first at-home development
Messy, fun, stressful: developing at home can save money if you are up for the challenge
I held on to my Ilford + Paterson Film Developing starter kit for months before I grew the courage to use it. Roll after roll, I would look at the kit, mull it over and then send my film off to a lab for development. With that came the peace of mind that a trusted professional would be handling my images, so if anything were to happen such as not getting any images back, it was most likely the camera or me who had an error or made a mistake.
BEEP. The final timer has gone off. I pull open the lid to my Paterson tank and pour out the last of the chemicals. In no time at all, I will see if my first at-home development has garnered any results. And so they did! The excitement that grew within me from seeing these images on the negative after only a couple of minutes of developing was amazing. This is a part of the film shooting process that I think is nice to be able to experience and understand. I won’t say or make any assumptions that everyone must develop their own film at home, because supporting local labs is just as important. Developing film at home can save a lot of money, and if you are willing to take on the challenges, learn how different film stocks react with the various developers available, it can be worthwhile.
In the first set of images above the header, the left hand column shows the scans as they are right from the development. Immediately, it’s clear that the exposure is quite hot on these. For reference, I was shooting Cinestill BwXX at box speed in my Mamiya 645 1000S. What I think may have happened in this scenario is that I unintentionally overdeveloped this roll, which has caused some overexposure and increased the contrast. I was able to pull some of that information back in Lightroom (right hand column) and have somewhat workable images from the roll.
Unfortunately, in this development I did lose about 2 or so images that came back blank. I am not entirely sure what happened as this roll had been sitting for a while before being developed, so I may have had a camera issue during shooting that I can’t remember (I think my shutter maybe come stuck due to weather?).
Otherwise the experience of the development was fairly smooth EXCEPT for loading the rolls onto the spools for the Paterson tank. That took me a solid 30-40 minutes of constant struggle in the changing bag. That is where I’m sure most people tend to decide to give up on the effort, as I came very close. I watched a few videos, tried again, failed and repeated the process. Eventually, I was able to get the 120 film loaded onto the spool and start my development. It is a skill that definitely needs practice to get better at, so I hope to continue developing and be a champion loader in the darkbag.
