some pictures - Caffenol-C-H

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

Happy New Year 2011

 

May your butts always stay warm - Reinhold

large format photography - Caffenol-C-L

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

Caffenol-C-L stand development

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

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)

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.

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, 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