The Siren Call

[paachi]

hello everyone..

i finally succumbed to the siren call and got myself and M2 w a light meter, 40mm letiz elmar and 90mm elmar-C..i will be shooting b and w exclusively..

i am now trying to understand the nuts and bolts of how best to go about with the film developing and scanning process..

choice 1 : abc labs in mystic, ct sounds a like a good professional lab which is close to my place. they develop and scan b&w film for $10.95 + $6.95. incl shipping. the costs with this option should work out to about $20 per roll of film.

choice 2: build my own dark room..the requirements i have gleaned so far are :
1. Metal 1 Film tank and reel
2. Changing bag - General Brand
3. Developer : Agfa Rodinal
4. Fixer : Kodak rapid fixer
5. Stop Bath : Water or do I need any specific chemical??
6. Hypo Cleaning Agent : Kodak Hypo Cleaning Agent Powder
7. Measuring Jar
8. Thermometer
9. Clips to dry the film
10. Archival sleeves
11. white cotton gloves

the challenge with choice 2 is that i need to make a substantial investment into a decent scanner (in terms of both time and money)

My questions are :
1. which choice should i pick?? I am a grad school student so time is quite limited, however if the benefits of developing film at my own dark room are substantial, i will do it
2. if i take choice 1, do you folks know of a cheaper/ better mailing developing and scanning service??
3. if i take up choice 2, have i listed all the items i will need?? what is my option for scanning films??
4. my college has a hp 5590 scanner with a film adapter..what is the general experience with this scanner?? you think this will give me good results??

appreciate the tremendous help and impetus this forum has been..

cheers..
prashant.

 

[javimm]

Hi.

I've been developing my own film for about a year and a half now. Getting B&W film into a lab is a no-no for me (as for a lot of people). Labs can make a good job with color, but you'll get better results for B&W on your own with a little practice.

To answer your question, consider how much film you are going to shoot. $20 per roll is quite high; the initial investment can be high, but if you intend to keep shooting film for some time, that $20/roll is going to drain your budget much more than doing it yourself.

Without doing the exact numbers, and without knowing what you want to buy as a scanner, the investment could go from, let's say, $600-$700; that'll include a Epson V700 scanner, the scanner I own (price from an Ebay Buy it Now auction chosen at random), plus all the chemicals, tank, jugs, etc. That gives you about 30-35 rolls. In about 1-2 years you're going to eat it up paying $20 a roll.

So I'll go with choice 2.

For developing I use:
- Jobo plastic Tank, and reels.
- Thermomether, analog, 0.2 º C.
- 1 Measuring jar, of 1 litre.
- 2 jars of water filled with water to rinse and as a stop bath.
- 2 black accordion containers (sorry for my English 🙂 ) : One for developer, I use my developer as a 1 time developer, and one for fixer, that I reuse.
- Clips.
- Achival sleeves.
- 1 syringe: For measruing chemicals.

Chemicals:
- Developer: HC-110. Great all around developer, good results with HP5+, the film that I use, and keeps forever if closed air tight.
- Ilford Rapid Fixer.
- Kodak Wetting agent
- Water as a Stop Bath
- Water bath as described by Ilford for washing my film.

Well, hope that helps ;-)

 

[venchka]

javimm beat me to it. What he said!

Choice #2:

5. Water is fine.
6. Optional or you don't need it at all. Opinions vary.

Scanner: No clue about the HP 5590. I have an ancient HP that only accepts 35mm film. It's ok but not spectacular. I'm saving my money for an Epson V7xx or Microtek M1. I need a scanner for 35mm, 6x7 and 4x5.

Don't rule out getting a complete darkroom for free or very little cash. I have collected 3 so far. Each was missing something. All together I have assembled two complete darkrooms. I also managed to pick up quite a few tanks, reels, etc. I'm using Jobo tanks and Unicolor or Beseler motor bases for my film. They work very nicely. I'm also using Paterson tanks for stand development. My film developers include D-76, Xtol and Rodinal.

Good luck!

 

[Roger Hicks]

Dear Prashant,

Seriously consider a wet darkroom darkroom for printing as well. See:

http://www.rogerandfrances.com/darkroom.html

especially the Nova tent and Nova tanks.

See also:

http://www.rogerandfrances.com/photoschool/ps howdoi.html

for dev tanks, film developing, etc.

Cheers,

R.

 

[jwhitley]

Speaking of Nova processors, can anyone here speak to the practical differences between the Nova FB processors and the Nova Quad processors, especially regarding B&W print processing? The descriptions on Nova's site suggest a fair amount of overlap between the capabilities of these units for B&W work.

I ask as I'm building out my first darkroom and want to plan ahead a bit on the layout. At first, I expect to do single-tray development for economy and simplicity. Also, single-tray works rather well for some alternative process printing that I'm getting into. But I'm definitely eyeing a Nova processor as my needs grow...

 

[funkaoshi]

Choice 3: rent out a darkroom when you need to print. Some Universities will let you use their darkroom. Similarly, a lot of pro labs have darkroom rentals. In Toronto, you can rent space at Imageworks for something like 12/hour. I think the only thing you need to provide is paper, they give you everything else.

 

[shadowfox]

Prashant, developing your own B&W has another side benefit other than control and quality, it's also fun and relaxing.

I wrote about my experiences starting my own development B&W here, it may be of use to your decision making 🙂

 

[venchka]

Choose BOTH!

Choose BOTH!

Once you develop your own film you'll wonder why you trusted the bunnies at the lab! 😛

My only comment would be regarding the choice of Rodinal as a sole developer ... in certain situations it produces way too much grain and it's sweet spot IMO is the slower older emulsions where it's brilliant. I still believe in my heart that the best all round developer out there is XTOL and if I was going to restrict myself to one developer it would be my choice!

I'm with you Keith. Either/or/both. They are quite a good pair.

I guess I should explain a bit more: either developer alone is good in it's own right and for the right film and subject. I couldn't imagine not having one without the other.

Then there are times when mixing the two is very nice also. 😎

 

[Roger Hicks]

The Quad is all we use for B+W. The FB is slanted and lets you admire the print as it comes up, but as you should be developing to completion anyway, this is not going to improve your printng. You can see a Quad 12x16 sunk in the bench (!) next to an 8x10 on its own in 'Nova Tanks' about three-quarters of the way through http://www.rogerandfrances.com/darkroom.html. Apart from lith printing, Novas are pretty much all we use for printing.

Cheers,

Roger

 

[paachi]

Thanks guys for coming up so quickly with the answers..happily enough the solution is to develop the film by myself at home..which considering I am going to be exclusively B&W, doesn't seem all that hard..

The irony is that I am less scared to develop the B&W roll and more cautious of the nuisance of scanning..can anyone allay my fears here?? How much time do you folks spend on an average getting the developed film into the computer and generally what are the tweaks involved to make the scanned film presentable??

Like I said I am also a little skeptic about the cost of a scanner and want to maximize the scanner available in college..wot se??

Best,
Prashant.

 

[chris91387]

i process my own b&w at home and pay my local lab to scan the negs. the charge me the full rate and dont give me a discount for developing it myself. i know it's a waste of money but i'm fairly happy with the results i get and the lab is less than a mile from my work. i just don't have the time or energy to try and get good scans. and besides, i only shoot about a roll or two per month.

but DO NOT CUT YOUR NEGS. if you want to try this with your lab, buy the sleeves in roll form so they can run the whole roll through the scanner. then, when the scanning is done, you can cut them and sleeve them if you want.

- chris

 

[javimm]

Thanks guys for coming up so quickly with the answers..happily enough the solution is to develop the film by myself at home..which considering I am going to be exclusively B&W, doesn't seem all that hard..

The irony is that I am less scared to develop the B&W roll and more cautious of the nuisance of scanning..can anyone allay my fears here?? How much time do you folks spend on an average getting the developed film into the computer and generally what are the tweaks involved to make the scanned film presentable??

Like I said I am also a little skeptic about the cost of a scanner and want to maximize the scanner available in college..wot se??

Best,
Prashant.

Using my V700 scanner, I scan 24 negs with the neg holder, time around 30-40 mins, and the rest on a second batch.
I usually do cropping, autolevels, shadows and luminance (I'm using the spanish version of CS3, so I don't know this is called in english) curves for brightness, and curves for contrast, and that's it. I scan everything at 3200 dpi, tiff. I use Epson's software. I can't use Vuescan, as it hangs my machine. HP5+ in HC-110 tends to give very flat results at first, and this workflow does it for me just fine.
Scanning gets some time to get it right, but it's not hard.

I'd like to get an enlarger, but I can't for now, living in a house with more people.

Anyway, even if I had an enlarger, I'd buy a scanner too, because it's nice to be able to have your negs in digital format too and be able to modify them as a guide or even as a contact sheet generator.