Film Development
Film Development
It is worth taking care processing the film, since, unlike the highstreet labs would have us believe, the images the film contains may be more valuable than its initial cost.
General points.
The temperature of the Developer bath is the only real worry. You can save your self a lot of time if you make up the developer concentrate with warm water. This can then be kept in a water bath to maintain its heat... or used straight away. I never bother to warm the developing tank, but if *you* find you cannot maintain your colour balances you will have to.
Combine constant temperature with good regular agitation an eye on the time and you'll be fine.
As mentioned before, once out of the developer the other baths are much more forgiving to errors, and therefore are good candidates for a bit of time saving.
As with B+W a wetting agent can prevent drying marks, which are a real pain when printing the negative.
Equipment and Chemicals.
The name of the colour process chemistry is c41. I mean, you could use 2 parts water one part fairy dust if you want, but c41 will get the job done just as well.
The equipment needed is the same as for B+W, a spiral and developing tank. See that section for more details, and pictures.
Chemicals: I recommend a two bath process, why waste time trying to keep 5 bottles at the correct temperature? Life is just too short. The c41 chemistry I use is called Photocolour, and is suitable for films or prints.
Processing!.
First off you are going to need to load the film. This must be done in a completely dark place. If you don't have a darkroom, then you could buy or make a dark bag, or something. See the sections on, darkroom, and loading film.
Other than this, follow the instructions given with the actual chemicals, I could explain my process in detail to you, but lets face it, its almost exactly the same as the process for B+W, see here.
Ideas.
Get a digi thermometer, alcohol ones are *slow*
Instead of doing the process on newspaper in the living room, why not do it at the sink? I'm sure your spouse would agree with this idea, even more so it they were aware just how difficult BleachFix *is* to get off the carpet.
Listen to the radio, or Tv, when you are used to the process, unless you are brain-dead, it *will* become tiresome eventually.
Get yourself a large beeping digi-clock... That Dev time is important.
Or, why not combine all three and make a Processing Tape, record a few of your favourite tunes, and then record you saying the instructions (to yourself) at each time interval. ie. At 6 mins -5 sec say "Pour out developer, pour in stop! Agitate!" etc. A tape such as this goes a long way to standardising your process too.
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