Negative comments

Today I developed my first roll of 120 film (a few of the final negs pictured <--). It was a scary but fun experience, the main problem being that you can't see the finished product until right at the end of the process so I had no idea how well/badly things had gone until then.

Here's a short overview of the complete process:

I first had to load the film into the developing tank, I did this last night, in the cuboard under the stairs, as this needs to be done in complete darkness. There was a little fumbling around but it seemed to go pretty well for my first real attempt. Again this had the same kind of scare factor as the actual developing as I could not tell if all had gone well until I finished the process, there was a slight worry in the back of my head that I might have put the backing paper on the reel rather than the film! When I put the light back on it turned out that at least I had got this far without many problems, all seemed well.

This afternoon I mixed all the chemicals (developer, stop bath, fixer and wetting agent) with some tempered water (@ 20 degrees) and layed out all the equpiment that I would need on the kitchen draining board. I realised that I had no accurate way of measuring the time, which is crucial when it comes to devloping film but was saved by Maria (my girlfriend) when she pointed out that she had a timer on her phone...note to self, buy stopwatch!...

- First comes the developer, poured into the developing tank, agitated for 10 secs every minute - time in tank 8 mins total

- Next the stop bath, agitated a few times during a 30 sec period

- The fixer is poured in after the stopbath to make the film no longer sensitive to light, in tank for 3 mins agitate a few times every minute

- The final stage is the wash, just with plain tempered water. Followed by a brief dip in the wetting agent which helps the film dry without any marks.

- The film was then taken off the reel and left to dry in the shower for about 4-5 hours, cut up and placed into a special poly-pocket for film.

Considering I had only read about the process and have had no 'hands-on' teaching I was very pleased with the outcome as the film came out looking like negatives, the next test will be getting the printed in a small size just for proofing. Espcially when you take into account the inaccuracy of the timing and the measuring of the whole process; the way I did this today probably had some great photographers turning in their graves!

N.B. The pic top-left is a really quick 'proof' that I managed to make by loading up photoshop and opening a new document with a white background, sticking the poly-pocket full of negatives to the screen and then taking a photo of it with my digital camera! This accounts for the poor quality of that pic.