So I'm feeling better today, I processed 6 rolls of film, and I don't think I ever want to do that again.
To develop color negatives, you have to mix the chemicals at 110 F but have to wait until it is 102 F to use it. That was only part of what annoyed me. Most developers have a short shelf life, so either you can only use it to develop one roll, a few rolls, or you have to use it with in a certain amount of days before it doesn't work anymore. I decided I didn't want to do this again on Sunday or next weekend, so I was going to process all 6 today.
I did so much research about developing at home. I have been reading articles and watching videos for weeks. I felt I was ready. I set everything up, but then noticed I did have any stabilizer. I bought a c-41 kit, so it should have been in there; nope! So then I did another round of research searching for information about how important stabilizer is to c-41 developing and could I continue without it. Stabilizer basically helps to keep the film from deteriorating once it is done and in storage. Supposedly it gives it a 70+ year shelf-life. I plan on scanning the film tomorrow and most of the rolls were test film, so I decided to continue without the stabilizer.
Getting the roll of film on a reel is torture. The first set went well, but the second and third set gave me trouble. Once the reel was wet from the previous batch, it got harder to get the film on the reel. So hard, that at one point it took me more than 40 minutes to get the film on reel. I gave up trying to inch it on the reel and just wrapped the film around the reel, which bit me in the ass later on.
The next part was trying to keep the developer and blix at 102 F, along with making sure I didn't use the same tools I used for developer with the blix. This meant I had boiled water to put in the water bath the bottles were sitting in and constantly rinsing things off. I'm pretty sure my temperature for the first batch was too high. The tap water I used was close to 120 F when I started mixing. I waited for the temp to drop closer to 102 F before using it. I got better at regulating the temperature by the third batch, but I'm sure the water I used to rinse the rolls were too hot, because tiredness and hunger was setting in (it was close to 12AM).
I wont be able to really tell until tomorrow when I cut and scan the film, but out of the 6 rolls, one roll was blank (no idea why), one was half processed (the one I wrapped around in frustration), and the other 4 seem okay. Some more variables are, 3 of the films were actually slide film and not color negatives, so I basically cross-processed them; and I used Lomography cameras on some of the films so the photos might have problems because of light leaks and double exposures. It's all about fun and learning.
Tomorrow is going to be another adventure, because I have not used my scanner in more then 4 years. I hope it works with my computer.
Oh, the photo above is another old one from March 2014 taken at the Japanese Gardens. I thought about cropping the tree out, but I liked that it was a detail in the mid-ground, so I left it in.
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