Developed my first roll!

[Kier]

Last night I finally got around to developing my first roll of film after months of slowly collecting equipment and planning (I wanted to make sure I knew what to do before I jumped in!)

Well I actually got some photos out of it! They're grainy but I'm still happy, as I'm sure once I sort out the temperatures and experiment with agitation they'll get better... I've just picked the 3 that I think turned out best;

Film was Tri-X, developer was Tetenal Ultrafin Liquid at 1+10 for 9 minutes :

They're low-res scans, as the price for scanning here is frankly silly!

I've been having trouble getting the liquids to a steady temperature which I'm still trying to figure out... I was thinking about a fishtank heater in a bowl of water, with the graduates in the water to warm them up? I tried one I had around, but it was a powerful 200w one and just made the water way too hot :bang:

I've got some Rollei Retro 100 to shoot and develop now, but I think I'll try to fix the temperature issue first 😱

 

[Borghesia]

Good first try !
Don't bother with fishtank heating etc... B&W temp is around room temperature.
you need that temp ontrol with C41 development.
Try D76 with Tri-x, that's the perfect combo, you will loose most of the grain with it.

 

[Landshark]

A constant temperature will give you predictable results from session to session. Large grain can be caused by high temps or particular film/developer combinations.
Among others

 

[MartinP]

Well done ! The 21C temperature can be maintained in a washing-up bowl of water (also at 21C) and that should be fine for most room temperature processing in the UK - the few minutes needed for the developer won't see much change in the temperature of the gallon of water in the bowl. Keep the containers of stop and fixer in the bowl too and everything is nicely the same temperature, and repeatable.

You can make also contact prints without an enlarger too. Some Googling, some thought and a bit of standardisation will see you through that 🙂

 

[River Dog]

Hello from just up the road. Well done and welcome to your next adventure.

I don't like Tri-X grain too much but then I haven't tried it in D76 for many years. I prefer to push Neopan Acros to 200 at least.

The fish tank thing doesn't work and you don't need it for b/w, especially now the weather is turning in the west country.

I don't use a heater for C41 at 30 degrees either. Only a washing-up bowl as a warm water bath. Just change one variable at a time and you'll find the workflow for the results you like.

As for scanning, the Epson V500 works pretty well for me, and doesn't cost that much. Check out my Flickr film set for examples.

 

[Kier]

Thanks everyone 🙂

My biggest concern was getting a steady temperature so that I can have that variable steady while I figured out agitation technique.

I have a bunch of Rollei Retro 100 to experiment with now (10 rolls for ~£18 was just too good to miss), so comparing the results of those should be a good learning experience! Does anybody have any experience with this film in Ultrafin Liquid? This is the only developer I have...

A quick question - I have a stainless steel tank/reel, would this cause the liquids to drop in temperature at all while in the tank?

A scanner is definitely on my to-get list, the V500 looks pretty good!