Can You Develop Film in ANYTHING?
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- čas přidán 24. 08. 2024
- Are you flushing the world's greatest black and white film developer down the toilet? This is one of the longest-lasting myths in the film photography world. It's been circulated by even the greatest minds at Kodak! So it was about time someone, somewhere put it to the test. So I teamed up with Dmitri from Analog.Cafe and Yvonne Hanson to put this mythical developer, among other forest finds, to the test. Here's what we found.
Analog Cafe's Cannanol Experiment:
www.analog.caf...
Yvonne Hanson:
/ @yvonnehansonphotography
(Video coming Wednesday!)
Get the Film Developing Cookbook by Bill Troop and Steve Anchell:
amzn.to/3xNTUME
(The inspiration for this video, and the absolute best book on film photography today)
Polyphenol content:
www.35mmc.com/...
The Film Developing Cookbook (the book that inspired this video):
amzn.to/3Uo6bQW
Make your own film developers with stuff you find near home:
Vitamin C Powder (2.5-3g):
amzn.to/3Jr3zLT
Washing Soda (15-18g):
amzn.to/3W5MpuU
Accurate weight scale with calibration weight (up to 200g):
amzn.to/3JkiqYu
Glass beaker (500ml for two rolls of 35mm film)
amzn.to/3xADBTk
50ml graduated cylinder (for measuring commercial developers like BW&G)
amzn.to/3JpmBlM
100ml graduated cylinder (for measuring commercial developers like Ilfotec DD-X or fixer solutions)
amzn.to/3U5IsU8
Best film developer of all time (Ilfotec DD-X):
amzn.to/3Q7ID07
Patterson Developing Tank (2x 35mm rolls, or 1x 120):
amzn.to/3UlMmcN
Salt Film Developer:
www.analog.caf...
Film developers compared:
www.learnfilm....
How to develop film at home:
www.learnfilm....
Had tons of fun working on this with you, Daren! Perfection all around.
Absolutely! This whole project was a blast! Can't wait for the next one
Really fascinating video! Well done. I had no idea you could make a good developer from renewable plant materials. That gives me hope.
It's quite easy, too! Film photography is amazingly flexible.
Well time to learn about film, as someone that knows very little on it, it seemed to me that Coffee was the best and as good as the RBeG product because there was contrast 😅
Contrast isn't the best measure, as it isn't always a good thing - you can always add contrast in post, but you can't take contrast away.
ADOX here in Germany seems to be determined to re-create Tetenal chemistry. They already did so with some famous Kodak chemicals (like X-TOL and D-76), and also has brought up a replacement for Tetenals C-41 development kit. They did well in the past with what they're doing, so I'm quite sure they'll succeed (I actually do buy their chemistry, and find their ADOX CHS 100 II to be a really good b&w film stock).
That's great to hear! It's scary to see the bigger companies stumble with their supply of these vital chemicals. So it's great to know that there are people taking over what they can. In Canada, we have Flic Film who also seems to be creating a lot of their own versions of Kodak chemistry as well. And good ol Ilford will probably stay steady for the time being, though their chems are getting pricey.
@@LearnFilmPhotography Totally forgot Ilford! Not that pricey here in Europe/Germany. I use their film stocks, but don't like their chemistry … ;-) We still have some choice, and it doesn't look as bad to me. At least not with B&W - color is a different beast altogether!
I think just everything is more expensive in Canada. We don't have many importers for the film photography business, so prices are getting out of control.
My entire practice revolves around plant based developers :) so cool to see more and more people trying out different formulas. If you're going to make developer from plants using water as your solvent, you need to boil the water and crush up the plants as much as possible to help break down the cell walls.
Do you boil the plants as well? Or crush them in water after the boil is done? Also, are there other solvents you recommend?
@@LearnFilmPhotography I crush the plants and boil them in the water. I stick to water and alcohol because other solvents can be really nasty
How long do you boil for? Or do you have a resource that you can share? Definitely interested in learning more - I'd actually love to start refining the cedar wood developer since it showed promise in this basic test.
Is there a way to test for phenol content in a homemade solution? That would certainly make it easier to figure out the concentration and effectiveness of a home brew solution.
That would make it so much easier! I did some searching and I can't find anything that easily tells you the concentration - only solutions that show you phenols are present.
Very cool! I wonder if pulp mill effluent or some polluted water in a milling town like Port Alberni might yield a better developer than regular ditch water
What is in that effluent? If there's salt, I don't think it will work, but if they use a lot of phenols during processing it could be great!
Now just for pure fun, would eating something high in phenols lead to a more effective urine developer?
That is the question of the day! I don't think so. I think the salts reduce the overall amount of development, since it was worse than just having the Vitamin C.
@@LearnFilmPhotography Great point! Considering salt water has potential as a fixer, this makes sense to me.
Ok, Developer CHECK
What about the fixer?
Or the Film!
Can we make film from local materials?
Fixer can be made with table salt. And the film is something I'm working on. There will be future videos about different solutions for that problem!
Maybe it’s time to ask NikeRed how we can extract phenol from something.
This went over my head. Can you elaborate on this one?
Is it bad if I wanna know if your diet would change the results?
It might! But based on those results, and the fact that salt water didn't work at all, I doubt it would change enough to make it a good developer.
finally a productive use for nonpotable bean water??
Hahah! Probably! Beans are fairly high in polyphenals.
Well urine makes a great fertilizer for plants, so there is that.
Apparently thiosulfate isn't too bad for them either. Have to check this one, and I definitely wouldn't eat anything you fertilize with it. But it could all be part of the cycle.
It's adorable that you guessed that film might outlast oil. My brother in Kodak, the film is plastic, what do you think that is made of?
Oh, trust me, I know it won't. That's just a hypothetical. This whole project is part of a series about how to keep shooting analog when film photography dies. So this is the first part of that series.
Make corn based film which will just be hell to keep flat.
There's a French brand that uses washi paper
5:08 I guess, technically, you were looking for negative results, you know, because developing negatives... Ba Dum Tss
There's also PaRodinal, which can be made with Paracetamol, Sodium Sulphite and Caustic Soda. Apparently it works as good as original Rodinal.
That's Tylenol, right? I'm going to have to try that! I wonder if there's a way to get that in powdered form.
@@LearnFilmPhotography Yeah that should work too, I haven't bothered yet as I can get Rodinal for cheap locally, but it's nice alternative.
EcoPro is a great developer that should not require to source from petrochemicals.
EcoPro is a Kodak Xtol clone, which is a phenidone, Vitamin C formula. Phenidone is still a petrochemical, but in general, needs much less reagents (less than a mg per roll of film) than standard developers. So it is better for sure, but to require that little material to do the same job does mean it's a highly reactive chemical.
@@LearnFilmPhotography there's the XTol formula yes, but then somewhat confusingly LegacyPro uses the EcoPro brand for their ascorbic/pentetic acid based developers which do not contain phenidone - I certainly do have a bottle of EcoPro print developer and bag of film developer which do not list phenidone. The print developer bottle lists "potassium carbonate, sodium sulfite, sodium isoascorbic, triethanolamine" while the powdered film developer lists "sodium sulfite, sodium metaborate, pentetic acid, pentasodium salt" for part A and "sodium sulfite, sodium erythrobate, sodium metabisulfite" for part B.
@@MultipleObjectSelector Oh, right. They really need some help with their branding! Hahah, an amazing company, but super confusing to wade through what they are and what they do. That's super cool, though! I did a bit of wiki background, and pentetic acid isn't even a phenol, which is interesting!
@@LearnFilmPhotography yeah. My understanding is that many reducing agents (something with electrons to spare) will do as the primary active agent in a developer.
Here's an interesting thought that popped into my head: terpenoids such as limonene are abundantly available, pleasant to be around, thin, probably miscible with water using a surfactant. Many of the plant based developers you tried will have contained them in small quantities, but buying distilled and isolated forms is affordable if you want to have some very nice smelling and potentially decent developer. You'll want to include other agents to control oxidation, the cookbook should go into that. Eugenol is another one worth trying.