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

Lucky SHD 100 - Caffenol-C-M

"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

Happy New Year 2011

 

May your butts always stay warm - Reinhold

Polypan F and Caffenol

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

Rollei Universal 200 - the first film to fail in Caffenol

"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

Recipes

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

 

my dream team

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

next summary

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)

FP4+ by Khoa

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

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

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

Micha's first

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

...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

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

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

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

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 neccessary.

UPDATE: You can use volumetric measuring with Caffenol-C-M, but NOT with Cafenol-C-L, that will be introduced later. Using a scale is HIGHLY recommended for every recipe.

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 or 16 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

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