Sunday, April 20, 2014

Black Coffee

In a recent discussion at Flickr involving someone who wanted to give up of caffenol, because it produces fogged negatives and stained, I came to the conclusion that, on the contrary, coffee is an excellent developer and doesn't need lots of stuff to give good results. My minimal recipe, that I call Black Coffee is as follows, for 1 liter developer:

20 g soluble coffee dissolved in about 750 ml water. Add 0,5 g (more or less) of Sodium Hydroxide. Complete with water to make 1000ml.
It is important that you reach a pH of 11,4 to 11,6 and the amount of Sodium Hydroxide will depend on coffee quality and also of the water used.

Develop for at least 60 minutes in stand or semi-stand development at room temperature.

To measure 0,5 g of sodium hydroxide, make a solution of 10% (100g/liter) and measure some mililiters of that. Go on slowly and stiring to reach not more than 11,6 pH.

Give it a try and tell me later about!

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