So yesterday me and my partner tried developing black and white film for the first time! We had agreed to include one roll each of Kentmere 200 in case they got ruined, but it worked out well!
As mentioned in the description, we used the Ilford Simplicity kit of chemicals, which was included with the Ilford and Patterson development kit that includes all the equipment, along with buying a film squeegee.
I unfortunately forgot to write down our timings and dilutions, so I'll just put what I remember here. For the dilutions we used the suggested ratios, for example 1+4 for the developer. The timings were as follows:
- Developer: 5 minutes, 4 agitations in the first 10 seconds of each minute, tap tank on the table at the end.
- Stop bath: 20 seconds, light agitation.
- Fixer: 3 minutes, 4 agitations in the first 10 seconds of each minute.
- Wetting agent: We got a bit mixed up here, so we did wetting agent, then rinsed with water because we forgot, then used wetting agent again.
Before getting into some examples, I'll list some improvements that could easily be made next time we do this:
- Clean up the wetting agent process. We have very hard water, so it's a step we need to get right.
- Squeegee the film a bit more carefully. For some reason neither of us thought to hang up the film and then squeegee it.
- Be more careful loading the film into the reels. My bathroom worked perfectly as a dark room, but we both crunched the film a bit at the ends as we got a bit too confident with rolling the film on. This is more obvious with the other roll of film but I'll be able to show it here somewhat.
Once we improve those, everything else should be easier to pinpoint and improve. Now I'll show some examples of both the developing, and the film itself, as this is my first time shooting Kentmere 200. I'll only be sharing photos from my roll, as it's just easier for me to explain.
This is the last photo I took on the roll, which was hence the last one to be rolled onto the spool. The frame was clearly partly cut into, which you can see on the bottom right. You can also see the right side of the next frame at the left edge, which is a symptom of that and I only just noticed it. There are also some curved lines along the top middle of the frame. I think these lines are either from the folding that happened when the film got crunched up around the end, or from water staining. Either way we can work it out and fix it next time. There are also some white specs that can be seen throughout the frame, which I would assume are dust on the negatives maybe, but again I'm not sure.
These next three photos are just good photos in my opinion. I can't see any particular issues related to development here, other than something I want to talk about later with a specific example. I would like to note that these are all unedited, outside of rotating and compressing them.
This is another photo that I just like, and can't see any obvious development issues with. The only thing I would probably change is underexposing it a bit to get detail on the bulb itself.
Here are some examples that show off a feature of Kentmere films in general that I like a lot. They have clear backing, and hence can have a lot of light halation. This is mostly shown here around the headlights of the train, and the lights on the platform ceiling.
This is where I want to speculate about our development times specifically. I know I just said that Kentmere films usually have a lot of halation, but this seems like a lot. I do like it, but it feels like it's worth investigating. Obviously there is the possibility that I overexposed the frame, but I don't remember to be honest. I think it could also be possible that we pushed the film unintentionally by developing it for a bit longer than 5 minutes. I don't really know if that could cause this, but it's an interesting thought.
I'll end off the examples with two more photos that I just like.
So that's our first attempt at developing film. Considering I had convinced myself that we'd just ruin both rolls, I'm very happy with the results. In the future we will be doing more, and will probably be using D-96 I think.
-- Lolei <3