APX new emulsion

Hello coffeeholics,

the distributor Agfaphoto had launched 2 new films after the broke of  Agfa Leverkusen and the deep-frozen stock of  old APX was sold out. The  APX 100 and 400 "new emulsion" have nothing to do anymore with the old Agfa APX, are made by Ilford and are close relatives to the Kentmere films, but must not be 100 % identical. Ilford is producing a lot of OEM stuff nowadays and they all remind at the Kentmere films somehow. Especially the less than optimal halo protection is a common feature though it doesn't disturb under most conditions.

Here is my first impression of the APX 400 new. Maybe it's the same as the Kentmere 400, surely different from the RPX 400, who is the best of them all imo after a somehow inconsistent history. But that's another story, already told here, see the older posts concerning the RPX 400.


Update: all APXn and Kentmere are identical. Also I couldn`t see a difference between RPX 400 and APX/Kentmere 400 anymore, it seems Ilford didn`t want a RPX to be better than a Kentmere. I can't see why I should buy a more expensive RPX 400 anymore.

I never liked the Kentmere 400, quite big grain and very push resistant, and the new APX 400 behaves like his brother. But it has the big advantage to be easily available here at big drugstores like Muller. Because I had agreed a short dated shooting in a small coffee roastery and no time to order new fast film, I decided to give the APX 400 new a chance. First trials with small snippets showed that not more than ISO 400 is makeable and the grain was - let's say - very visible and nice. Furthermore I decided this to be a feature and not a bug and live with the grain. So, if you want a film with nice big and sharp grain, here it is, developed in coffee.

 The films were exposed at EI 400 with a Minolta X-500 and 2.8/28 and 1.4/58 Rokkor lenses. Developed in Caffenol-C-H (rs) with 1 g/l pot. bromide, 13 minutes at 25 °C which is about the same as 20 minutes at 20 °C, agitation first minute continuously, then 3x every 30 seconds. Because the film tends to give a lower contrast, this agitation sceme was used.

Here are some results from the shooting, scanned with a dslr, macro gear and at 20 MP resolution. White point and black point were set and some contrast curve adjustments made. No sharpening at all in pp.

As always, right click on the pics to open in a new tab to see the biggest available size.

The whole set can be seen here at full resolution:
roastery at flickr

Happy developings - Reinhold

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

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

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

 

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