Episode: 3017
Title: HPR3017: Developing Black and White Film
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3017/hpr3017.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 15:13:31

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This is Hacker Public Radio episode 3,017 for Tuesday, 25 February 2020.
Today's show is entitled Developing Black and White Film. It is hosted by Paul Quirk
and is about 42 minutes long
and carries a clean flag. The summer is
Join Me as I Developed My First Roll of Black and White Film since over 30 years ago.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by archive.org.
Support universal access to all knowledge by heading over to archive.org forward slash donate.
Hello, good listeners of Hacker Public Radio. Paul Quirk here. I'm dealing with a bit of a near infection today, so I apologize if I sound a little off.
But today what I'm going to do is I'm going to develop a role of Black and White Film. Now I haven't done this for a very long time, probably not since the late 1980s.
My father was a photographer, and so I'm going to develop a role of Black and White Film.
Now I haven't done this for a very long time, probably not since the late 1980s.
My father was a photographer, and so I developed Black and White Film with him, and we also made our own pictures with an enlarger.
I also did it for a short time in my high school and I was in grade 9 before I kind of hit it away from people.
There was a certain stigma back then, you know, people who developed their own film, their own Black and White Film, were obviously people who were taking pictures of things that were illegal, right?
And I just didn't want that stigma, I just didn't want to associate with it. So I kind of, I did most of my developing film with my dad back in the day, but it's been so long.
I have retained some of the equipment, but not all of it. I decided to buy the Ilford Simplicity Starter Pack.
This comes with everything you need to develop two roles of Black and White Film, although the three of the four chemicals in this package are good for eight roles of film, actually.
So it's only the developer that's good for two roles of film, which is kind of good.
So I prepared some things ahead of time. I practiced loading the film into my Patterson Tank in the dark.
The Patterson Tank is a black tank where you can add chemicals to the film without letting light in. That's pretty cool.
And I'm using these one liter, Nestle Pure Life Sparkling Water bottles to store the chemicals.
Each packet makes up about 600 milliliters, and these are one liter bottles. So yeah, I'm going to keep my chemicals in these bottles throughout this process.
So what I've done here is I've mixed up a pitcher of water, and I have it at 20 degrees precisely.
So everything here has to be done at 20 degrees Celsius, because this is chemistry, right?
So we're going to start with, we're going to mix up some film developer, then we're going to mix up some stop bath, then the fixer, and then the fourth product is just a wedding agent.
It doesn't need to be mixed up. You just use a couple of catfuls of that.
So let's go ahead and start this. So I'm going to start with the developer.
It says, if I can find the ratio here, 540 milliliters of water.
So I have my beaker here, and I'm going to pour the water in first, because if I overshoot, I don't want to dump out any developer.
So the scale on the side of my beaker, it's at 500 milliliters, that's 20.
So the dividing lines there don't resolve to that fine of detail.
So I have another tube that I'm going to go downstairs and get, and that'll let me measure at exactly 40 milliliters, because it has a finer scale.
Here it is.
I'm doing the chemical mixing in my kitchen, and I'll be moving to the basement when I load up the Patterson tank.
So here we go.
We want 40 milliliters, as it does call for 540.
Now I'll set this back down.
I overshoot it just a hair.
I try to be as precise as I can in this.
Again, it is chemistry.
Temperatures, a temperature difference of even 304 degrees can make a difference in time of developing time of like a minute or maybe even more.
So I'm just about ready to mix this up.
I keep overshooting and undershooting it.
I'm probably overthinking it, but I try to get it as close as I can.
I'll put that in.
And now I'm ready to add the developer.
Yes, that's 540.
Moment of truth.
I always double and triple check to make sure I got the right product.
Adding it to the right speaker.
Again, it's been so long that I'm not going to take anything for granted this time around.
Plus I think I got some fantastic photographs that I shut on that roll of the black and white film.
So I have a paddle here now.
I'm going to mix it up.
This stuff mixes pretty good.
It's constant trait, but it's in liquid form.
Now the powders obviously would take more time and effort to mix at 20 degrees.
So now I'm just pouring out of the beaker carefully, very carefully.
I don't want to spill a drop because they pretty much only give you just barely enough developer for those two rolls of film.
And I do have two rolls of film to develop.
My ear feels like it's starting to pop, which is good news.
I must be getting over that infection.
I'm going to tap on that. That's my developer.
Put the lid on good and tight.
Now let's look at the stop pass.
This tells us that we need 570 milliliters of water at 20 degrees.
I'm going to use a fresh beaker to so that there's no cross contamination, although it's probably not really that big of a deal.
So that's 500.
And we'll say 70 in a measure of 70 in the smaller gradient tube.
Let's put that on 70.
There's our 570 milliliters of water.
And it's a little warmer than 20 degrees now, not by much.
This adds pretty good, just 20 degrees.
Then we'll check to make sure I got the right packet, 570.
Setbacks from all the way over there.
This comes out a straw color.
The developer is clear, but this stop pass is like a straw color.
The color changes when it's no good anymore.
So it does have something called an indicator in it.
Film stop pass.
Let's stir that up now.
I'll rinse this off.
Just to keep things as clean as possible.
What happens is a stop pass has the indicator in it.
Because as you use it, it slowly becomes contaminated to the point where it's no longer any good.
Film stop pass.
I'll put that in the bottle I labeled stop pass.
And that was just my phone.
I got a message.
I'll check it after.
And we'll put the cap on this.
I'm doing tight.
And finally we're going to mix up the film fixer.
This calls for 500 milliliters of water, so that'll be easy.
I can find the 500 milliliters on the side of this beaker quite easily.
It's got 500 milliliters there.
Right there.
We're going to have them mix in the fixer.
The fixer is kind of a melky.
It's clear.
It's mostly clear when it pours in.
It smells like vinegar.
I'm still getting messages on that phone.
Let's not worry about that right now.
Mix off the old stir stick.
Mix it up.
And now we'll pour that into the bottle I labeled fixer.
Just like Dad used to do.
Sounds like I'm a pretty popular guy today.
I'm going to have to see what messages I'm getting sent.
That's good.
Put the cap on that.
All our chemicals are mixed up.
I'm going to refill this picture of water and mix it to 20 degrees Celsius
because we'll need that for the wash at the end.
I'll leave this thermometer in the water.
I'll put the water in.
Nice, not the water.
I checked the temperatures ago along.
For the wash, it's not as critical.
I think you can be within maybe 45 degrees for the wash.
Who knows, but I'm sticking with what they tell me.
All right, so I got my chemicals ready.
I'm going to move down to the basement now.
I'm going to go ahead and load up the old potterson tank.
First, I'll check my messages.
I'm in my basement bathroom now.
The light is still on.
I'm just setting up now.
I have a little table.
A little table that I set up here.
I've organized things where I can find them easily.
I also set it up so that I know where to load the film.
When I pick this up, I'll know that my left thumb
will naturally touch the point where the film has to enter the reel.
When I rewound this film, I made sure to leave the tail out.
That makes it easier to load it in.
So anything I don't need, I'm taking off the table.
I only have the things that I need here.
I have a pair of scissors.
I have the reel that I'm loading the film onto.
The Patterson tank with the center piece on the inside.
Because I'm afraid if I drop it, or if it falls off the table, if I bump it,
I might not find it in the dark.
Then where would I be then?
I leave that in the tank so that I can just put the roll on it in the dark,
without worrying about that.
Then there's the lid that blocks the light, but that's chemicals in.
Then I had the rubber lid that keeps everything on.
First of all, I'm going to start by cutting off the tail to make it flat.
Normally the tail has a taper.
I just cut that taper off.
Now for the moment of truth.
Don't need my reading glasses.
Be in the dark.
Don't need a sweater.
Short sleeve shirt.
I'm going to sew a towel under the door.
I'm home alone today, but if the better half decides to come home and turn on the light,
I see one other problem here.
There's a lid on my recorder.
With me a moment, I'm going to put a piece of electrical tape on that.
Okay.
I'm just going to put the recorder upside down just to make double sure that that light won't be a problem.
Like so.
Ooh, it's dark in here already.
I'm going to close the door.
I'm going to lock the door.
I'm going to put a towel under the door.
I'm going to take my watch off and put it in my pocket because it has numbers that glow in the dark.
Okay.
I'm in complete darkness.
I can't tell if my eyes are open or closed.
So I'm doing everything by feel now.
This is, to me, the scariest part of this whole reveal.
Well, not quite yet because the film hasn't been exposed.
But I have the film in my hand now.
And I'm going to grab my reel from my Patterson take.
Feel for the stock.
There it is.
And I'm going to start pulling the film out and loading it in.
Wish me luck.
I did practice this one or two times.
Okay, here we go.
It's coming in.
Once I get past the stops, I just have to rock it back and forth like this.
Some people use a black bag to hold their film.
I think that's a good idea.
Might be a bit less stressful.
So far, so good.
I'm sweating it.
This is a 36 exposure roll of film.
I'm loading in complete darkness.
I think I'm near the end.
Yes, that is definitely the end.
I'm going to take my scissors.
I know they're here somewhere.
And in the blind and total darkness.
I'm going to go ahead and snip off the film right along the can there.
I'm just going to make sure that's straight.
You probably hear the film can't hit the floor.
Yes.
So that's okay.
Just going to load the rest of the film in.
No big deal, right?
Find my Patterson tank.
There it is. Find the rod.
There it is.
Like the centerpiece.
I'm going to put this in my Patterson tank.
Then I'm going to get the lid.
I'm going to snap that on.
Let's see a light type.
But just to complete it, now I've got the lid on.
Now I can turn on the light and see if I can find the door.
There we go.
We are good.
Good listeners of Hector Public Radio.
It's been so long since I loaded one of these.
I'm glad to say I still have what it takes.
It really isn't that hard.
The difficult part is doing it in the dark.
The Patterson tank does make it as easy as possible to do something like loading film into the tank.
Let's go back upstairs into the kitchen.
Let's start the process.
As we know, the developer is good for two roles of film.
I have two roles of film.
I bought the Kent Mirror Pan 100 and I also bought the Kent Mirror Pan 400.
I wanted to try out the two different ISOs.
I think I have two reels in this tank.
I completely forgot that each role of film has a different developing type.
The Pan 100 has a developing time of five minutes.
The Pan 400 needs six and a half minutes.
I can't develop them together.
What do I do?
I look on the bottom of the Patterson tank and it tells me that for 35mm film,
I need 290mm of chemical.
It's not going to be a big deal for the stop-bath and the fixer because we reuse that.
But the developer is a one-time shot.
What I'm going to do is I am going to measure out 300 milliliters.
That's 10 milliliters more than what I need.
But it should also be exactly half of my developer.
I'm just going to give it a quick little shake in the bottle.
I'll try not to hold it or the liquid is because I don't want to make it warmer than 20 degrees.
I'm going to carefully measure 300 milliliters.
I think that's it.
Just a little drop more.
I'm just under the 300 milliliters line.
I'm going to use my stopwatch.
I used to have a timer.
I think it's still at my dad's place back in the barn somewhere.
I'm just going to use the stopwatch on my watch.
Start reset.
I went ahead and I made a list of directions.
The developer is five minutes.
I have to agitate it for the first 30 seconds.
Let it sit for 20 seconds.
Agitate it for the last 10 seconds.
There's a process to this.
I did get an update on the instructions.
There's different ideas that different people have about how to agitate.
Some people use a little agitate or spinner.
Some people invert the tank back and forth.
I don't think there's any right or wrong one.
Even the directions on how to agitate.
This is what I got from the Ilford website for this particular product.
Agitate the tank as follows.
Invert the tank four times during the first 10 seconds.
Repeat these four versions during the first 10 seconds of each subsequent minute of development.
At the end of each agitation sequence, tap the tank firmly on the workbench to dislodge any air bubbles,
which may be trapped in the processing spiral.
We're good to go.
That's what we're going to do.
I'm going to take the rubber lid off.
I'm going to pour in the developer and start my stopwatch as soon as it's all in.
There's a stopwatch.
Let's do this little agitate right here.
I'm also going to invert it.
Let's snap this down a good and tight.
Right now, put the lid on tight and just rolling it.
I think I'll pass the first 10 seconds, so I'll set it down to the bench.
I'm going to pop it, not going to need bubbles off.
I've up to the first minute.
I'm going to go ahead and do the one, two, three, four.
Tap it on the bench to dislodge any bubbles.
It is a process and you do have to have some amount of focus when you're doing this.
You don't want to run over.
That's called pushing or pulling when you under-develop or over-develop a film.
You can do that.
If you intended on shooting this Pan100, I say you want to shoot it at 200 ISO.
Even though it's 100 film, you can change the developing time and develop it as a ISO 200 film.
But I shot this at 100, so I'm going to make sure that I'm well within the proper time.
So we're up to the two minute mark.
I'm going to go ahead and one, two, three, four.
We'll go ahead and set it back on the bench.
Couple of taps, get rid of any air bubbles.
So yeah, some of my friends have asked me if they should get into shooting film photography right away.
You know what?
If you're already good at photography, then I say why not?
It is a great medium for your art.
This particular kind of film was invented back in 1908.
I've read sources that say that it'll last up to a thousand years before it deteriorates.
So it definitely has some longevity to it.
And this is chemistry.
And it's kind of fun.
It's a fun hobby.
So I'm coming up to the third minute now.
So we'll do that agitation again.
We'll go ahead and set it down the counter like that.
And yeah, but if you're new to photography, and you have an old film camera,
and you know, I guess it's a camera has automatic settings.
You're fine, but if you really want to learn the art of photography,
I think you're best to start off with a cheap, maybe a used digital SLR.
There's plenty of them on flea bay for some pretty good prices.
And the idea there is you start off with one lens, one body.
You can set your ISO to 100 or 400 and leave it there.
And then just try to take good pictures, manipulating the other settings
to approximate shooting with an old camera with a film at the four minute mark.
Set that down.
And we're coming up to the five minute mark.
So I'm going to set the developer side.
The stop bath is next.
I'm just going to get that ready.
We are at four and a half minutes.
I'm just going to pop the rubber lid off.
Get it ready to dump.
I'm going to make sure that this top part here is screwed in tight.
We don't want any, we don't want it to dump out and dump the film into the sink
before we've fixed it.
That's a fixer.
We're at four fifty, four fifty one.
So now we're at our five minute mark.
So I'm dumping it.
So that developer's gone.
Let's give it the stop bath.
Now this is ten to thirty seconds.
It's no more than four inversions.
The purpose of the stop bath is of course to stop the developing process.
Twenty.
I'll give it a little more.
Four inversions max.
So we'll go ahead and snap this lid back on.
It's ten to thirty seconds.
So I'm just going to go ahead and dump it out.
Into my beaker.
And the fixer is next.
Again, this is something that we can reuse.
I'm just going to part straight in.
And this is a two to five minute.
So I'm going to start the stop watch.
Four inversions per minute it calls for.
Get that lid on good and tight.
So we don't lose any of it.
There we go.
So I'm going to go ahead and pour this stop bath out of this beaker back into its storage bottle.
So yeah, like I said, if you're new, if you're not that familiar with photography, start with a cheap digital camera.
Because if you're shooting with film right away, it can be a real frustrating experience.
I mean, a lot of people had been turned off of photography in the early days because a manual camera, one minute now.
A manual camera just can be frustrating.
You shoot off a little film and you don't know.
You don't know how the pictures have turned out.
And then you spend all this money on film, you spend all this money on developing.
And then what are you left with?
A bunch of bad shots that look like crap.
So I say start with a digital as a learner.
And then if you feel like moving your art to the world of film, black and white is a fantastic film to work with.
Because you can do it all at home, right in your own kitchen.
Chemicals are very toxic. They're all water soluble.
Now it does say two to five minutes.
So I'm just going to try and land somewhere in between. This is a two-minute mark.
Yeah, like I said, the developer is just a mild alkali.
The whole process when you're done and you have these pictures that you've done by hand
from beginning to end, I think is a really rewarding experience.
I mean digital can be fun too. You have your shooting manual.
You're still in the process of creating that image.
The thing is there's a computer in there that does all the developing for you and all the post-processing.
Unless you shoot raw and that's its own whole other topic.
I got nothing against digital.
I don't have anything against any art medium.
On the third minute marks, I'll do my inversions.
So it's a great hobby.
What else can I say? We're coming up to three and a half minutes.
I think I'm going to dump this after the fourth inversion.
The next step after that is the wedding agent.
Two catfills, five inversions for ten seconds.
Then we can pull this film out and see what it looks like.
Unfortunately, I can't show you on this podcast.
So what I'll do is I'll put the results up at my personal non-commercial blog at pquark.com.
pqirk.com. I'll put a link in the show notes.
I'm at the fourth minute so I'm just going to go ahead and do four more.
I think it's pretty good.
I'm just going to go ahead and dump this in my beaker.
Now we've got the wash, wash one.
For this, I'm just going to use the tap water.
I'm just going to pour it right in.
When the first wash, it says five inversions for fifteen seconds.
So I think we're almost there.
So one, two litles came off there.
Three, four, five.
I'm just using tap water here, right?
Nothing too fancy.
I think that's pretty close to fifteen seconds.
I'm just going to dump that water out.
Let's do another wash.
This time is for thirty seconds, according to the directions.
The way my dad used to do this, he just run it under a tap and just maintain the temperature at twenty degrees.
I don't know.
Some people might think that's a waste of water.
The directions at Elford are pretty clear.
You have three wash cycles.
The first one's fifteen seconds.
This one's thirty seconds.
So again, this one's going to have ten inversions.
Now at this point, I probably could open the tank and take a look at my pictures.
But I'm patient.
This is a final wash.
There's a different people that have different methods and processes of how they develop black and white film.
I mean, the times are all pretty much consistent, but numbers of inversions went to do the inversions.
How to rinse it, all that.
So this one's a full minute, and I got twenty inversions to do.
I'll commentary to a popular YouTube vlogger.
I only loaded in the one reel.
Some people think you should load in both reels to have the chemical spread properly.
I don't know about that.
I think keep things in the dark room as simple as possible.
If you drop something, you know, you're going to be crawling your hands and knees in the dark, feeling around trying to find it.
I only put what I need on that table.
I'm sure I'm close to twenty inversions here.
Yeah, this is just tap water.
I'm going to go ahead and dump my fixer back into its bottle.
So the developer is perfectly clear.
The stop-bass is a straw color, but clear.
Then this fixer, which smells a little vinegar-y, a little acidic, it's a slightly cloudy.
But we'll recycle that.
We got seven more uses out of our stop-bass and fixer.
But I will have to buy more developer if I plan on doing any more of these.
I think we're good.
I'm going to go ahead and dump this.
And then there's a wedding agent.
It's just a simple detergent.
I believe it's two cat-fills.
It's not much.
One.
It does look a little soapy, too.
So it says five inversions over ten seconds.
So I think by the time we do five inversions, we'll take over there.
Okay, let's see what we've done.
There we go.
Moment of truth.
Moment of truth.
I think we have something.
Let's just find out.
Opening up that.
Oh, look at that, eh?
Oh, yes.
We have successfully developed a roll of black and white film in the year 2020.
So I'm going to share these.
I've got to hang this strip up to dry.
I've got to find the beginning.
Oh, yeah, look at that.
So basically the only step left here is hanging this up to dry.
Squeegee it.
And then I'll put it in the protective sleeve.
And I think I'll scan these in, too.
So yeah, I can't wait for you to look at these.
And thank you for joining me on this journey.
This is something I'm going to do a little more.
I'm actually thinking of starting a business of just side business of just doing film photography.
Yeah, so I'm just going to hang this up.
I'm going to use a close pin the way down the bottom.
I'm going to squeeze you dry and scan these in.
Thanks for listening.
And hopefully I'll get to talk to you in another podcast if I come up with another bright idea.
Thanks for listening.
Drive safe and make sure to have fun.
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