Caffenol Solo or Caffenol Alone or Black Caffenol

In a recent discussion in Flickr, someone wanted to give up from caffenol because he only got dense negatives, hard to extract an image. I entered the discussion later and started a seiries of experiments using just coffee as developing agent and just Sodium Hydroxide as alkali.

The results are very nice, no fog, no stain, completely nice developed negatives using only 2 components. This is, maybe, not so often, I only remenber a developer using 2 components, the Kodak 23, which formula is:

7,5 g metol
100 g Sodium Sulfite
Water to make 1 liter

This new developer I prepared by the scientific method (trial-and-error), may be prepared as follows:

750 ml water
15 g soluble coffee
Sodium Hydroxide (or Carbonate) q.b. to achieve pH=11,4
Water to make 1 liter

Properties of the developer: it is important that pH=11,4 or maybe a little higher. Too high pH will produce fog, too little will take too long and below 11 no development takes place. It is a one-shot developer. Reuse gave bad result even with pH=11,4. You may put more coffee and more alkali to accelerate the process but keep pH=11.4. I needed 60 minutes with the above formula.

And here are some photos made with my Minolta Maxxum 7000 using Polypan F film: