Processing at home?

[firestorm_bsf]

I was just curious on how easy/hard it is to process my own film. Also what chemicals and supplies I would need.

Thanks

[Greg Crawford]

That depends on the type of film you were hoping to process. Forget about Kodachrome.With black and White neg you have Developer, stop bath and fixer plus a wash. Temperature is not that critical + / - 2 degrees.

Color E-6 not that hard, more expensive more chemicals. ( Four or five steps, it's been a white since I developed still film.) closer temperature tolerance.

C-41 color neg not that bad, again more steps tighter temperature control than Black and White. May have an extra bath to remove the black backing that still film does not have. Start by shooting and developing Black And White negative film, then move on.

You might want to try still film first to learn the basics. You will probably need to find special movie reel and developing take outfit, or make your own. With a daylight take you load the film in total darkness then you can do the remainder of the job in daylight. Very helpful when you need to watch the clock.

If you do some kind of dip and dunk, you will need to stay in total darkness for the whole time, and you will be exposing your self to the fumes of the various chemicals.

Keep in mind that prolonged exposure to the chemical fumes is not a good think and color developing chemistry is even more toxic.

Best to read a few books now and learn all you can.

[dharmabum1949]

Depending on what your desired result is there are several ways to go about doing your own processing. For the experimental work that ive done I was home processing not for economy but for a desire to manipulate the developing process.

I wanted a dirty textural quality to my footage. Something akin to a dirty old film from the 50's thats been run over a few times. Instead of buying a processing tank for 8mm film (which you prob cost you 30-50 bucks) i crammed my plus-x or trix b+w reversal film into a steel 2 reel 35mm tank without the reels. I then used a T-max direct positive processing kit. Depending on what i wanted from the footage i was processing would change the temperature of my water washes, add items into the tank before processing, expose the film 2/3's of the way into the first developer in order to solarize them, overdevelop, skip the bleach and second developer etc.

Ralph Dickinson has a site taht elaborates on this kind of processing

http://online.sfsu.edu/~ralph/process_site/explain.html

B+W reversal chemicals can also be mixed for added economy there are various recipes, one can be found in the "Process your Own" section of Mike Brantleys page. Ive been considering this but havent done it yet

As has been mentioned you can also get slide processing kits (e6 process) in order to develop ektachrome

[MikeBrantley]

Here is a page with some info and some links. (Hope the links mostly still work ... I know my pages are getting rather dusty.)

http://www.super8filmmaking.com/s8proc.htm

[firestorm_bsf]

Awesome, thanks for the info!