Sunday, December 7, 2014

Does grain increase with scan?

Since I am doing C-41, and after many experiments, I adopted Dignan's 2-bath developer as the most practical and cheap method to get acceptable negatives. I had to fight 2 main enemies, the surge marks and grain. The surge marks were defeated by adopting the right agitation of the tank. This consists in inclining the tank and turning it very slowly some 5 times per minute during the second bath. The first bath is not important, just stir to ensure that the CD4 soaks the film, a pre-soak in water may help.

Below you may find 3 photos free from surge marks but still with huge grains.






To fight the grain, which is increased by scanning ,  I decided to follow Dignan's original recipe, using Potassium Carbonate in the second bath instead of just Sodium Carbonate and 1g/liter of Potassium Bromide. The Potassium Bromide will affect very much the developing time that must be increased. Because a small difference in Potassium Bromide weight will cause a big difference in developing time, I extend the 2.nd bath to 30 minutes and also because the 2-bath developer cann't overdevelop. The result can be appreciated in the next 3 photos where I used the same 2.nd bath with addition of 1g/liter of Potassium Bromide.




Monday, December 1, 2014

Caffenol Black LF (low fog)

Because Caffenol is a one shot developer, I use minimal amounts of stuff in order to make it cheap enough. I have been changing the coffee brand and the original recipe that uses only coffee and soda may produce more or less fog, depending on film and coffee brand. So, I started using Sodium Chloride (table salt) as anti-foggant. First only 2g/liter and then 4g/liter. Because salt is a restrainer, the developing time had to be increased from 70 to 90 minutes at 20ºC.

The formula, for a 500ml batch is now as follows:

150 ml water
10g Soluble, not decaf. robusta coffee
3 g Sodium Carbonate (or 300ml of a 1% solution)
2 g Sodium Chloride (or 20ml of a 10% solution)
Water to make 500 ml

Develop for 90 minutes at 20ºC

Here some photos I made recently using Agfaphoto APX 100 (may be like Ilford FP4), exposed in a Cosina plastic body with a Vivitar 50mm/1.7 lens. The iris of this lens are broken, it is always full openned and I used speeds from 1/500 to 1/2000s according to light conditions.