Developing black & white film

Published on 8 April 2020

Step-by-step

This is how I do it (detailed descriptions below):

1. Gather together all the things needed.

2. Load film onto reels.

3. Mix developer.

4. Pour in developer. Agitate slowly for 30 seconds and then for 10 seconds every minute (thus first time at 1 min 30 secs).

5. Discard developer when you’ve reached the stated development time.

6. Pour in stop bath. Agitate continuously for 1 minute. Pour stop bath back into its bottle.

7. Pour in fixer. Agitate for 1 minute and then 10 seconds every minute as with the developer. Fix for five minutes, unless fixer is becoming exhausted (see below). Pour fixer back into its bottle.

8. Fill tank with tap water. Inverse tank 20-30 times. Do this a total of three times.

9. Pour distilled or demineralised water into a jug and swirl each reel around for 10-15 seconds.

10. Spin reel or reels in salad spinner.

11. Use film dryer or hang dry.

Liquids needed

• Developer

  I advise you to begin with Kodak’s HC-110 which is a pretty amazing general purpose developer that works well with films from several brands. It is also very economical even though it is a one-shot developer (i.e. you don’t reuse it) and it keeps for a very long time. I have just recently (2020) finished a bottle which I opened in 2013. It has continued to work to this day without any problems and has lasted me through way over 100 rolls (this is considerably longer than the storage life Kodak mentions in the HC-110 information sheet).

• Stop bath

  I use Ilford Ilfostop which I find is an effective way to cut off development. It is also possible to use plain tap water.

• Fixer

  I like Ilford Rapid Fixer which is reliable and lasts for many rolls before a new batch needs to be mixed.

• Distilled or demineralised water

  This is for the final wash of the film.

Some recommend using a wetting agent, such as Ilford’s Ilfotol or Kodak’s Photo Flo, to reduce marks from the water as it dries. I have stopped using it because I just can’t get it to work. The problem is that so little is needed (I think Ilfotol dilutes 1:200) that it is very difficult to add the right amount. Add too much and the water will foam madly, which invariably leads to ugly drying marks on the film. Add too little and it has no effect.

Tools needed

In addition to the above, I use the following tools:

• Changing tent

  Instead of buying a changing bag, I bought the Photoflex changing tent seen above because I don’t want to have the bag lying over my arms and hands as I work inside. There are several brands of changing tents (including the very expensive Harrison tent) but Photoflex appears to be one of the better-priced ones. It is extremely convenient and easy to stow away, too. And it is also useful when bulk loading film. I highly recommend the Photoflex changing tent.

• Scissors

  Pretty much any kind will do. I often use the scissors on my old Victorinox or ordinary office scissors.

• Bottle opener

  This is used to open the film roll in order to extract the film. There are also special film openers but a bottle opener works just as well.

• Film tank and spirals

  There are two main options here, the plastic Patterson system or stainless steel reels and tanks. From what I have read, the Patterson system works well but the plastic reels need to be dry before being used again. Stainless steel reels, however, can be used again even if a bit wet. Steel tanks are best found on the used market and come in various sizes. I use a 1-litre Kindermann tank which takes five 35mm rolls or three 120 rolls. It is built like a tank (hahaha).

• Measuring jugs and funnel

  Measuring jugs are used to hold the liquids. It is necessary to use a measuring jug for HC-110 since that will need to be mixed at the right dilution for each batch of films. For stop bath and fixer it is not necessary to use jugs since they can be poured directly from the bottles in which their mixed solutions are kept and then poured back using a funnel. A measuring jug (or some other container) is, however, necessary for the final wash with distilled or demineralised water.

• Oral syringe

  This is a really handy thing to have. It is possible to find very small measuring jugs or cups, but given how little HC-110 one needs and how very viscous and thick it is (it really is a syrup), it is tricky to pour all of it out of such a small container. An oral syringe — the kind used to give medicine to small children (can be found on eBay) — is much easier to use as it pushes out all of the measured developer. This is also what Kodak’s information sheet recommends (p. 1).

• Digital thermometer

  Absolutely exactly precisely accurate temperature is not necessary for good results with black and white film. It is sufficient to stay within one degree centigrade of any given “required” temperature. A digital thermometer is much better than an analogue one because it reacts much faster.

• Salad spinner

  Yes actually, a sallad spinner. I use this to spin one or several reels for a few seconds to remove water from the film.

• Towel

  Just like the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy recommends, a towel is eminently useful for many things, including to have handy when developing film. I don’t know how often liquids have ended up where they are not supposed to go.

• Some way to hang the film to dry or a film dryer

  The reason I built my own Film Dryer is that I never could get consistently water-mark-free results if I simply hung the film to dry in the shower. If one hangs film to dry in the shower there are recommendations online that one should run a hot shower before hanging the film to dry; the water vapour is supposed to catch dust particles and make them fall to the floor. That doesn’t deal with water marks though, which is why I prefer my film dryer for spotless results. It works extremely well, doesn’t cost much and is easy to build.

• Massive Development Chart (app or online)

  The MDC is the online bible in terms of developers, dilutions, development times, agitation schedules, temperature conversions etc. Extremely handy. The companion app — Massive Dev Chart Time App – has all the necessary information for a large number of films and many, many developers and also functions as a handy timer to remind you of when to agitate the film tank. You can also add your own development schedules, which is handy if you, like I, tend to forget what you did last time something worked out.

Loading the film onto the reels

First of all, sacrifice a roll and practise loading it onto the reel in daylight. It is really easy, but it helps to do a few dry runs before sticking the hands into the changing tent’s darkness. A bit of a technique is needed to bend the film slightly while rotating the reel to get the film onto the spiral. Practice may also be needed to get the end of the film under the “lip” of the reel’s core.

Start by putting what you need in the changing tent or bag. That would be the film tank and lid, the necessary amount of spirals, scissor, bottle opener and film rolls.

Be careful when you bend open the bottom of the film roll using the bottle opener. The edges of the bottom part are quite sharp and one’s skin can easily get squeezed between the opener and the roll, causing a cut.

Rip off the film from its spool. Use the scissors to cut off the the leader.

Load each film onto a reel, place into the tank and put the lid on. The film tank has two lids; a big lid that covers the whole tank and a small lid which covers the opening into which the chemicals are poured. It is often a lot easier to push the big lid on without the little lid attached as air can then pass through the opening.

Developing

Some notes on how to use HC-110

Mix the required amount of HC-110 depending on your chosen dilution and the number of films you have in the tank (example below).

The development time is shorter the stronger the dilution (and the warmer the temperature), but the results don’t differ much if you use, for instance, dilution B (1:31) or dilution E (1:47). To make the math simpler I have resorted to using a dilution of 1:49 at dilution E development times, which works great.

With respect to HC-110 people usually refer to Michael Covington’s page. As good as it is, it contains considerably more information than the average user needs, but I include it in case you wish to delve deeper into the mysteries and intricacies of this versatile developer. He notes that there are two different concentrates of HC-110, an American one (catalogue number CAT 501 0541) and one “sold in Europe” (catalogue number CAT 500 1466). The latter is weaker than the former, which affects the dilutions and developing times, so it is important to know which one is being used. That being said, CAT 501 0541 is being sold here in Europe, too, and is the one I use.

An example. Say I wish to develop five rolls of 35mm Ilford XP2 Super (yes, a black and white film intended to be developed in C41 colour negative chemicals, but it gives wonderful results in HC-110) in my one-litre tank. Dilution B (1:31) would let me use up to 31,25ml developer (1000ml/32). The Covington page states that one should “use at least 6ml of syrup per 135-36 or 120 roll of film, even if this requires you to put more than the usual amount of liquid in the tank”, so dilution B would appear to be the perfect dilution for my one-litre tank.

However, I prefer to use dilution of 1:49 because it makes my developer last longer, the only downside being a longer development time. A dilution of 1:49 means I could only fit 20ml of developer and 980ml of water in my tank.

I don’t know where the 6ml/roll information comes from as I don’t see it in the Kodak information sheet. But since I evidently can’t make my tank larger in order to comply with the 6ml/roll ‘requirement’ I have tried with 5ml/roll and that works perfectly fine. I don’t know what the lower limit would be in terms of ml/roll so best try out for yourself. Incidentally, the MDC site has a helpful volume mixer to figure these things out.

The MDC site also has a time/temperature converter, to calculate how a stated development time is extended or shortened by changes in temperature. I try to keep the same temperature on my liquids and mix my HC-110 at the temperature of my stop bath and fixer. They are frequently a bit warmer than the MDC’s recommended 20C,

The MDC also includes a page on push processing which can be used to recalculate the development time if the MDC doesn’t contain the ISO (or exposure index, really) at which you have exposed your film.

Agitation

The purpose of agitation is to ensure that the film is always in contact with working developer (the developer exhausts in contact with the film).

Agitation is done by moving the tank slowly left-right left like a seesaw while twisting it slightly. Don’t do it too aggressively as that will increase the contrast in your images (unless you want that, of course). I typically do 3-4 agitations (left-right is one) in each 10-second interval. I don’t inverse the tank fully when agitating.

Stop bath, fixing and washing

Stop bath is simply used to halt development. I reuse my stop bath and usually mix a new batch once every year or so, noting on the bottle the date when it was mixed (I do the same with fixer). The stop bath normally takes one minute.

After this the film must be fixed. Fixer exhausts as more films are put through. As you can see on the image above, I note on the bottle how many films I have used the batch for.

Technically the fixing time needs to be extended as more rolls are put through the fixer. I rarely care about this as I tend to fix for longer than needed anyway. But an important reason to mix new fixer is that over time lots of little particles or sediment/residue will remain in the liquid. They end up on the film as irritating little white specks that are absolute total hell to remove by dust spotting in Photoshop. It is probably best to mix new fixer after 10-12 rolls to prevent this.

A little side note regarding sediment/residue. It can help not only with fixer but also with certain developers that are reused (like Diafine) to filter the liquid. Some suggest using a funnel and cotton balls as filter, other people say a coffee filter can do the trick. It is messy to use cotton balls, and difficult to figure out how much cotton a particular funnel needs to filter effectively. And coffee filters break when they get too wet. The best solution I have found is to buy a metal coffee filters. I have a stainless steel filter from Osaka Coffee which is effective at catching the particles.

Washing seems to be a subject that people feel strongly about. There is the Kodak method and the Ilford method. I prefer Ilford’s because Kodak’s method uses more water than necessary. As stated above, I simply fill my tank with tap water and invert it 20-30 times. Then I repeat this twice.

For the final wash I put enough distilled or demineralised water in a jug to cover the spiral. Usually 2-3 decilitres is enough. I place each film spiral in this, swirl it around a bit and then run the spirals through my salad spinner.

Then I place the reels in my film dryer and wait an hour or so before cutting the negs and placing them in sleeves.