Confusion

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

"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

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

 

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

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 

More Tmax400 - Caffenol-C-L

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

 

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

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

"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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 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

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

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