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
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
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:
- Put 300ml of water in a saucepan, threw in all the tea bags, bring to boil.
- Once boiling, turn off the stove and let steep for 30 minutes.
- Transfer to a measuring cup to see how much tea solution you got. I got 200ml after squeezing every drop from the tea bags.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
