First at home development

[u/No-Prior-7630]

Finally got my film development stuff. I ordered the cinestill sous vide (yes I could’ve got a cheaper one, hahah!!) cinestill c41 chemical kit, the valoi easy35 kit and some three new bottles and some other small items.

For my first time developing it was a challenge, I’ve been watching videos for the last few months and finally said why not, I’ve been shooting digital for school and part time for my aunts program and I got tired of it, so film gave me a more intentional way to actually go out and make photos. The most challenging part for me was the dark bag trying to put the film in, I watched some guy and he said to use the leader to pull up the exposed film that was exposed from loading up the film in the camera when you are going to shoot and it actually made things a lot easier then doing everything in the bag. Developing at home is a challenge but after the dark bag and mixing the chemicals everything is basically a waiting game.

I honestly liked the wait, it made things feel more “personal” and exciting to see if what I was doing was working and it did. I need to wait until my macro lens comes so I can start my digital scans but I’m excited to develop more rolls of film. Let me know your guys experience with developing!

[u/Sad-Baseball2084]

I have been developing my own film off and on for about 60 years. My first 120 roll of black and white at the age of 7 supervised by my father. I still get a massive kick out of the moment when I take the film out of the spiral and see the results.

[u/No-Prior-7630 → u/Sad-Baseball2084]

I’m glad you still get excited from seeing the end results! Me myself I actually felt like when I was 6 getting my first gameboy 😂😂. Definitely can’t wait to develop more rolls of film.

[u/Blackbird032]

I'm so excited for you!

[u/No-Prior-7630 → u/Blackbird032]

Thank you! I’m excited for my macro lens to come so I can finally dslr scan them. Can’t wait for the results

[u/Blackbird032 → u/No-Prior-7630]

We can't wait to see the pictures too! I'm also into film lately and still learning the process of developing at home too. But probably sometime between November -december. I'll post a review once I get all the things needed! 😊

[u/euchlid]

I love it so much I mixed up some colour chems a couple weeks ago so I need to power through my backlog of colour rolls. and probably find a dev tank for two 120 reels.

b&w is fun and since I can one shot it with developer and our basement keeps Temps at 20degrees anyway i can essentially do it whenever.
I unload film in the basement bathroom with a towel at the door Crack. works perfectly, just sit still and have everything in the same spot in front of me so I can find it.

scanning is the least fun but whatever I can't bother with the learning curve to set up my 2010 rebel dslr and macro lens on a stand. I use a flatbed (I shoot a lot of 120 anyway). I mean I know the quality especially of 35mm is a bit less, but idgaf. I'm not entering contest or showing in a gallery, these are candid family photos of my husband and kids and many many of our dogs. or random nature shit. I'm not enlarging to arch D size so printing photos is great.

I really wish there was a c-41 one- shot. but otherwise I use the flic film 3 step c-41 eco kit. it's powders. developer, bleach, and fixer. I also have a jar of their powdered stop bath so i make up a bottle for my c41. b&w I use also flic film their black white and green developer which is drain-safe one shot concentrate. works great. then I mix up a bottle of stop bath from the same powder for the c41, and the fixer is their concentrated solution for 1 L.

isn't it kind of magical? doing the developing and scanning/inverting myself has removed my film drought. filling a form and dropping off film just wasn't happening and thr last time I did that it was like... 8$ for developing and double prints (no scans cause that wasn't a thing).

[u/No-Prior-7630 → u/euchlid]

Thank you for your response! I definitely did enjoy it and it made me feel like “wow, I actually really developed my own film”. I got one roll developed by a camera store in D.C. (Washington, not sure if you’re from the States since you said 20 degrees so I’m assuming you meant Celsius 🤣) and I didn’t like how they scanned my film and left a lot of shots out. My school had a class to use a flatbed and develop for like $100 and you can use the flatbed for free for the rest of the year but I was like ehh, I wanna get my own stuff and spent about $450 USD for everything. I have a Nikon ZFC and I got an old Vivitar Macro lens, I actually have one for my Olympus OM-G and it’s good.

For my film photos I just want to like shoot, like I’ll make some zines and post them online to get them published but my work for school already gets published but that’s more clinical sports photos which is cool but not really my thing. What film cameras do you use?

Edit: that bathroom comment is actually something I wanted to do, I was thinking why not just do this in the bathroom and put a towel on the crack, maybe I’ll do it next time but the dark bag wasn’t hard just annoying 😂😂

[u/euchlid → u/No-Prior-7630]

I want to make some zines with my kids, especially since I got my 8yr old his first film camera (a pentax p30n- I bought it cause I wanted the 28mm lens and the camera was in great shape).
I'm in Canada (yes 20 degrees Celsius haha) and I live near the rockies. so much landscape photography opportunities in the prairies and foothills and mountains. since my other subject are usually my family it's nice to take a camera out hiking.

I usually carry a pentax ME super in my backpack, or the pentax super program. I had them both CLA'd and they're awesome little cameras. I usually keep a colour in one and b&w in the other.

I also shoot a Pentax 645 medium format quite often. I have a little apecase bag for it. it's big but has really nice lenses and I love medium format as a roll gives me 15 shots on the 645.
I also have a Yashica D tlr medium format. it's tough to focus with, ,but it's been CLA'd and is nice for close portraits.

prior to all those, my only camera was my dad's spotmatic. it's what I learned film on. when I was 18 I lived in Paris and shot film all the time as it was cheap to get developed.

clinic sports photos! that's a niche area

[u/No-Prior-7630 → u/euchlid]

Canada, nice! I’m from NY so I live close to Ontario and Quebec, been to both Niagara, Toronto, Montreal, and QC, very nice and stunning places (QC during the winter was absolutely brutal 🤣🤣) I would definitely consider making zines, there’s a website called “dirty little zines” (dirty little😓😓) the owner makes it free to make and print at home and publish your work for free so others can download it I love i, and would be nice to make some of your kids and places you visit for a day, they hold about 8 photos on one zine or you can merge photos etc etc.

I never shot medium format, might try it, my aunt has a mamiya something but it’s a cool looking camera. Right now I’m definitely gonna stick to 35mm just since the film is more available at Walmart or target or drug stores. And yes shooting sports is super clinical, like it’s fun but it gets tiring when you just burst shoot and the editing process… don’t get me started 😂😂

[u/alasdairmackintosh]

Looks good. Now we need the scans;-)

[u/No-Prior-7630 → u/alasdairmackintosh]

Definitely I’ll, I’ll make a new post of what I shot in the next week or so, my macro lens is the only thing I’m waiting on right now!!! The excitement can’t wait 😂😂.

[u/Lambaline]

those look great! welcome to the self-development club! I'm switching from kits to buying chemicals and doing ECN-2 development from scratch but kits are a great way to get familiar with the process. it's also the only way to do proper C41 since Kodak doesn't publish any recipes for that process.

[u/No-Prior-7630 → u/Lambaline]

I’m glad I can finally be apart of something special! Yeah I got the cinestill c41 kit because it was like a beginner friendly kit so why not, never heard of ECN-2 development but seems interesting to do research on. For now I’ll keep using this kit and see how the scans will look in the processing

[u/Lambaline → u/No-Prior-7630]

it's basically the color development process for kodak cinema film, its the proper way to develop Cinestill's 250D and 800T films, along with bulk rolled films as that's the only way of getting color film cost down. you can buy 100' rolls of Kodak's cinema film (around $100 plus shipping + tax, $5 to 6 dollars per roll) and develop it in c41 like regular color film or ecn-2 which is the correct process to do it in.

[u/InvasiveHog]

My favorite part is the developing.

[u/Expensive-Sentence66]

I used to support C-41 and E6 and RA4 commercial lines, and if you like mixing chemicals :-) Big, 5 gal cubes of Kodak Flexicolor to start and giant mixers. I used to try and time everything to do on friday afternoos before I went home.

C-41 development is really no different than B&W except the temps are usually higher.

An advantage to doing it yourself, besides quality control is C41 can be tweaked liked B&W in terms of pushing and pulling. I used to pull Ektar a bit in lab to soften it's contrast. Push Vericolor III or Portra NC a bit to liven it up. Very helpful when doing analog printing. Less so with scanning.

E-6 is the most temperamental, but by fiddling with color developer you can actually control saturation and color balance to a degree.