Third attempt

The second try at this was really grainy, and the negatives were very dense, which would indicate that I’d really overexposed the film.

For this third attempt I halved the  development time, using the same recipe. The negatives were still dense but much better developed.

Ingredients

• 1 x 500mg clove supplement tablet
• 27g Sodium Carbonate (Soda Ash)
• 10g Vitamin C powder
• 500ml tap water

Method

As per attempt 2. This time I developed for 12 minutes.

• In a 500ml jug, dissolve the clove tablet in 200ml water at 48°C. Stir for 20 seconds and leave to stand.
• In a second, 1 litre jug, add the Sodium carbonate to 300ml water at room temperature, stir until the mixture is nearly clear.
• Add the Vitamin C powder to the Sodium Carbonate solution, and stir until the mixture is nearly clear. The solution will fizz a little but nothing alarming.
• Carefully pour the clove solution into the Sodium Carbonate. Try to avoid transferring the sediment.
• Leave the solution to stand.

Development

From attempt 2 onwards I’m now using Fomapan 200 as a standard film as it’s cheap. I developed this ISO200 film in the ars imago lab box. 30 seconds initial agitation, then 10 seconds every minute for 12 minutes. Development temperature 28°C

Stop Bath

I agitated in 500ml tap water for 1 minute.

Fixing

Fixing was using Ilford Rapid fixer diluted 1:4 with tap water. Agitated for 30 seconds then 10 seconds per minute for 3 minutes. This is the first time I’ve used this so not 100% sure this is the right approach. Once I have the developer working I want to look at alternative fixers and ways of reclaiming the silver from the fixing solution to make disposal simpler. That will be a later project.

Results

Very happy with these. Still quite a lot of grain but a big improvement.