Black & White Film Developing

Lack of access to a darkroom is not the only reason many people avoid trying their own black and white film developing. The other is the process itself, which to the unitiated often seems complicated and dangerous.

Well, the process itself could hardly be simpler. And with just a modicum of care, it need not be dangerous.

Basically, all you're doing is exposing the film to the developer for a set period of time, at a set temperature; then you expose the film to a "stop bath" which quickly halts any further development; then you run it through fixer; then you wash it. That's pretty much it.

My process:

• Using a changing bag, remove the film from its cassette, load it onto a film reel, and place the loaded reel inside its tank. Usually done while sitting on the couch in the living room. After that, everything is done in room light.
• At the kitchen table, I extract from my "darkroom box" the four 1/2 gallon brown plastic jugs of pre-mixed stop bath, fixer, hypo clear, and photo flo. These get lined up left-to-right in the order in which they are to be used, to minimize the chance of mixing them up.
• I then verify the time and temperature for the film I'm developing, at the iso I shot it at.
• Using a graduate, I prepare a one-shot mix of developer solution. If I'm using a single-roll tank (generally the case), I'll need 250ml of solution; if I'm using a double-roll tank, I'll need 500ml. Xtol is my favorite developer, usually mixed 1:1. So for that I'll take one of the 125ml bottles I store my stock solution in, pour it into the graduate, carefully determine its temperature with a long-stemmed dial-guage thermometer, calculate what the temperature of the corresponding 125ml of water needs to be in order to bring the combined 250ml of solution to 68 or 70 degrees, run the tap water at the sink to get to that exact temperature, and then mix in 125ml of that tap water with the developer. The resulting developer solution should provide me with exactly the amount of soup needed, at exactly the right temperature.
• Using the timer on my runner's watch (Timex Triathalon), I pour the developer into the tank and quickly replace the tank's lid. I rap the tank sharply against the edge of the sink to dislodge any air bubbles; and then agitate for 15-20 seconds. After that I agitate briefly - for around 5 seconds - every 30 seconds until the development time called for is completed. Then the developer is poured down the sink.
• I then pour in stop bath, agitate for 30 seconds, then pour it down the sink.
• Next comes the fixer. Films vary a bit in how much time they require. For Tri-X, by far my most-used B&W film, I'll fix for about 7 minutes. I pour the fixer in, agitate continuously for the first 30 seconds, then again for 10 seconds every minute thereafter. Then it goes down the drain.
• Next is a 30-60 second rinse. First I run the tap water continuously and verify that its temperature is the same as the developer solution I mixed earlier. After dumping the fixer, I'll place the tank with the lid still removed under the running stream of water until it's full, then dump it out. I do that three times.
• Next up is hypo clear. Pouring that in, I agitate continuously for 30 seconds; then at 30 second intervals until 2 minutes is up. Then that goes down the drain.
• At that point I remove the entire plastic top (as opposed to the small plastic lid used heretofore) and place the open tank directly under the stream of running water. I let it run for 5 minutes.
• The last thing I do is to wet the film with a bit of Photo Flo solution. After the 5-minute water rinse is complete I dump the water from the tank, pour in the working solution of Photo Flo (I use a much weaker concentration than Kodak calls for), swish it around in the tank for 5 seconds, then let it sit for a total of 30. Then that gets dumped out.
• That's it. Then it's just the fun stuff: slowly pulling the wet strip of film from the reel, affixing an unweighted film clip at the top and a weighted one at the bottom, and hanging it from the little nail sticking out from the wooden ceiling beam. It's the first opportunity to see the images on the film. I never fail to get a kick out of that!

The process above describes how I go about developing a roll of film, once everything is set up to do that. But left unsaid is that those chemicals need to be prepared. For me that's easily the most onerous part of doing one's own film development.

I usually mix a single batch of Xtol, to last a year. Once the 5-liter batch is mixed up, I pour it into 36 125ml brown glass bottles, each filled to the very brim before I tightly cap them. That gives me enough ready mix to develop 36 rolls of film - more than I typically do in a year. Mixing it and separating it into all those little bottles is a bit of a pain - it takes an hour or so - but then I don't generally have to do it but once a year.

Kodak Hypo Clear likewise comes as a powder. That gets mixed up every 3-6 months, the stock solution stored in a 1-gallon plastic brown bottle. That stock solution then gets mixed into a ready-to-use working solution, and stored in a 1/2 gallon plastic brown bottle in my darkroom box, every half-dozen rolls or so.

Kodak Stop Bath comes as a liquid, so it's much easier to deal with than a powder. I prepare a working solution from the stock bottle every half-dozen rolls or so, storing that in a 1/2 gallon brown plastic bottle in my darkroom box.

Kodafix, the fixer I use, likewise comes in a liquid. I prepare a working solution from the stock bottle every half-dozen rolls or so, storing that in a 1/2 gallon brown plastic bottle in my darkroom box.

And similarly, Photo Flo comes in a small bottle and is pretty easy to deal with. I mix a working solution every half-dozen rolls or so and, likewise, store it in a 1/2 gallon brown plastic bottle inside my darkroom box.

Late 2008 Update...

I love film. I expect I'll always love it. But acknowledging that digital brings enormous speed advantages to photography, I'm only being honest in suggesting that I'll not soon be developing a lot of rolls of film. At least as long as I'm working a full-time job and commuting long hours, as I've been in recent years.

And so that prompted me to think of ways I might simplify my wet darkroom process. As I write this in December 2008 I am still exploring things, but my initial results are promising enough that I can talk about them:

• Developer. It didn't make much sense to go through all the time and effort to mix up that annual batch of Xtol if I was only going to shoot (and develop) the odd roll here and there. So I began looking for a high-quality developer that was liquid, had a long shelf life, had low toxicity, and required little or no mixing (the ideal being able to work directly from the stock solution).

I think I've found what I'm looking for in HC110.

• Stop Bath. In looking through the processing steps and the five separate chemicals involved, I asked myself if anything could be dropped or modified. And so with that in mind I've ceased the use of an acid stop bath - using instead a water rinse. After pouring out the developer I place the tank under the faucet (at the proper temperature, of course) and run five tankfuls of water rinse through it.

One less chemical to deal with.

(I'm aware I could also stop using Hypo Clear, simply extending the washing interval at the end. But that would take quite a bit more water and - especially with our house being on a well - that's not something I would consider).