APX new emulsion 2

Now let's have a look at the Agfaphoto APX 100 new emulsion. Again an OEM film by Ilford, similar but also different from the Kentmere/RPX bothers. Biggest difference is that this one needs much less development like the others. E.g. the Kentmere in Rodinal 1:50 needs about 16 - 17 minutes for boxspeed, the APX only 10 minutes.

And so it is with Caffenol-C. 10 minutes at 20 °C in Caffenol-C-M (rs) are enough, and here I stand developed 20 minutes at 25 °C in Caffenol-C-L with 0.5 g/l pot. bromide, both for boxspeed. A nice, sharp and reasonable fine grained classic bw film, easy to handle with the only disavantage of a slightly sub-optimal halo protection like all Ilford OEM films.

Update: it looks like the APXn and Kentmere 100 are identical. Also I couldn`t see a difference between RPX 400 and APX/Kentmere 400 anymore, it seems Ilford didn`t want a RPX to be better than a Kentmere. I can't see why I should buy a more expensive RPX 400 anymore.

APX new emulsion

Hello coffeeholics,

the distributor Agfaphoto had launched 2 new films after the broke of  Agfa Leverkusen and the deep-frozen stock of  old APX was sold out. The  APX 100 and 400 "new emulsion" have nothing to do anymore with the old Agfa APX, are made by Ilford and are close relatives to the Kentmere films, but must not be 100 % identical. Ilford is producing a lot of OEM stuff nowadays and they all remind at the Kentmere films somehow. Especially the less than optimal halo protection is a common feature though it doesn't disturb under most conditions.

Here is my first impression of the APX 400 new. Maybe it's the same as the Kentmere 400, surely different from the RPX 400, who is the best of them all imo after a somehow inconsistent history. But that's another story, already told here, see the older posts concerning the RPX 400.


Update: all APXn and Kentmere are identical. Also I couldn`t see a difference between RPX 400 and APX/Kentmere 400 anymore, it seems Ilford didn`t want a RPX to be better than a Kentmere. I can't see why I should buy a more expensive RPX 400 anymore.

I never liked the Kentmere 400, quite big grain and very push resistant, and the new APX 400 behaves like his brother. But it has the big advantage to be easily available here at big drugstores like Muller. Because I had agreed a short dated shooting in a small coffee roastery and no time to order new fast film, I decided to give the APX 400 new a chance. First trials with small snippets showed that not more than ISO 400 is makeable and the grain was - let's say - very visible and nice. Furthermore I decided this to be a feature and not a bug and live with the grain. So, if you want a film with nice big and sharp grain, here it is, developed in coffee.

 The films were exposed at EI 400 with a Minolta X-500 and 2.8/28 and 1.4/58 Rokkor lenses. Developed in Caffenol-C-H (rs) with 1 g/l pot. bromide, 13 minutes at 25 °C which is about the same as 20 minutes at 20 °C, agitation first minute continuously, then 3x every 30 seconds. Because the film tends to give a lower contrast, this agitation sceme was used.

Here are some results from the shooting, scanned with a dslr, macro gear and at 20 MP resolution. White point and black point were set and some contrast curve adjustments made. No sharpening at all in pp.

As always, right click on the pics to open in a new tab to see the biggest available size.

The whole set can be seen here at full resolution:
roastery at flickr

Happy developings - Reinhold

Caffenol C-M and C-H (RS/RSA)

Hello coffee (ab)users, 

I'm very happy to present Eiriks report about his reduced soda/ascorbic-acid versions. Have a nice reading, and I recommend visiting his sites linked below. He's a great photographer and a very nice guy. Thank you so much, Eirik.

Happy developings - Reinhold


That's what Eirik wrote:

I promised Reinhold a long time ago I would write an article on the (RS) and (RSA) versions of his recipes.

Like many others, when I started out with Caffenol I perused the net for tips on where to start. I concluded pretty early on that these 8tsp of this, a pinch of that, and a cup of other recipes, were not going to cut it for me. Reinhold’s precise and predictable recipes however were exactly what I was looking for. In addition to reading everything on his blog, I joined a Caffenol group on Flickr, and a long ongoing thread on the Scandinavian APUG forum to discuss and share experiences.

I like to be accurate in my work, but I am also lazy. So I soon tried out premixing Caffenol, instead of having to dissolve powders and mix them up for every development. My approach was to dissolve the ingredients in larger quantities and store them in light and airtight bottles. Then mix them, one third each, when developing. For this to work, each solution had to be 3 times the prescribed strength. And it worked well. The ingredients did not go off as quickly as some had thought. The coffee started to develop mold at 8-12 weeks, and the ascorbic acid oxidized gradually to be useless after 15-20 weeks. The soda kept forever, but was susceptible to crystalising in my storage space in the basement in cold weather. Evidently this was due to the combination of higher concentration and low temperature. In warm weather the soda was stabile.

The first time the soda crystalised, I was unaware of it. Some of the soda had formed a solid block at the bottom of the flask. I mixed as usual, and developed a roll of TMX. And it came out gloriously! Caffenol is a compensating developer, and I had been accustomed to it helping me bring back highlights and draw out shadow detail, but this was something else. The compensating effect seemed enhanced, and the tonal gradation, definition and micro contrast was discernably better than I was used too. I knew something was not quite as it should be. Having checked with said forums I was tipped that the soda may have something to do with it. Having identified the culprit I went about testing levels of soda to approximate the serendipitous TMX roll. After a bit of trial and error I ended up with a recipe where the only difference being lowering the level of soda (or sodium carbonate if you will) to 40g/l (from 54g/l). Technically this will result in a lower pH and a less active developer. Developing times may therefore need adjusting. I however found that this was not necessary. But then again, I tend not to do push development. My variations over Reinhold’s recipes are more tuned to regular box speed developing. Of course, should you want to push, by all means, but then you may want to add a few minutes to the timing, as compared to most of my efforts that is. Since this discovery, it became my staple developer for several years, and worked fine on films such as Kodak TMX, TMY2, Tri-X, Plus-X, Double-X and BW400CN, Fuji Acros (my favourite) and Neopan 400, Efke R25 and KB/R 100, Era 100, Rollei Retro 400s, Agfa APX 100/400, Ilford PanF and Delta 400, PolyPan F and several others I forget.

Like Reinhold, I like a definition to have a particular meaning. The name should refer to a specific recipe. I therefore set about naming the recipes. I wanted to coin mine much like Reinhold has his, and it felt only natural the names should reflect that they were indeed variations over his well-known Caffenol-C-M and H.

So Caffenol-C-M(RS) is just a Reduced Soda version of C-M. Same applies to C-H. I also experimented lowering the ascorbic acid level to 10g/l (from 16g/l), and saw little or no effect. But I found little reason to continue with it, introducing yet a variable. This variation gained the postfix (RSA).

I lay no claim to have invented anything, I know of several others who have come to similar conclusions by other means. Indeed, a couple of my co-authors of the Caffenol Cookbook have their own versions of lower pH Caffenol-C mixtures, which work in much the same way.

The TMX roll that started it all? Here are a few examples.

 

My caffenol flickr album: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ezzie0304/sets/72157625081279605/

My Caffenol and DIY blog: http://on-your-kitchen-worktop.blogspot.no/

Caffenol Cookbook: http://www.caffenol-cookbook.com/

Best of luck

Eirik Russell Roberts

densitometry

Inspired by a discussion on a german board I made a new test with the  Kodak Technical Pan in Caffenol-C-L, compared with older results of Rodinal. The film was exposed @ EI 25, developed in Caffenol-C-L with 0.1 g/l pot. bromide, 11 minutes 20°C, constant agitation for the first 30 seconds, then 3 turns every minute.

No presoak here. I recommend using destilled or demin. water, the thin emulsion is very sensitive for spots. Check if your fixer is clean! And make a clearing test, fix for double clearing time, not longer, you can overfix these films quite easy. Here I fixed for 1 minute total with my regular strength fixer. Development was perfectly even, so I guess there is no need at all to use pot. bromide and maybe get a little bit more speed. After development I made 3 intermediate rinses (tap water this time) with shaky agitation to reduce possible spots. The final rinse was again made with demin water and the film carefully wiped with a V-folded paper tissue.

As you can see, the real speed is like ISO 20, with both developers Rodinal and C-C-L. But the red Rodinal curve is more contrasty. The blue C-C-L curve is better suitable for wet prints. Quite a nice result for a film that is said to be very difficult to handle, isn't it?

On my walk to do the test shots I met 4 young photographers and they were eager models for the test. Thank you very much, guys. I exposed @ EI 25, short before dawn I shot with 1/30 and f/1.4.

Happy developings - Reinhold

 click on the pics to make them bigger

arabica coffee or not

We recently had a discussion at Apug if pure arabica coffee without Vit-C would do any development, one guy reported that he had no development at all with arabica coffee. We can read at different places that the cheap and awful robusta would be the best for developing film and arabica would be worse, but no development at all? Furthermore, I didn't have single report here on my blog of any failure caused by arabica coffee. Au contraire, people told me that they used 100% arabica "premium" instant coffee, because it was at hand, and got excellent results. I also made such an experiment and could confirm, that pure arabica coffee was not worse than any other I tried so far. But I made the test with Caffenol-C. Now I decided to make a side by side comparison of 100 % arabica and the cheapest instant coffee available here without Vit-C, to get the results from coffee with washing soda alone. To make it worse, I used decaffeinated(!) arabica. Both samples were developed at the same time side by side. To make a simple story simple: I can't distinguish both! They look exactly the same, even held against a lamp for better judgement: identical blackening. To be honest, I wasn't surprised very much. But of course using a more expensive coffee is a waiste of money.

PS: my old flickr buddy Larry aka inetjoker just said that he only once had a failure with caffenol, and it was a deacidified coffee. Again no big surprise, caffeic acid is regarded as the main developing agent of coffee. Thank you so much, Larry for all your help and simply for being around always.

 

Both developments were made with snippets of Polylan F, I cut off 1 edge for the arabica developement and 2 edges for the "cheap" development for further reference. The recipe for both was:

40 g/l instant coffee and 40 g/l washing soda waterfree, that's it. pH was about 9.9 for both. Fixing and rinsing as usual.

Stand developed 60 minutes at room temp with some stirring every 10 minutes or so. That was a quick and dirty test, everybody can repeat it with a minimum effort.

See you guys, happy developings

Reinhold

the new old RPX 400

 Hi coffee users and abusers,

good news about film and Caffenol. The "original" Rollei RPX 400 is back!

The RPX 400 from the very first production was a great film with good pushing behaviour and nice grain. Then the emulsion was changed obviously without any announcement. I couldn't see any difference to the Kentmere 400 now, and I never liked this film. 

 

Here is my original post on the RPX 400 with an update adressing that point:

http://caffenol.blogspot.de/2011/03/new-film-rollei-rpx-400.html

Many people, incuding me, complained about this inaceptable behaviour. After the new package design was launched recently the emulsion obviously changed again, now showing again all the great features of the first batch. Obviously our lament was successful. Shadow detail is splendid, even with extremely contrasty subjects. EI 1600 is possible. The RPX 400 needs a powerful development to show his best side.

I used exactly the same development as before: 5 minutes presoak, Caffenol-C-L with 1.2 g/l pot. bromide, 80 minutes at 24 °C stand development with constant agitation only for the first minute. And I got the same great results as almost 4 years earlier. EI was 800, all shots done with a Dynax 5 (Maxxum 5) in multi-segment metering mode with aperture priority at f/4, no manual exposure compensation. The subject contrast was big to huge up to more than 10 stops! Only very small adjustments were made in postproduction. Shadow detail was so splendid that I had to darken them a bit.

Credits go to a friendly guy who sent me 2 films for this test. Thank you very much! And thanks to the 2 charming girls who let me take the picture.

Best - Reinhold

Rezepte

for my german friends... Don't worry, this blog stays in englisch language. This post is an exeption.

Das Bild kann wie alles von mir ohne weitere Nachfrage nichtkommerziell frei benutzt werden. Klick ins Bild für eine größere Darstellung.

Viele Grüße - Reinhold

How to avoid spots

Often it's not easy to get clean negatives without spots, drying marks etc. Fernando e.g. asked what he can do to get rid of these spots. Instead of a reply as a comment here my thoughts about avoiding spots with all kinds of films:

Hi Fernando, the thin emulsions of microfilms show every fault unmercifully. No, I don't filter the mix, but I found that using destilled water for the developer is neccessary for microfilms no matter which developer you use. And the fixer can make problems. I sometimes had masses of white spots with most films and after trying a lot there was no other explanation left that the fixer had to be blamed. Now I use a more than 30 years old Agefix (no joke!) and have the cleanest negs ever. When the bottle is empty I will buy only premium branded fixer and nothing else. And again, use destilled water for the fixer! I had 2 different but cheap fixers causing many problems.

Rinsing I do with tap water, the final one again with destilled water that got a dash of dish soap. Put the film completely in this bath, then hang to dry and pour the bath with the dish soap over the film on both sides. No wiping.

happy new year

Happy new year 2014 everybody.

Medium format quality with slow technical (micro) 35mm films and Caffenol-C as a great and cheap developer compared to the dedicated and expensive soups? Yes, why not? The results are first class using a proven recipe and adjusted dev times. Using really fine resolving zoom lenses at bright sunshine make it possible to get great results even handheld, of course fast prime lenses are first choice for every subject.

There are also films from fresh production as Rollei ATO, Rollei Ortho 25, Rollei ATP, Agfa Copex Rapid, and of course the new Kentmere/RPX 25. The latter are not technical films and will probably need some more minutes dev time.

Another sample from the excellent Kodak Technical Pan, developed 12 minutes at 20 °C in Caffenol-C-L with 0.1 g/l pot. bromide, regular agitation, means first 60 seconds continuously, thereafter 3x every minute. Excellent tonal range even at heavy backlight.

Love and peace - Reinhold

click for a bigger size

Announcement

Hello Coffeeholics!

Since the disastrous change at flickr many of my friends left the site and moved elsewhere, and so did I. You can see us here now:

ipernity

The new Caffenol group and my own account are shown in the linklist.

Don't look back - Reinhold

Agfa Copex Rapid 35 mm film, Caffenol-C-L

more microfilms - Copex Rapid

Microfilms are a little bit delicate to process, because the extremely thin emulsions are very contrasty as they shall be regarding the original purpose. Anyhow, for pictorial use we don't need specialized and very expensive developers as some distributors want to make you believe. Simple Rodinal 1:100 or 1:200 already gives nice results. And Caffenol-C used in an adapted manner produces state-of-the-art results.

Here we talk about the Copex Rapid from Agfa Belgium. I got it in an older package as the so called "gigabitfilm", and yes, the naming imho was a serious aberration of taste and the film was sold together with an expensive and very doubious developer. That initially brought the whole category of microfilms into discredit.But enough wining about people who only want to empty your pockets. This blog is ad-free and will stay so as long as the host will allow it. Caffenol strikes again!

Caffenol-C-L is a weak or compensating developer ideal for extended stand development or for a low contrast development in some minutes. Here I used Caffenol-C-L with no restrainer (no KBr or salt) for 13 minutes/20°C, regular agitation (30 sec initially, 3x every min) and the film was exposed at EI 50. The strong backlight is a challenge for any film/developer combo and of course you need a proper exposure.I metered the foreground, added 3 stops (for the zonies: it was set to zone 2) and still have a good tonal resolution in the sky. The Copex Rapid is told to handle a contrast range of 14 stops, try that with your full format DSLR ;-) Grain is virtually not existent or not resolvable with my humble Canoscan 8800F. The density range of this negative is D = 0.2 - 1.8, so it should be printable perfectly on silver paper.

The very thin emulsions of microfilms only need a very short fixing time, maybe less than 10 seconds, in normal strenght fixer, so you should dilute your fixer much more to get at least a fixing time of 1 minute to not overfix the negs. Make a clearing test!

Best regards - Reinhold

Kodak BW400CN

Recently I shot my first roll of Kodak BW400CN, a chromogenic b/w film. A first experiance in C41 color developer slightly pushed turned out very good at EI 1600, and I wanted to try Caffenol. I'm not a big fan of color film developed in b/w developer, but this BW400CN developed in Caffenol-C-L is as good as developed in color developer. No doubt. This film is ideal for high speed purposes and hybrid workflow. You can push this film a lot and still don't get to much contrast, for the sample image attached here I even had to enhance the contrast in pp. Grain is still very small, almost unvisible with my Canoscan 8800F. The look is very different from other films, probably ideal for taming highest contrasts. The orange mask is very transparent and the base fog very low.

So here's a sample, no masterpiece for sure, but showing the character of the film under very low light conditions at EI 1600, simple average metering with my trusty Canon A1. Developed in Caffenol-C-L semi stand with 0.5 g/l pot bromide, 20 °C, 70 minutes, fixed in regular bw fixer, increased contrast (s-curve) in Gimp.

Best - Reinhold

The Caffenol Cookbook and Bible

.... is a project surely worth not only an entry in the link list but also an extra posting. And no, the book is not sold for money to make us rich, it's available for everyone online and totally free by Community Spirit Publications. Made by nine well known Caffenol cooks under the project leadership of the fabulous large format photographer Bo Sibbern-Larsen. I'm very proud to be part of this project. See a bunch of fine Caffenol developed pictures and get lots of infos about this marvellous developer. There are still some minor imperfections of the web design, but really enjoyable to look and read. So here I proudly present:

http://www.caffenol-cookbook.com/

Thank you very much for your enthusiasm and patience, Bo.

Caffenol-C-F and Cardinal

After a few more results with Caffenol-C-F I have to state that compared with my other Caffenol receipes this is a weak developer giving thinner negatives. It has less Vit-C and the sulfite is also slowing down the development. So for boxspeed you might need about 20 minutes development time, Also less sulfite may be good for better film speed, maybe 30 or 40 g/l. You can play with the amount of sulfite without any other change, but you probably have to adjust the dev time. We see exactly the same behaviour as with regular fine grain developers, smaller grain -> less speed. But together with Rodinal/Parodinal we get a developer on steroids, still producing acceptable fine grain. And still we need more experiances with Caffenol-C-F and the Cardinal developer.

And no, there won't be a pope developer. The original latin "cardinalis" has nothing to do with katholizism, nor do I.

TMax 400 @ 800, Cardinal developer 12 minutes, 20 °C, regular agitation. The Tmax 400 was difficult in Caffenol-C, a lot of fog and rather large grain. Now we have reasonable fine grain, no fog and speeds up to 3200.

Best - Reinhold

New recipes

Hi guys, something new after a long time. I had lots of fun with Caffenol-C developers in the past and wanted to try something new for me.

Caffenol-C and it's many variants are not real fine grain developers, although Caffenol-C-L is better than most others in this regard. Many commercial fine grain developers use sodium sulfite as a silver solvent agent, making grain smaller in high concentrations. One of the most famous for sure is D-76, containing 100 g/l sulfite in the stock solution. Lower amounts are used as a preservative. For another purpose it is used in waterbeds, it's sold here sometimes as "bubble ex". And that's how I got it from a waterbed supplier, 400 g for 4,60 Euro, shipping included. Not a big venture ;-)

Another thing was adding Rodinal to a Caffenol-C, using a third developing agent for synergistic work and hopefully better film speed. It already worked, but grain was pretty big. Could sulfite be the solution? And could homebrewed Parodinal from Paracetamol painkiller pills substitute the Rodinal? Will we get the desired film speed? Will we get reasonable fine grain? The target is at least EI 1600 from an ISO 400 film, more is better, and grain should be much smaller than with a Delta 3200 for example. That's a great film, speed and shadow details are splendid in many developers, but very expensive and grain is pretty huge for 35 mm film.

So here's the new Caffenol-C-F recipe, F means fine grain:

washing soda waterfree 17 g/l

Vit-C 4 g/l

sodium sulfite aka "bubble ex" 50 g/l

instant coffee 40 g/l

pot. bromide 1 g/l

Together with Rodinal 20 ml/l = 1:50 it worked perfect, so I brewed Parodinal according to Donald Qualls recipe:

http://silent1.home.netcom.com/Photography/Dilutions%20and%20Times.html#Parodinal

250 ml water

30 tablets @ 500 mg Acetaminophen (Paracetamol, Tylenol)

sodium sulfite, anhydrous, 50 g

sodium hydroxide 20 g

Again the sulfite was the "bubble ex" and the hydroxide was "drain free" or "Rohrfrei" in german. If there should be small aluminium chips in there, remove them with a plier.

Use protective gloves and glasses. Never pour water over the hydroxide, give small amounts of hydroxide into the water at the time. Cool the mug in cool water while diluting the hydroxide. Be careful! Stay away if any doubts!!!

I let stand the fresh Parodinal for 3 days, then I use it. See how it worked.

The Cardinal developer - Caffenol-C-F with Parodinal 20 ml/l 

This is a completely homebrewed developer.

The first one is HP5+ as 35 mm film at EI 3200 in Caffenol-C-F with Parodinal 20 ml/l developer, I call it the Cardinal developer.

So the grain is razor sharp and small, scanned with a high resolving Minolta Scan Dual II. Some brightening was necessary in postprocessing, but nothing too dramatic.

Now I tried the TMax 400, 35 mm film, in Cardinal developer. The film was a delicate candidate in Caffenol so far, lots of fog and quite ugly grain at high speed. So again the TMax400 was exposed at EI 3200, developed 15 minutes @ 22 °C in Cardinal, agitation first minute constantly, then 3x every 2 minutes.

Shot in bright sunlight with a Minolta Dynax (Maxxum) 700si with battery grip shutter speed of 1/4000 and a stopped down tele lens, the neg is really contrasty and reminds of a transparency. How I love the look! The 35 mm film was scanned with the reliable Canoscan 8800F, needing some unsharp masking in postprocessing but with better tones and I love the result. The Tmax400 shows almost no fog, very, very small grain for EI 3200 and - of course - a bit compressed tones. For better shadow detail and easier silver prints you should restrict the exposure to EI 1600 and are rewarded with splendid tones, very fine grain and exquisite sharpness at EI 1600 - I'm glowing! Let's hope that Kodak will survive.

Finally I have to give credits - huge credits:

- Dr. Scott A. Williams and his 1995 technical photography class at the R.I.T. - the Caffenol pioneers!

- Donald Qualls and his omnipresence in the universe of homebrewed developers

- Steve Anchell for his great "darkroom cookbook"

- all the guys at "The new Caffenol home" group at flickr for their constant help, encouragement and inspiration

- and the many mostly unnamed friends in the www like Rob, Mike "the englishman in France", Larry, Henrique, Dirk, another Dirk, Gerald, Jon, Khoa, Adrian, Volker, Micha, Berthold ..... just to name a very few by their first names, they will know.......

Thank you very much!

Best - Reinhold

Fixer 2 - errare humanum est

Hi folks,

I stated before that salt will not fix photographic film, but I was wrong. Yes, I tested it and it didn't work, but under special circumstances you can use kitchen salt as a fixer. So how to?

You must use a highly concentrated solution of table salt of about 300 g/l. That's a lot! That's really a lot!!! Maximum solubility is 359 g/l, so the suggested solution is almost saturated and the diluting process takes some time and/or a lot of stirring. Furthermore the fixing takes a lot of time, after about 24 hours the exposed at room light but undeveloped little piece of APX100 was clear. Since fixing time is said to have to be doubble of the clearing time, expect a total fixing time of 2 days! Rising the temperature to 30 or 40 °C will shorten the time to a couple of hours, but I don't want to "cook" my bw-films.

The perfect clear snippet of the film then was developed and no blackening at all occured, indicating that no silver halide was hold back in the emulsion. I developed with Caffenol-C-M and the film snippet got a remarkable brown tint. I noticed before that some films have a stronger brown tint if they are developed with salt as a restrainer, of course with much less salt. But of course usually the negs are first developed and then fixed, so I expect no problems.

I tried regular non-iodized table salt and iodized table salt, both work about the same. Both contain a small amount of anti-caking agent: E 535 aka hexacyanoferrat(II). Since the amount is very small - max. 20 mg/kg - I don't think it has an influence. But never say never again, hahaha.

So it's good to know that there is an alternative to thiosulphate based fixers. Be it if you live abroad or can't get regular fixer for what reason ever or simply because you like it, it's good to know. I will continue fixing with the regular one because it only takes a few minutes, but NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN. 

All these insights I owe Sir Henrique the "Cronocrator" and his fine blog: http://caffenolcolor.blogspot.de/ and the corresponding discussion in "the new Caffenol home" group at flickr. Thank you very much, guys.

Some questions are left, f.e. we have no explanation why it works and how other films behave, especially films like TMax or Delta. So before using this method you should make own trials with the film and salt you use before you ruin important negs. It's simple. Cut a small piece from the leader of 35 mm film, put it in a solution of 300 g/l salt, wait and see. Should be done in a simple glass mug.

Now after so much salt I urgently need a COFFEE!!!

Best - Reinhold

Fixer

There's absolutely no way to invent an environmental safe fixer. No way at all! Problem are the unused and removed silver salts from the emulsion, they come from the film and they are toxic for micro organisms. If you don't remove these salts, you do not fix! The commonly used thiosulphates (hypo) alone are of very, very low toxicity, the silver ions are the problem.

Kitchen salt doesn't work at all as a fixer, beleave me, I tested it. And I don't know of any reliable source that can confirm kitchen salt works as a fixer with modern films. And even if it should work (again, it doesn't!) still you would have to dispose the used fixer environmentally safe!!!

So use your regular fixer without bad consious. A "bio"-fix does NOT  and can NOT exist. Proper disposal and re-using the toxic and expensive silver is the only way that makes sense, for us AND the environment.

I'm really getting tired answering this question: salt does NOT work as a fixer. No matter how often it is claimed. This is a myth coming from the 19th century!!!

Important update, see next post: Fixer 2. I don't delete this post, it's part of my own Caffenol history.

My new photo blog

No recent posts, what's happening with the Caffenol blog?

Most secrets about coffee based bw film development are no secrets any more. Also the flickr Caffenol group is rather quiet now, people are very successful all over the world with Caffenol and they create awesome pictures. My recipes have become a kind of worldwide standard, if anyone wants a standard at all. In the very first line I did this all for myself and got the most reliable developer I can think of.. Always fresh, never again think about shelf live, non-toxic and environmental safe, pleeeeasing results, what more can you ask for?

You could add all the well known agents from conventional developers like sulphites to get a real fine grain developer or experiment with other additives. But that's not my cup of "tea" anymore. 

So, this blog will stay alive as long as Google will let it live. Every once in a while I will come back here and maybe post something or not.

I started a new blog and anyone is invited to have look. I will post pictures from the past and recent ones. Digitally captured or film based. BW, monochrome or colour, frugal images hopefully:

Imagesfrugales

Best wishes for everybody - Reinhold

Here's a pic on long expired Efke KB 25, exposure index 40, developed in Caffenol-C-L with 0.5 g/l KBr, 45 minutes semi-stand at 20 °C. Very dense highlights, should have been developed at less time. Digitally split toned with Gimp.

Time for a huge english style breakfirst and a delicious cup of coffee - italian style of course.

Efke 25 - Caffenol-C-L

I was waiting for a large format contri, but it didn't arrive. So here we go with another story. The Efke R 25 was exposed with EI 50. Caffenol-C-L with 6 g/l iodized salt, agitation 1st minute continuously, let stand for 60 minutes. No prewash. Lot of uneven development, this one is the best and shows the potential. Maybe prewash and some more agitation will help, also some pot bromide. Almost no grain, beautiful tones, 6x6 neg here. The Efke is a rude film, curls like hell and attracts dust like a vacuum cleaner, the film base is like an optical fiber. I hate PET film base. As the wet emulsion is very scratch sensitiv I didn't wipe the film before drying. Result: littered with small white drying marks and dust, dust, dust...

Tones are nice, but what a pain in the a.. the darkroom and scanning handling is.

happy new year

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

Reinhold

HP5+, Caffenol-C-L