Blend Caffenol

Important update at the end!

Starting by preparing Caffenol black and the Orange developer as listed below,

I repared that both have the same pH value and if I mix them, then the result would have the same pH value and by mixing them in a fifty-fifty proportion the final solution will have half the amounts of chemicals per liter and the recipe would be then:

1000 ml water
10 g soluble cheap coffee
28 g Sodium Carbonate*
5 g of Vitamine C

What changes then? The developing time, because coffe and Vit. C are superadditive. In fact the developing time drops to 12 or 15 minutes. The first roll I developed it in just 10 minutes but the film is slightly underdeveloped. Next time I will try 15 minutes. To the 1 liter developer I added then a pintch of Potassium Metabissulfite to see if it helps to preserve the solution for reuse. I will test this today.

Another suggestion is to work with a lower pH reducing the amount of Sodium Carbonate. Developing time will increase but the grain will be finer.

Blend Caffenol, Shangai GP3, 10 minutes semi-stand development

* Note: I calculated wrong (23 g). This was a lucky mistake, because in reality we only need 20 g/Liter of Sodium Carbonate. Please update the recipe as follows:

1000 ml water
10 g soluble cheap coffee
20 g Sodium Carbonate anhydrous
5 g Vitamine C

Mixing order as given in the recipe. The pH value should stay in about 10,4-10.6. Developing time is 15 minutes for the first roll. You may reuse at least within 24h, more time is not known yet.

Caffenol Black (or Solo) - new preparation instructions

If you already succeeded using Caffenol Black and you find it difficult to prepare, I have a suggestion that I use myself too:

Dissolve 50g Sodium Carbonate anhydrous (or equivalent) in 5 liters water and store in a jerrycan. This is a 1% solution, if you use other units, calculate 1% of the weight of the water quantity.

Now, when preparing for instance 500 ml of working solution, dissolve 10 g soluble cheap coffee, not arabic, not decoffeinated, in 200 ml water. After the coffee is completely dissolved, start adding the 1% solution of Soda until you reach 10,4-10,6 pH. Complete with water to make 500 ml if needed.

I think this is very practical and allows you to adapt the soda amount according to the acidity of the coffee used. For instance, if you use 200ml coffee solution and 300ml soda solution, you have 3g/500ml what is 6g/liter instead of just 5g. As a matter of fact, the real amount of soda is between 5 and 6 g, when using 20g/liter of coffee.

Polypan F + Caffenol Black (and Photoscape)

Caffenol Solo (or Black) - Update

It is rather difficult to express our ideas in such a way that the others understand and may reproduce what we have done. So, and in order to avoid the killing of a (for me) great developer, I will try to pass all relevant information here in the blog. The recipe must be updated as follows:

500 ml water
20g soluble cheap, not arabic, not decoffeinated
Sodium Carbonate anhydrous q.b. to reach pH of 10,4 to 10,6 (it is 5 g or more per liter)
Water to make 1 liter

Instructions:

First dissolve the coffee in 500ml water and then the alkali, in this case Sodium Carbonate. Stir until all grittiness is dissolved, addd water to make 1 liter and use immediatly. Make 60 minutes semi-stand development at 20ºC. Of course you may reduce the quantities to the half if you don't need 1 liter of developer.

Gratefulness

I express here my deep gratitude to Reinhold of the superb blog Caffenol, for having tried the original recipe where I wrote 5 g of Washing Soda as a fixed value. He only got 9,9 of pH value and the Stripe of Polypan F was underdeveloped and gave no details in shadow.

Here an example of what you may reach with Caffenol Solo and Polypan F:

Is Caffenol a good option as film developer or is it just a curiosity?

Most people begin using Caffenol just to see if it works. And the most spread recipe for Caffenol is the one reproduced in the site of Digital Truth from which I made Copy & Paste here.

Caffenol

Caffenol film developer

Water	8	fl oz
Arm & Hammer Washing Soda	2	tsp
Folger's Coffee Crystals (not decaf)	4	tsp

Mixing Instructions: Mix soda until completely dissolved and solution is clear. Add coffee, mix until all grittiness is gone and solution is uniform. Let stand 5-10 minutes until microbubbles clear. Use within 30 minutes.

Dilution: Use undiluted.

Usage: 30 mins.

Notes: Gives imagewise stain and general (fog) stain. All teaspoon measures should be level, or slightly rounded for coffee crystals.

Everybody that tried this recipe comes to the conclusion that OK, it works, the film is developed in 30 minutes but it is a dirty developer, the film remains foggy and stained and with hudge grain. For playing with it is OK but to have decent developed films, better another choice. There have been several contributes to turn Caffenol a decent developer, mainly from Reinhold who proposed several recipes of Caffenol combined with Vitamine C or, better said, with sodium ascorbate.

Recently, at Flickr, somebody started complaining about caffenol and he (or she) was going to give up using Caffenol for the reasons I said before: stain, fog, grain.

I started then to test several possibilities, under my opinion that a developer must be as simple as possible and with the minimum amount of chemicals. Using stripes of film, I made a solution of coffee and start increasing the amount of alkali, at that time I used Sodium Hydroxide, until I was sure that some development would happen. I exposed then cheap films like Polypan F and Shangai GP3 and the results were more than satisfying. I can say now that coffee is an excellent developer, at least for the films used.

The recipe of Digital Truth given above is a bad recipe. On the other hand the quantities measured in spoons may work differently for different people.

The recipe I use now is like this and I am calling it Caffenol Black or Caffenol Solo:

500 ml of water
20 g of soluble coffee
5 g of Sodium Carbonate*
Water to make 1 liter

First dissolve the coffee in water and then add the alkali. The order is coffee-alkali and not like the recipe of Digital Truth says. It works much better. Sodium Carbonate can be added as solution, if you dissolve 100g in 1000 ml, use 50ml of this solution that may be kept for other Caffenol batches.

The Caffenol should be used just after preparation and it takes some 60 minutes (and not 30 minutes) to develop your film without stain, without fog and with very acceptable grain.

* Important notice: after discusssing this with Reinhold, who had bad results with the recipe above (underdevelopment, no shadow details), the 5g/l are not a must, Important is to achieve the right pH that is about 10,4 to 10,6, according to my cheap pH-meter. Different coffees have different acidic properties and may need more or less alkali. I even have used Sodium Hydroxid, adding it drop by drop until I reach pH 10,4 and it worked.

My submission to Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day

Yesterday I took my old Agfa Synchro Box adapted as Pinhole, with a focal lenth of 100 mm and a hole of 0,5 mm f number 200, and exposed a Shangai GP3 120 roll giving about 3 seconds exposition. Some of them were underexposed because I didn't count on shadows and trees. But I've got the best sharpness of all attempts I made before in Pinhole Photography.

And I choosed this photo, entitled «Ghosts on the Bridge» to submit to the contest of the WPPG organization here: http://www.pinholeday.org/.

Photo taken on the 27th April in Leiria, Portugal

Notice: I couldn't upload this photo, checked some days after if it was in the gallery, but didn't find it. There was no feedback at all when I uploaded so I tried again with another photo from the same day and the same camera but using expired Fujicolor 100:

Pinhole Day is tomorrow

Yesterday I went until the site of Pombal, near Leiria where I live. Knowing that next 27th April, tomorrow, is the Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day, I took my Agfa Synchro Box modified as Pinhole Box. In Pombal, I visited the Castle and took there or from there some pictures with my box. Later, at home, I developed the roll, an Agfapan 400 expired since 2001 using my Black Coffee developer. Here are two samples of the 8 pictures that the Box can take with a 120 roll film. This film came a little brownish, slightly fogged.

Black Coffee

In a recent discussion at Flickr involving someone who wanted to give up of caffenol, because it produces fogged negatives and stained, I came to the conclusion that, on the contrary, coffee is an excellent developer and doesn't need lots of stuff to give good results. My minimal recipe, that I call Black Coffee is as follows, for 1 liter developer:

20 g soluble coffee dissolved in about 750 ml water. Add 0,5 g (more or less) of Sodium Hydroxide. Complete with water to make 1000ml.
It is important that you reach a pH of 11,4 to 11,6 and the amount of Sodium Hydroxide will depend on coffee quality and also of the water used.

Develop for at least 60 minutes in stand or semi-stand development at room temperature.

To measure 0,5 g of sodium hydroxide, make a solution of 10% (100g/liter) and measure some mililiters of that. Go on slowly and stiring to reach not more than 11,6 pH.

Give it a try and tell me later about!