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

available light - HP5+ @ 1600

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.

HP5+ @ 1600 and Tmax3200

 

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 

Caffenol-C-L + high speed film

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

3200

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

Caffenol-C-H "highspeed"

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

Juliette

...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