trouble shooting

Some people report of problems with coffee based developers and I get some inquieries every once in a while, but not very frequently. You can get very reliable and reproducible results with Caffenol developers if you know what you are doing.

First of all the basic darkroom techniques are exactly the same as with any other developer. If you are a newbie to film development, look for instructions you find a lot of in the web or very often in public libraries. It doesn't matter if the book is 50 years old. If you can develop a film with proper results in Rodinal f.e., you also can with Caffenol. And vice versa :-)

What are the special items to notice for a proper Caffenol development? It's the kind of "agents" you use and the kind of measuring.

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Different coffee brands aren't so different as some people might think. Even expensive coffees work, I got reports f.e. for Nescafe Gold, but why wasting money? There may be very few exeptions, but if any other step of your procedure is OK you will get something and may eventually have adjust the amount of coffee slightly. By the cheapest "strong" or "classic" instant coffee available. Don't use deacidified coffees that are frequently branded "mild" and don't use decaffeinated coffee at all. Use pure instant coffee, no mixes with surrogates etc.

Vitamin-C (ascorbic acid) doesn't make any problems if you get pure one. Crushed pills or something like that may be another thing, try to get pure ascorbic acid. Here in Germany we are lucky to get it in any pharmacy at a very low price.

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Soda definately can make probs if you don't know exactly(!) which kind of soda you have in hands. Please read this post first: http://caffenol.blogspot.com/2010/03/soda-myth-and-truth_07.html

I asked in some discussion groups for veryfied data concerning the quality of soda they use. I didn't get too much feedback and I must believe that many users don't know what they have. But that's important to know, and demanding to know for developers containing a low amount of soda like Caffenol-C-L.

So dry your washing soda in the oven and meter the weight before and after. The loss of weight is the water that was in the soda before drying. All my recipes and most others are based upon anhydrous, waterfree soda. When you know the water content, it's easy to recalculate the amount of soda.

Verified data i have got for different brands of soda:

"Holsten reine calzinierte Soda" (and most other brands in Germany) is anhydrous/waterfree, containing neglectible 2 % of water. So far I didn't hear from a hydrated soda sold in Germany.

"Arm & Hammer washing soda" (US) is also anhydrous/waterfree with 2 % of water.

Update: Jeff reports that his recently bought A&H soda contains about 9 % water, so better check yourself if using low pH mixes like Caffenol-C-L

Senzora Soda (Netherlands, Ukraine) 20 % water. Monohydrate as stated by the manufacturers lab.


"Soude cristeaux" (France, Belgium) contains 50 % water. You need the doubled amont measured in gramms! It seems to be neither a monohydrate nor a decahydrate but something in between.


These are only examples showing that it's important that you determine the water content if not absolutely 100 % sure. There are different kinds of hydrated soda with different water content. Store the soda in an airtight box, otherwise it will attract water from the air. BTW, anhydrous, waterfree soda is a very fine white powder.

If you can't get washing soda (sodium carbonate, Na2CO3) you can use baking soda (NaHCO3, also known as Natron) but you must heat it in the oven or a pan and not only water but also CO2 gas will evaporate in quite large quantities. No warrenty for your safety if you inhale a lot of CO2 gas!!! You will end up with waterfree washing soda. How long it takes? No clue. Heat above 120 °C until it doesn't loose any more weight as you do when drying a hydrated washing soda.

You can use hydrated washing soda once you know how much water it contains. You can't use baking without transforming to washing soda, it will fail.

Don't use any other washing additives like bleech.

Dilute always in given order, first the soda, then Vit-C (let bubbles clear), coffee at last, let stand for some minutes and stir gently.

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Last and winning hands down as a source for trouble is measuring. I highly recommend using a scale/balance. Digital kitchen scales are fine for measuring 100 gramms or so, but may have a big deviation at low weights like f.e. 10 gramms. My digital kitchen scale is unusable below 50 gramms but precise above 100 gramms. I bought a cheap lab scale for about 12 Eur with a resolution of 0.01 gramms. If you have no scale precise enough you may use premixes with larger quantities that are easier to measure. Ezzie explains how to do this on his fine, fine blog:  

http://on-your-kitchen-worktop.blogspot.com/2010/11/does-caffenol-expire-or-can-it-be.html 

Thanks a lot Ezzie for your invaluable support. And maybe you find the idea of premixed dilutions to be very charming.

If you stick to volumetric measuring it's important to determine the density of the agents you have in hands Scientific density data are absolutely useless. Believe me. You must do it yourself. That's why recipes based on volume are so unreliable. They are only suitable for the agents you use. Different brands of coffee, Vit-C and Soda can vary extremely regarding the volume, but not the weight. 1 gramm is 1 gramm. Always. But also pay attention to the water content of your washing soda. Once you determined the densities for your agents you may use your now individually calibrated teaspoons.

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So as an extract : Know which kind of soda you use. Use a scale/balance. Or at least calibrate your teaspoons for each agent. A scale is better ;-)


Happy developings - Reinhold

lab gear

 

All I need for my "R+D". The lttle scale is the most important tool, it did coast me about 12 Eur and has a resolution of 0.01 gramms. All mugs have ml-calibration.

sidestep: direct positive paper

Hello,

I received a message from Anton, who developed the Harman direct positive paper in Caffenol. Read the french report here: http://www.galerie-photo.com/positif-direct-papier.html

translate.google is very funny, but you will understand the sense.

Best - Reinhold

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