Developing a roll of B+W film (hopefully)

In high school, my friend had a darkroom. It's fun to see how much I remember from helping her 20 years ago.

I used to standardize on dektol & D76, had every color safe light available, and had my own darkroom at the parent's house.

Leslie Deana

I haven't used a film camera in years. The last one I used was my Dad's old Minolta. I used bulk rolled film in school, did my own tank developing, and my own manual printing and developing. I really liked it.

Thank you, I found this fascinating. I hope to see a follow up where you can show us how you develop onto the photo paper :)

This takes me back to when I actually did this on a weekly basis in high school. I developed film and printed the negatives for the school paper/yearbook. When I got to college we used a negative scanner to "develop" the film. I was bummed because printing out the negatives was really fun.

My jr high school had a photography lab. But due to perpetual funding cutbacks, they turned literally everything they could into classrooms. A few "classrooms" were wide sections of hallway blocked off with boxes. So our classroom had this weird rotating door to enter the darkroom, complete with the threat of punishment if the teacher saw you using it. (Why did they goto the effort of designing extras like photo labs into schools they know will be overcrowded before it's built? Laws said they couldn't design a school for more students than the district had, in a growing district, so the school designed 3 years ago is overcrowded on opening.)

Stephen Gillie

Really enjoyed this.

Clayton Grey

Have you heard of the R3 or R5 Monobath? It's a reusable chemical that you can develop B&W film using only that, and you pour it back to its bottle. It's quite magical. There was also a silly technology by Polaroid back in the day called PolaPan and PolaChrome, where you would buy a pack containing a film canister and a development canister. After shooting the roll, you would stick both canisters inside a development machine (that you would also buy), and it would do its magic for you. I bought it a few years ago and it was quite impressive. Maybe these technologies could be worth a follow-up video :)

Asaf Sagi

I worked at a 1-hour photo lab inside a retailer for a number of years (2005-2011). The device you're using, we always called a "film pick". Either way, I always had a better success rate if I counter-rotated the film until it resists after pushing number 2 in. We had the exact same device, and it brought back some memories for me. They do wear out after a while. I'd say probably after a thousand uses or so they would barely work and would need to be replaced. There definitely is a 'feel' for those damn things!

Quinton Wilson

Thank you. When I took film because it was all there was I used transparency film - Kodachrome when I could afford it. And that always came development-paid. Since I’ve got back into film, I’ve been doing black-and-white and developing it exactly the same way as you - same developer and stand development. Only thing I’ve found is sometimes a “halo” effect round bright light. But otherwise, I agree, it’s the best way.

Thank you for this video. Way back in the early 1980s, 20 years before the turn of the century, I had a summer internship at a chemical research company. I worked the summer in the spectrophotometry group. The smell of acetic acid still brings back memories of that. That was the last throes of using photographic plates for spectroscopy. B & W plates developed in the dark, by touch. Other things the technicians had to do by touch, in the dark: loading the plates into the cartridges; cut the plates with a glasscutter so we could replace the part of the plate that was not very sensitive to a band of frequencies (yellow light, I believe) with a section of a plate that was quite a bit more sensitive. The bag and modern developer chemicals seem way more convenient than the time critical process we used way back then.

Dean Lovett

Thanks for uploading, takes my memory back to childhood! My father used to have a darkroom, we didn't have the changing bag. When he moved a couple of years ago, I took the developer tanks to Switzerland, gave them to my best friend (he has more room, might be able to create a darkroom), so maybe we'll develop some films ourselves. Although, having them developed and scanned in professionally is also not a bad idea, as scanning B/W rolls is pretty difficult without digital ICE... And of course, in my childhood, we tried to save on everything, didn't use the rinse stuff, so all of our old negatives are full of chalk staines... And my father had exactly the same story about the stop bath, but I think we used citric acid instead of acetic acid, smells a bit nicer ;-). And the fixer, I remembered as nasty smelling and a bit sticky stuff, you wouldn't like to get that onto your fingers... I'm looking forward to your video on printing, since that's actually the fun stuff when doing it yourself. I did it a couple of times when I was still at University. It's also the perfect way to get much nicer prints than any photography shop can deliver, because you have total control of it :-D,

MrHammond

So this was B roll of a B&W roll? Punderful!

Stephen Gillie

The only thing I miss about film photography is that with film I didn't have to worry about contamination on the film or sensor. The switch to digital has been all positives aside from the nuisance of dirty CMOS.

Alan B.

Well, greetings! It's like any other camera except really, really slow. Oh and there's no color. Oh and if you open it accidentally all your photos are ruined. Oh and it only takes 36 at a time.

Technology Connections

Me being one of the few that has never used a film camera 👁👁

I have been waiting on a video like this since your video on digital ice. Glad we finally got to see you working with film!

I think Shanghai GP3 is the brand name. The camera shop I go to, where I also get film developed, carries it. I haven’t really paid attention to it because I haven’t shot much 120… so far just a roll of foma 100 in my new 3d printed pinhole camera.

Keisi

This looks interesting, but I’m away from home and all I have to watch it on at the moment is an iPad and I really, really prefer to watch on a screen larger than that so it will have to wait until tomorrow—same thing holds true for the latest offering from Techmoan.

Mark Hesse

Oh the luxury of having an electronic tape (re)winder. Growing up poor, we had to make due with hand-wind 35mm cameras.

Stephen Gillie

Loved this video! I would love to see the print-making and color development process videos too, if you decide to do those as well. (And also showing off some of the Quirks and Features(TM) of that Olympus camera you showed briefly in the Canon F-1 video.)

Nick Loh

Neat. Lots of fun.

Robert McCullough

That takes me back to the 80s, I never took useful fotos, just messed around with the process and building cameras with LEGO ;-)

Carsten Lechte

Yes, absolutely! It's just going to need waaaay more setup to pull off.

Technology Connections

Great topic, great video, thanks for showing all the details! Will you make another video of the making of paper photos from the developed film as well?

Jonas

Honestly I never used stop even with D76 back in the day. I just rinsed really well and went to fixer. I picked up the habit when I was shooting for a newspaper, where speed to result was more important than perfect development, but over the years I felt that even when I had enough time, stop wasn't worth the hassle.

Sean Harding

Most really expensive SLRs didn't have electric winding either until about 10 years before the cascade event that killed Kodak.

Mike Bird

Thank you for the behind-the-scenes look at photo film processing. I never knew what all was involved. Never knew that a changing bag was a thing (except for diapers).

Don Eitner

Oh man, tech connections and film photochemicals, that's a combo I didn't realize I needed today!

Dylan Packard

The only good thing from Lucky Film back in the days for Chinese pro photographers is that it brought down the price of Kodak, Agfa, and Fujifilm.

Zhenbang Xiao

I spent many years in a darkroom. Love the smell of the chemicals and the process of developing film and enlarging printe

James Jepsen

No worries. I am reflecting on 9/11 as are many other Americans today. Yes. We shouldn't forget, but a distraction would be welcome..

I used to use film cameras… but the cheap ones with no electric rewinding 😅

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