Would you stop shooting if no B&W films exist anymore?

I really don't know what is this useful for, but it is possible and I discovered it accidentally, to develop a C-41 film looking like a B&W film. No discernable color in it, a monochromatic image.

To achieve this result I started using my developer CSS, that contains CD4, to develop C-41. Using the accelerator for B&W film it produced a very weak image, so I decided to use the same accelerator as for paper but the same amount of stock solution at room temperature. Yes, it worked, I fixed the film and bleach, the image I obtained was monochromatic and could be scanned as B&W film giving acceptable B&W pictures.

The next step, and in order to turn this a process that can be reproduced by anyone, without special stuffs, I replaced CD4 by Hair Dye and it worked the same way, the amount of hair dye is maybe more difficult to precise, but I measured some 10ml of that stuff to replace 6 g CD4. Yo this new developer I called CSS-HD, where HD means Hair Dye.

After developing with CSS-HD you may fix normally with rapid fixer and then place the film in a bath of Iodopovidone, sold in the pharmacies as Betadyne in bottles of 500 ml. When it is new it acts very fast, maybe 5 minutes to dissolve the silver, but if used it will take longer and longer, mine needs now some 30 minutes. But no problem, it will not wash out the image, which I suppose is made of dyes but looking B&W.

Pure B&W and C-41 negative

Pure B&W and C-41 negative developed with CSS-HD

Picture from athe bove negative scanned as color negative

Picture of the first image scanned as color negative

Picture of the second image scanned as B&W

I have got visits

An old friend of mine and his wife visited me this week and I showed them the place where I live and we took a small tour around. As first we visited one of the oldest paper factories of Europe, the factory is still working but only for demonstration to the visitors. It suffered a restauration under the advise of one of the most known portuguese architects, Siza Vieira.

After the short visit to the factory we walked to the antique center of Leiria and we entered its Cathedral. We were also in some other important places of the town like the Square Rodrigues Lobo and Park Camões and crossed the old narrow streets of the city.

After this short visit of Leiria town, we took a tour by car until the beach village of S. Pedro de Moel where we had lunch, looking to the Atlantic, «it was like we were on vacation». After lunch we went to the village of Nazaré, following south the «Atlantic Street». My friend told me he never uses GPS, we had a look to a paper map and we knew how to drive. I said to him that I prefer OWA instead of GPS. He asked me what OWA means and I answered: «Open the Window and Ask». All we laughed and were happy beeing together.

Old Paper Factory, built in 1411 in Leiria, Portugal

Dagmar and Hans

New pedestrian bridge over river Lis

Leiria Cathedral

During lunch at S. Pedro de Moel

At Nazaré, looking down to the village and beach

Once at home I developed the film and scanned to the computer.

My procedure is following:

Developer
Wash
Fixer
Wash
Bleach
Final Wash
Dry

As developer I am using Dignan NCF-41 -- Two-Bath C-41 Color Developer for a while, what means, for some months, with some slight modifications. As first bath I prepared following, because I could not find Sodium Bisulfite:

300 ml water
5,5 g CD4
5 g Sodium Sulfite
Water to make 500 ml

For the second bath I have allways a 5 liter jerrycan with a 5% solution of Sodium Carbonate and 0,05% Potassium Bromide, which means:

50 g/liter Sodium Carbonate
0,5 g/liter Potassium Bromide

In the Donald Qualls page it is recommended to use distilled water for the first bath and distilled or filtered water for the second bath.

About times, I use 10 minutes for the first bath, agitating continously during the first 2 minutes and then let stand. The second bath I stir for 5 minutes and let stand for more 15 minutes.

Between developer and fixer I wash very well for 5 minutes.

As fixer I use common commercial fixer from Foma, times and dilutions as prescribed. But because the fixer is not new and also there is no danger to overfix, I usually give 5 minutes fixing time.

As bleach bath I am using Iodopovidone, normally known as Betadyne that is sold at Pharmacies as disinfectant for wounds. Here you may control at light the degree of transparency you want, the film is already fixed and now the bleach will only remove the silver and the orange mask.


Finally I wash very well for at list one hour ant hang to dry.

My new Flintstone camera

This is my 5th selfmade camera, but all of them were different. The first 2 were 35mm Pinhole small cameras, I could sell one at ebay and the other I offered my smaller daugther who was very happy with it. The third one was a bellows camera with a binocular lens, without shutter or with hand shutter to expose paper. Later I adapted a guilhotine shutter made by my self but giving shaking images because it worked with rubbers horizontally. The camera is still here somewhere waiting for beeing repaired or used somehow.

In the 4th camera I used a Rollei back for 120 film and a Leica Leitz Elmar lens and a guillhotin shutter by gravity giving good images, only the Rollei back sticks a little, it needs some more tuning work. The camera is there more like a museum piece on a table in the corner. Works fine, only to return the guilhotine in the upper position you must close the lens and invert the whole camera and reset the trigger cable that when released, let the guilhotine fall. No shaking images at all, great shutter.

Now, my 5th camera started with a wooden box of the dimensions 12.7 x 8.8 x 8.1 cm with hinges and latch. I used a Vario shutter (which advantage is to have everything including flash synchronyzer). This shutter had no lens in it but looking in the box where I put all optic devices left over from other projects, I found a 100 mm lens that with some tuning in the distance to the film could serve. This is more or less easier to do if we use a lens board and regulate the distance by adding stuff between the box and the lens board. I choosed the size of the lens board so that I can use it in a professional Horseman 980 too.

The trickiest part is the back cover of the box that works perfectly to load a 120 film and take, not 6x6, but 5x5 pictures, due to the thickness of the used wood parts, mainly the frame which slides and is held in position by two small parts of nails on both sides. Well, for the rest just look the pictures, they are clear. I use in the first steps a kind of spring to prevent the roll to unwind during the loading process.

The Flintstone camera

Inside the Flintstone camera

Loading film in the Flintstone camera, 1.st step

Loading film in the Flintstone camera, 2.nd step

Loading film in the Flintstone camera, 3.rd step

Loading film in the Flintstone camera, 4th step

Film loaded in the Flintstone camera.

Caffernal, first working recipe

I may now announce the first working Caffernal and its recipe is following, but please understand what I mean. To start, let us consider the balanced equation of the reaction between Ascorbic Acid and Sodium Hydroxide to give Sodium Ascorbate and Water:

C6H8O6 + NaOH → C6H7O6Na + H2O
176 g  + 39 g = 197 g + 18 g

The complete reaction needs 4.5 times (176/39) Ascorbic Acid in relation to Sodium Hydroxide.

But we don't want the complete reaction because there is a risk of surplus of Sodium Hydroxide that will give a high pH, or a risk of low pH that combined with coffee can go acidic and no development will take place. After some disasters, my starting point was fixed at 3 parts of Ascorbic Acid in weight for 1 part of Sodium Hydroxide and I end with a basic pH of 11,6, but still to high for ascorbate developer. So, I added coffee as acid to lower th pH to 10.6. And here is the whole procedure:

Preboil 1 liter water for 10 minutes and let cool. Add 5 g Potasssium Metabissulfite as Oxygene scavenger. Then use just 100 ml of this water in a beaker and dissolve 60 g Ascorbic Acid in it. Then put the beaker in a bowl with cold water and add 20 g Sodium Hydroxide and stir (don't forget gloves and googles). Pour some more of the cold preboiled water, say, 50 ml. The color of the mixture is light yellow. At the end of the solution measure the pH which will be about 11,6. Now weight about 60 g soluble coffee and go on adding to the soup and measure the pH. When you reach 10,6, more or less, stop. Add 5 g Potassium Bromide as anti-fog (it is enough). Add some more of the preboiled water to make 250 ml and store in an amber bottle of 250 ml. You have prepared the stock solution of Caffernal.

According to my experiments, for each 100 mg Sodium Hydroxide more than the necessary, you will have to put more 1 g of coffee. Suppose that by mistake you putted 2 grams more of Sodium Hydroxide, this will need 20 g coffe to neutralize it. So, be careful and don't waste resources, unless you want to change the proportion Ascorbic Acid to Coffee for a developer with other properties, more grain, more contrast and so on.

And so we have constructed a developer that can be used very diluted. I have been using it in dilution 1:50 and I need some 60 minutes at 25ºC to develop well the film Ilford FP4.

Have fun with Caffernal!

Note: For better understanding, I add a small explanation in red.

2.nd Note: Sodium Ascorbate has a pH between 7.4 and 7.7. Without a surplus of alkali it will not develop.

Tests with Caffernal

The photo above was taken with a Adox Golf 63 at 1/200 and f/8 with Ilford FP4. No software enhancement was applied, just as it came from automatic luminosity of the scanner.

Caffernal looks like a fine grain developer, low contrast and good restitution of the whole grey scale.

In the dilution 1:50 it takes a minimum of 60 minutes to develop at 25ºC.

Now, comparing this developer with the Caffenol C+, using Sodium Hydroxide as alkali too, I found a way to change the properties of Caffernal, I am about to test these possibilities.

The aim of the changes is to make Caffernal faster than it is now. In comparison with Rodinal it is some 4 times slower or more. The contrast can be also pushed a little, I think.

Caffernal advances

Today, because it is too hot during the day, I left home about 8 o'clock in direction to sea, where I would like to make some pictures with my Holga 120 GN adapted to 30 photos 20x30 mm. The weather was very cloudy and I had to use the bigger aperture of the Holga and the sharpness of the photos are not ideal. Once at home, I developed in Caffernal dilution 1:50 for 50 minutes at 25ºC. Well, it needed some more minutes, maybe 60 minutes, which is consistent to my experience using caffenols with 1g/l coffee and Vit. C. OK, but the pictures could be sacanned without problem, dark areas have less details.

On the other hand, the highlights are superb, it was possible to see the small sky clouds shadows. I think in a not so cloudy day, the clouds would be fantastic.

Here are some choosen photos of the series:

The smal differences in sky density could be registered

Good grey scale

Testing depth of field, setting for group

Rock and sand

Rocks and water

More rocks, see difference sky/horizon

Head of the big chief

A couple photographing

The beach sight from above

Another sight of the beach

The typical portuguese coast to Atlantic 

Caffernal

After having succeeded with a Caffenol using Sodium Hydroxide as alkali, the Caffenol C+, I wrote an article about it at ipernity.com, I started a series of experiments to see the limits of how few I must use to develop. From many developers made with some logic I experimented, only perhaps the Caffenol 3335 (3 g Vit. C, 3 g Sodium Hydroxide, 3 g Coffee and 5 g Potassium Bromide per liter) is worth a try. But maybe you should raise the potassium bromide to 10g/l. Or, wait, you don't need so much, the proportions are not quite right as I discovered later.

But the new project I have is to find a based on coffee and vit. C developer that works similar to Parodinal. I started calling it Caffedinal but I worked so hard until I got reasonable results that I changed the name to Caffernal. I am still experimenting but I can already say it will be a reality. The photos below were made using a 1:25 solution and 20 minutes at 27ºC and I think it will work at 1:50 solution too, already tried but the duration was short (45 minutes), images too weak.

The final recipe is still not fixed but it is more or less obvious that coffee, vit. C, Sodium Hydroxide and a pinch of preservative and restrainer will also be included.

Picture 1 - Semi-stand development, not recommended, see the shadows of the perfuration

Picture 2 - 3 minutes constant agitation and the one minute every 5 minutes

Picture 3 - Same as Picture 2