Two previous posts have described my regression into primitive photography techniques. The first being my purchase of many old cameras and the second my creative effort to avoid paying over $400 for a film scanner.

Today the region has been busy getting drowned and blown away so I decided to spend a portion of my day inside developing my film.

It all started in the dark room (read: toilet) where I spent five minutes on my knees in complete darkness, tools set out on the work bench (read: toilet seat), fumbling around trying to get two rolls of film onto reels and into the developing tank. I'd been practicing with my eyes closed so it wasn't a huge deal. The astute of you will notice that there is a camera there; the reason for this is that I forgot that the Fujica had a 24 shot film installed rather than a 36, so when it reached 24 I over exerted the wind mechanism and tore the film from the roll. My only option was to remove the film from the camera in complete darkness. It worked and only a few photos are over exposed.

Next was preparing the laboratory (read: kitchen). Deadly chemicals sorted in order of requirement and reminders written on the back of old photos (timings are the key to developing so I had to make sure everything would run smoothly). I found that the best instructions were on Fecal Face, they worked and were simple so I think I'll stick with them from now on.

In simple terms it involved - filling the tank with developer and shaking for 7mins (developing the film), emptying the tank and filling it with stop bath for a minute or so (stopping the developing process); emptying again and filling with fixer for 4 minutes (fixing the image on the film), then lastly opening the tank, rinsing the reels and film (cleaning chemicals off), and processing the film in anti static (applying a protective layer to the film).

I thought it'd be a lot more difficult than it actually was, but as long as you have everything set out and prepared it's actually quite a therapeutic activity. Once I was done I hung the film out to dry and took a creative photo with a rainy backdrop. I did the dishes as usual, only with the aim of removing deadly chemicals instead of food scraps.

Then the DIY scanner came into play again and this is what resulted.

From the Voigtlander Vito B:

And from the Fujica ST605n (and no, I haven't tried to be super artistic, the weird ones are the end result of my aforementioned accident):

I'm prepared to say I'm well and truly fixed on film photography and home development. To me it feels a little like each roll of film is a tiny time capsule, a chemical imprint of what your eye saw through the lense, to be released only through manual labour and a few dangerous chemicals. It's another past time I'll never be able to describe, much like my other afflictions: prime lenses,  singlespeeding, fixed gear bikes, manual coffee machines, ukuleles, singlemalt, Land Rovers, the fact I've never been to Ikea........maybe I'm just a bit simple.