop 10x10 mm negative size
3. picture: EI 100, crop 10x10 mm negative size
4. picture: TMax100, EI 200, crop 10x10mm negative size

Click on the images for bigger size.

All images developed in Caffenol-C-M as described in former post. On my desktop screen, the 10x10mm crops represent whole images of 1.30x1.30 meters print size for 120 film and still 50x80 cm for 35mm film! Caffenol-C-M enhances film speed without changing anything. Compare the EI 100 and EI400 images, both from the same roll, there is almost no loss. Just a tiny little bit more grain.

The last image is a 10x10 mm crop from the TMax100 exposed at EI 200 ASA. Almost no grain, extraordinary rendering from highlights to shadows, usable exposure range from 25 to 800 ASA. The subject had a contrast range of 9 stops. All in all this combo can handle a contrast range of 13 - 14 stops! And you need an extremely good lens to scratch the resolution limits. That's what I call "state -of-the-art".

Images 1-3 made by a 65 years old Voigtländer Bessa 66 with uncoated 3.5/75 Skopar, image 4 made by Pentacon Six with 2.8/80 Carl-Zeiss-Jena Biometar and z-ring.

Stay tuned. More to come ...... Reinhold

Caffenol-C-M, recipe

2010-03-02T16:15:00.017+01:00

Hi there,

so lets start the show with my basic recipe and some words about the ingredients. You already know that Caffenol-C is made of instant coffee, washing soda and vitamin-C.

All recipes are based upon 1 litre solution, measured in gramms and milliliter (ml, 1/1000 of 1 litre). No teaspoons allowed here! No ounces, inches, quarters, barrels, °F etc. I only use international standard units. In many households you will find small measuring mugs f.e. for doing the laundry. These will be usable if they have scales. A weight scale will be of course a bit better, but is not absolutely neccessary.

If you live in a country using not international standard units, you have to calculate the amounts yourself. Sorry! Now here we go:

Instant coffee: granulate (crystals) with lot of air included. Buy the cheapest brand you can get. More expensive ones might not be so good. Get the "strong" labeled version if possible. Not the "mild" ones. The active substance in coffee is caffeic acid, that behaves similar to pyrogallol and is a very compensating developing agent. I tried some cheapest brands here in Germany from Aldi, Lidl and other supermarkets. They all taste the same (awfully) and I guess they are all made by the same company or at least the same method. So it shouldn't be a problem to get reproducible results. 200 gramms for 3 Euro.

Vitamin-C: ascorbic acid, the second active developing agent. Works similar like Hydrochinone, giving more contrast and is hyperadditive to caffeic acid. Also reduces fog and of course developing time. Whenever possible, buy pure Vitamin-C, small crystals. Here I buy 100 gramms for 2-3 Euro, available in any pharmacy. Don't use vitamin pills or tablets, there will be other substances added and you might have to adjust the recipe. Buy only pure crystals for reproducible results. Used also in a famous commercial developer.

Washing soda: sodium carbonate (Na2CO3), waterfree (anhydrous). Be sure to get the waterfree one, white powder. If you should have crystals, it is not waterfree and I do not recommend it. You need much more and depending on the kind of hydrate you must recalculate differently. Soda is used for making the solution alkaline, that is important for activating the developing agents. Available at drugstores, supermarkets, zoo shops, swimming pool suppliers. Here at drugstores less than 1 Euro/500 gramms.

Recipe for 1 litre Caffenol-C-M, means for medium fast 100 ASA films (adjust yourself for other quantities)

1. 1 litre water
2. 100 ml washing-soda or 54 gramms
3. 16 ml vitamin-C or16 gramms
4. 160 ml coffee or 40 gramms

Dissolve one after the other in the given order. Wait until each agent is dissolved completely. Stir while adding, especially the soda should be added slowly for good solution. I use tap water, no probs so far. The dissolving of the soda will heat the solution for about 3 °C. Keep that in mind for a proper temperature. Little fogging of the solution caused by the soda was no prob so far. When adding the vitamin-C small bubbles will appear, wait until they have cleared before finally adding the coffee. This is important! Then add the coffee, stir well and let stand the soup for about 5 minutes. The coffee needs some time to dissolve perfectly. Do not store, use within 1/2 an hour.

Develop for 15 minutes at 20 °C. Agitation first 30 seconds, then 3 times each minute. Intermediate rinse or stop bath, fix and rinse as usual. Tested with TMax100 and Fomapan100 so far. Other 100 ASA films may need slight adjustments. Not recommended for ASA 400 films or faster.

1 litre will cost about 1 to 1.20 Euro. Of course you will need less for developing 1 film, so depending from film and tank size, 1 development will cost about 30 to 60 Euro-Cents. Rodinal stand development will be much less expensive, but Caffenol-C competes well with commercial developers and the results are outstanding. No joke!

Image info: Pentacon Six with 2.8/80 Biometar and z-ring, KodakTmax100, exposed at exposure index EI 200 ASA, Caffenol-C-M. The image from the first "Hello"-post was made with Fomapan100 at EI 100 and the same soup, time, temperature.

More details and sample pics for Caffenol-C-M with the next post.

Important note for recipes: when I say "XYZ" I mean "XYZ" and not "ABC".

Now I need a cup of coffee.

Cheers - Reinhold

Hello

2010-03-01T07:28:00.011+01:00

Hi there,

this blog will be dedicated to a wonderful film developer you can mix yourself at home with ingredients you can buy in almost any supermarket, drugstore or pharmacy. It's names are "Caffenol" and "Caffenol-C".

Added Vitamin-C improves the quality in such a degree that it rivals the best commercial developers. The posted image was made with a 65 years old camera called Voigtländer Bessa 66, it has a beautiful uncoated 4-element lens named Skopar (3.5/75), exposed on Fomapan 100 film (type 120) and developed in Caffenol-C. Details like recipe and other tech stuff later.

More to come .... Reinhold