Posts tagged diy

Butterflies & Hurricanes…well, not really.

Kodak Elitechrome 100 (Film Soup) on Nikon F80

Yes, the film soup monster is back! My current project is to try different films with the same standard recipe, exposed in the same camera and document the color shifts. 

If you compare this to my previous post using the Tungsten 64, you’ll notice that the Elitechrome gives strong, blinding color shifts compared to the more subtle, pastel palette of the Tungsten. I quite like the effects of a film souped B&W, you can’t really see the “soup stains” per se, but it gives the image a certain vintage like quality, just like this set by eleanorrigby236 and yours truly. So, which is your cup of tea? 

Back to the photos, these were taken during our last photowalk at the KL Butterfly Park and double exposed randomly later. Nothing much to write about here, but FYI, the second pic, was that of eleanorrigby236!

-delusiana

Develop your own color film!

Lomo Xpro Chrome 100 on Diana Mini

Fuji CN 200 (Müller Foto) on Superheadz Ultra Wide Slim

Kodak Elitechrome 100 on Superheadz Ultra Wide Slim

Tired of spending so much dough on color processing at the lab? Like the pictures you see above? Well, today Max Zulauf of http://maxattacks.tumblr.com has a special treat for you guys: DIY Processing of C-41 Films!

Here’s what you’ll need:

• a film-developer tank (a lot of people trust on Jobo Tanks, I got an AP because they are cheaper)
• scissors
• a trash bag 
• the film you will want to process
• measuring tools
• a funnel
• Tetanal C41 Rapid Kit (they come in liquid and powder form, for 1 or 5 litres of working solution. I guess the liquid is easier to work with but I don’t know since I’ve never used the powder)
• chemistry bottles (I have plastic ones but I‘d rather go for 500ml glass bottles because they are heavier)
• thermometer
• an aquarium heater
• a timer (I use my cell, every cell has a timer)
• a water tank where you can fit the three bottles and the development tank

Introduction:
Ok, first of all, you need to know that C41 is a normed process, this means that all films whatever ASA they are, take the same amount of time to develop. This helps if you want to process 2 films at one go and they have different speeds. There are different ways to process C41, the standard is on 38°C, but this is too hot for me and pretty fast, there is the 45°C express process and the 30°C slower process. I will show you the last method, because the temperature is easier to control and isn’t too fast.

Secondly, the chemicals will weaken pretty fast, this means the more film processed in this solution, the longer it’ll take to process subsequent films. But don‘t worry, each Tetenal pack has a manual in it with a nice chart and processing times.

Thirdly, try to avoid useless air contact with your chemicals. They will oxidize and turn bad faster if you leave bottles open and so on. You can slow the process down if you get yourself a Tetenal Protectan Spray, it adds a film of gas (heavier than air, lighter than water) on top of your chemicals without affecting its processing ability.

Mixing The Chemicals & Getting The Right Temperature:

Mix your chemicals. I use 500ml working solution, this means I can keep the 1 liter kit for twice as long. Mix them according to the manual in the package and pour each part (CD for Color Developer, BX for Bleach/Fix and Stab for Stabiliser) into one bottle, close it and label it accordingly. Put them into the water tank. Also put the thermometer and aquarium heater into it and fill the tank with warm water.

It is crucial that you keep control over the water‘s temperature, because there is basically no tolerance in temperature for the process.This will now have to wait a little while, until it all is on 30°C. After a few go’s you’ll know how warm it has to be and you’ll be able to get almost the exact temperature needed. You can speed up this process by adding hot or cold water. On my part, I like to naturally heat up the water using a heater.

Load Film In The Developing Tank:

Take the scissors, film and tank, put them into the trash bag and the trash bag under your blanket. I only use the trash bag because I can trust that it’s dust-free. You do not need it but better be safe than sorry. As you know in this process, no light should get to the film. I won‘t explain the rest, since there are tons of tutorials on this out there. After you’ve loaded the film, put the tank into the waterbath as well.
(Alternatively you can just use a darkroom bag :) )

We’ll skip the part where you wait to get the right temperature. This can vary between minutes and an hour, depending on the initial water temperature.

Make sure that you have the manual with you so can be certain of the exact times need for each step.

Start developing!

First off, pour the CD into your tank. The time starts when you start pouring it.

Close the tank and put the funnel in the bottle. Put the tank back into the waterbath and just move it around there gently. You can rotate it a bit as well. Do this the entire time. This will first help you use all the chemicals, not only the parts next to your film, but it will also help the water in the tank to flow around and keep the same temperature. Because your heater is of no use if you only heat up the still water around the heater and the rest cools off. 

About 10 Seconds before the time runs out, pour the CD back into its bottle and store it for later use.
Then pour in the BX and just do the same thing like before. When you put the BX back into it‘s bottle, you‘ll need warm, running water.
Rinse the film for about 6 minutes. I normally proceed this way.

Fill the tank, invert it 10 times, pour out the water and repeat.
I normally do this 12 times, since it takes about 30 seconds each. After this it is already STAB time! No! No daggers, no knives. Sorry for that lame pun!

Put the tank on a steady surface and pour in the STAB. Just leave it like this for about a minute.
Since STAB foams so much, I never move it because it’ll exaggerate the foaming. After a minute pour in the STAB and rinse the film again.
Now it’s safe to open & check the tank.

Hold Your Breath & Open The Tank!

I normally add a few drops of wetting agent, but this is up to you. The booklet in the Tetanal kit says nothing about a final rinse and most people will just hang the film to dry with the STAB foam still on it.

Now open up the reel, take off the film and hang to dry with a clothes peg. I normally hang two more at the bottom end to straighten the film.

Wash your tank & other equipments throughly as you do not want any calcium residues (due to hard water) on them, this can affect your results the next time round. If you want, you can blow-dry your negatives or just leave them there for about 2 hours. 

You can then cut the negs, put them in sleeves and press them for a few hours (for best results) but you can also just go ahead and scan them.

-maxattacks

Edit: DON’T FORGET TO SAY THANKS TO MAX! You can say hi to him by visiting his tumblr http://maxattacks.tumblr.com or visit his flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/bbbbjs.

Testing the Epson V700

Shanghai GP3 BW 100 on Lubitel 166B

(Black tea + Vit C, 15 mins, 3 agitations every 30s, Epson V700 BW Negative mode in 16 bit color)

When eleanorrigby236 was scheduled to leave for Europe, I realized that I’ll lose access to her scanner, and that means spending more on scanning at my local lab! So she asked me if I wanted to buy hers at a discounted price since it’s practically mint and I said OK! Heh.

Anyway, I’ve developed this quite some time ago in Tea & Vitamin C. This roll was my best Tea-C result so far, the negative was clear with light tannin stains and images sharp & crisp. Since I used the Shanghai, you still get the typical grainy texture although they aren’t as pronounced as the ones developed in the normal B&W developer, probably owing to the almost continuous agitation scheme for a whole 15 minutes!

Now, I experimented with 3 scanning modes, namely Color Negative in 16 bit grayscale, B&W Negative in 16 bit Grayscale and B&W Negative in 16 bit Color; and I found that the 3rd option yields the best result - B&W with light tea tones. The scratches were probably due to my rough handling while “squeegee-ing” the wet film with my hands.

Nice huh?

-delusiana

Are you bored of the film soup yet?

Lucky BW SHD 100 on Olympus XA2

I decided to crop this photo into a square because I thought the standard panoramic format didn’t do this photo justice. It was really easy getting the pigeons in my backyard to pose for me: I just had to bait them with Sora’s leftover biscuits. Hahah.

So here’s Sora getting really annoyed with me and staring intently at them birds.

Self-dev: Ilford Ilfosol 3 (1+9, 7 minutes)

Recipe:

1/2 cup Persil detergent
I tbsp Clorox
25ml potassium permanganate
25ml apple cider vinegar.

Mix everything in boiling water and dunk the film into the soup and leave it overnight.
Dry the film in a darkroom with a hairdryer & start shooting!

-delusiana

Sunday Tea & Vitamin C

Fuji Neopan Acros 100 on Gevaert Gevabox (Flipped Lens)

At CGSF, we weren’t just busy preparing some tasty soup for colorful film adventures, we’re also brewing some Tea in Vitamin C to develop our black & whites in! Thanks to Paul Gadd of The Print Room KL who’d kindly allowed us to use his space & darkroom to demonstrate how to make your own film soup & develop your BWs in tea, we’ve finally managed to achieve this feat which has been eluding us since we first featured this technique courtesy of the lovely Firda Beka of Many Cameras.com!

Yes, I know the results aren’t that great, the photos look almost like a badly xeroxed version but this set was from one of my experimental phase. I’ve yet to discover the exact developing times & agitation scheme for the Neopan Acros 100 & Kodak TMAX but I’ll be sure to post here once I get that figured out.

So, the first set was taken with my vintage Gevaert Gevabox with flipped lens, which explains the crazy flared out effect & lack of focus.

The recipe: (to make 1000ml of stock solution)

5 bags of black tea (I used Lipton) in 600ml freshly boiled water
10 tsp of washing soda
5g of crushed Vitamin C

- Let the tea steep for 30 mins and squeeze every drop out, you should get about 500ml of tea
- Dissolve the washing soda & vitamin C in about 400ml of water and add the two solution together and mix them well,
- The solution should stay usable for about 24 hours

- First minute continuous agitation, then 3 agitations every minute for 30 minutes
- Stop bath, fix & rinse normally.

Kodak T-MAX 400 on Gevaert Gevabox (Flipped Lens)

For this set I used the same recipe but with 8 bags instead of 5 (6 bags of japanese green tea & 2 bags of black tea) to avoid the excessive fogging & staining by the black tea which could hamper your scanning (and printing if you plan to do it  traditionally with an enlarger!)

I also cut down the developing time to 15 minutes, with continuous agitation during the first minute and 3 agitations every 30 seconds (that’s an almost continuous agitation scheme!). I found that the negatives are much less foggy but I guess it could still be fine tuned. 

This recipe works really well with the cheapo Shanghai GP3 100 though, and I’ll be posting  the results from that set in my next post so stay tuned for that.

Oh, and say hi to my lovely Gevaert Gevabox!

-delusiana

A colorful sillhouette

Tungsten 64 Film Soup on Nikon F80D, Nikkor 50mm f1.8

I was really inspired by eleanorrigby236’s double exposure post so I thought, hey why don’t I try that technique in color? And film soup it while you’re at it? 

So what I did was I ran a roll of my Tungsten 64 film soup in the Nikon and shot whatever textured objects I could find in the house in Macro (I didn’t adjust the ISO, I just left it at 64 as per the DX coding) and since it was quite dark, I used the built in flash.

Then I re-shot the same roll again, this time with the help of my buddy ekinibicanabiss, and shot her against the sun. Like what eleanorrigby236 mentioned in her post, you’ll need to shoot your subject against a glaring white background or the textured object will bleed out of your subject’s sillhouette.

But as you know, I’m all for crazy colors and textures so as you can see in the set below, bleeding makes your shots all the more interesting, especially when you’ve souped the film before hand!

Here’s the recipe for you to try out:

500ml of freshly boiled water
1 sachet of silica gel (about a tbsp)
25ml potassium permanganate
1 capful of laundry detergent
1/2 capful of non bleaching fabric whitener (I used Vanish)
25ml Apple Cider Vinegar

So you basically mix all the ingredients in the water, stir it well and dunk your film in it and leave it overnight. You then dry the film thoroughly before popping it in your camera. As you might already know, slide films work best, especially when cross processed.

So enjoy, and have fun!

-delusiana

The film soup returns!

Agfa CT Precisa (expired 2002) on Pentax ME, Zenitar 16mm f2.8 Ultra Wide Angle Fisheye

Can I be lazy tonight and just post the pictures without any blurbs? Heheh. You can click here for more info on how to make your own film soup roll. 

OK, I’m gonna make things simple for those who are as lazy as me and couldn’t be bothered to read the long long write-ups so this will be in point form and succinct.

• Film soup recipe: 1 cup detergent + boiling water + 1 tsp silica gel + 1 expired roll of Agfa CT Precisa
• Location: An abandoned house in Bangsar
• Film accidentally exposed whilst drying with a hairdryer in the darkroom bag
• There were tons of mosquitos

A few shots came out totally incomprehensible with blobs of colors like this:

-delusiana

The Rubikon DIY Pinhole Camera

These images were shot by Czech designer Jaroslav Juřica using his own creation, a paper pinhole camera called the Rubikon. The camera itself has gone through 2 design updates with the first design released in 2005 and the latest version called the Rubikon Pinhole Rebel released in 2010. The Rebel is more user friendly and easier to build compared to its predecessor. You can download the full manual and camera template on Jaraslov’s website here. The manual has everything from explanations on how the camera works, to how to glue your camera together. The Pinhole Rebel takes 35mm film, both color and B&W based on what you like. It also comes equipped with a useful exposure table to help you time your exposures. 

So, what are you waiting for?? Go build yourself a camera already!!

The original paper camera obscura from 2005

The new and improved Pinhole Rebel that you too can own free of charge! Download the manual and template here!

Film Soup: Silica Gel Experiment

Boots Slide 200 on LOMO LC-A+

We love it when we see our readers try the experiments we feature on this blog, and fall head over heels when we see results like the pictures Nic sent us!! Here is Nic’s take on the Film Soup recipes we have featured.

Nic Walker says,

I love your blog was inspired to follow the instructions you blogged about. 1 cup silica gel, 1 cup boiled water and a tablespoon full of detergent.

I shot the roll I soaked, a Boots Slide 200 roll on an LCA+ and I was super happy with the results. I’ve submitted four of my faves!

Do head over to Nic’s Flickr to check out more pictures from this set. Don’t forget to send us your shots too!!

Film Soup : Tea + Detergent Ver.

Expired Fuji Tungsten film on Diana Mini

I’m sure you all remember this wonderful tutorial shared by Film Soup Guru, Kristian J, of AnalogueOnly.com . Here is my first set using my very own film soup recipe. I chose to dunk a roll of expired Tungsten film because I prefer the colors on a fresh roll of T-64 any day.  My roll here was left to sit in my film soup for 2 days and thoroughly dried in a darkroom bag. My attempt to sun dry it did not work, even after leaving it under direct sunlight for 3 full days. I ripped the roll in camera as I was advancing it, and knew that my roll was still wet, thus it went into my darkroom bag for proper drying.

From this first try, it definitely looks like results are much better when you expose each frame multiple times to get more contrast on your film. As the saturation of the liquid is uneven you get varying results throughout your roll which adds a lot of fun to the whole process of waiting for your prints.

Film Soup Recipe

• 300ml hot water
• 1 cap detergent  <—yes cap, not cup!!
• 1 tablespoon vanilla tea leaves

*film roll left in film soup for exactly 48 hours, dried, exposed, and cross-processed.

I have another roll, but this time of a fresh color negative film, soaked in salt water to share. That is yet another discovery!!

-eleanorrigby236

My B&W Tea recipe!!

Shanghai GP3 B&W Negative on Vredreborch Felica
(self developed, scanned in color negative mode)

I initially tried the exact recipe by Firda here on my roll of Kodak Tri-X 400 but I think I accidentally exposed the whole roll while transferring the film to the reel. That or I didn’t cook my baking soda long enough to convert it into washing soda. Another theory is that maybe I didn’t fix and agitate my film long enough. Anyway it came out severely overexposed.

So I tried again with the cheapo Shanghai B&W film mixed in a mixture of Lady Grey, Earl Grey & Green Tea (3:4:1), Vitamin C & cooked Baking Soda and let it develop at 35 minutes semi-standing with only 2 agitations during the 35 mins. 

This time I can see images on the film but my roll turned out brownish with a greenish sheen with some red spots all over. Since I didn’t have a scanner, I brought the roll to my local lab and I think he scanned the roll in color negative mode instead of B&W resulting in my funny looking scans! I like it though! 

Of course, I could always desaturate the scans to get it in B&W but I prefer to leave it this way since it looks way crazier! Afterall, CGSF is all about experimental film techniques :)

Anyway, here’s a desaturated scan of photo number 3. I realized that my 35 mins with only 2 agitations has caused the film to be underexposed, and 2 hours made it overexposed. So maybe 1 hour semi-standing with 3 agitations would do the trick?

I’m definitely trying this recipe again, maybe vary the developing time, amount of agitation or even using other types of tea to see the outcome. Fun isn’t it?

So have you developed your own B&Ws in tea? Do share with us! 

-delusiana

Develop your B&Ws in Tea!

Fuji Neopan Acros 100 on Great Wall DF

Agfa APX 100

We’re honored to feature Firda Beka of Many Cameras on CGSF and she had also kindly agreed to share her tea developer concoction, which she termed 4-Tea-C. 

Now, I’ve always loved B&Ws developed in caffenol but tea?? I’m intrigued! Let’s hear what Firda has to say,

== 4-Tea-C Developer Recipe ==

Ingredients (to make 500ml):

• 2 tea bags of each orange pekoe tea, pure green tea, pure peppermint tea, and pomegranate green tea (8 tea bags in total)
• 2 teaspoons of washing soda
• 1000mg vitamin c
• water

Instructions:

1. Put 300ml of water in a saucepan, threw in all the tea bags, bring to boil.
2. Once boiling, turn off the stove and let steep for 30 minutes.
3. Transfer to a measuring cup to see how much tea solution you got. I got 200ml after squeezing every drop from the tea bags.
4. Drop the vitamin c into the tea mixture. In retrospect, dropping it into the washing soda solution would probably be a better idea since mixing it with the tea mixture creates a lot of froth.
5. Mix washing soda with water to create 300ml solution or adjust according to the amount of tea solution you got in order to have a total of 500ml.
6. Mix the tea-c and washing soda solutions together.

I didn’t check the exact temperature but I’m pretty sure it was room temperature, i.e. 20 degrees. I know. Very scientific indeed. As for developing time, I did a 2 hour semi-stand development, only agitated 3 times during the 2 hours. You don’t want to agitate too many times when doing semi-stand development because the film could easily become over-developed.

Isn’t this just great?? I can’t wait to start developing my B&Ws now. Thanks so much Firda!

Firda also has a tumblr photoblog at http://www.manycameras.com (she has over 200 of them!) and definitely check out her Flickr stream for more analogue goodness.

-delusiana

Make your own pinhole camera

Introducing the Lie-ca M3, a fully functional handmade pinhole delight!! For 2 quid, you too can make your own pinhole camera. Check out Matt’s webpage here to purchase a 10-page PDF on all you need to build your very own camera. The PDF comes with a printable template and detailed instructions to guide you all the way. Pretty cool, non?