Over the Easter weekend Dad and I developed the first film in his brand new darkroom!It was a 120mm film that I had put through my lovely DianaF on a beautiful sunny day walking day the Pheonix Trail in Thame. I hadn't used a film camera in about 10 years so it took a bit of getting used to but that was really only the beginning of this darkroom adventure.
After getting the film out of the camera, the first job was to get it onto the spiral which needs to be done in the pitch black. We had a changing bag to do this in rather than turning off the lights. Not sure if this make it easier or not!
Film all inside the spiral nice and safe - I'll gloss over what a faff getting it in there is!
We went for nice and contrasty!
This is the developer. Some precise measuring is required, but I did it so it was there or there abouts!
It was mixed with a very specific amount of water, but I did it so....well you can guess.
While we waited for this to do it's magic on the film in the spiral we sorted out the next step...
Which is the stop bath. This is mixed up with water and once the developer had it's required time this got chucked into the spiral, shaken about and rinsed out.
This would be the time to add your fixer, but in our excitement we forgot so plunged straight into cleaning the spiral tank out with water and making sure all the chemical goop was off the film
And there they are. Only little tiny negative images, but one of the most magical things!
Unraveling the film to reveal all the images is amazing, there is a little bit of light leakage here, either from the camera or the spiral tank, but that what makes this interesting!
So we ended up with a contact sheet, it's got a few holes where I'd not really got to grips with the camera but the images themselves are lovely, full of analogue crackle and texture. Only small stumbling block is that the enlarger will only do 35mm film. Anyone know someone who can print these for me?! Here are some scans of the individuals pictures from the contact sheet.
Film all inside the spiral nice and safe - I'll gloss over what a faff getting it in there is!
We went for nice and contrasty!
This is the developer. Some precise measuring is required, but I did it so it was there or there abouts!It was mixed with a very specific amount of water, but I did it so....well you can guess.
While we waited for this to do it's magic on the film in the spiral we sorted out the next step...
Which is the stop bath. This is mixed up with water and once the developer had it's required time this got chucked into the spiral, shaken about and rinsed out.
This would be the time to add your fixer, but in our excitement we forgot so plunged straight into cleaning the spiral tank out with water and making sure all the chemical goop was off the film
And there they are. Only little tiny negative images, but one of the most magical things!
Unraveling the film to reveal all the images is amazing, there is a little bit of light leakage here, either from the camera or the spiral tank, but that what makes this interesting!
So we ended up with a contact sheet, it's got a few holes where I'd not really got to grips with the camera but the images themselves are lovely, full of analogue crackle and texture. Only small stumbling block is that the enlarger will only do 35mm film. Anyone know someone who can print these for me?! Here are some scans of the individuals pictures from the contact sheet.
