Analog Photography 101! Or: How to Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Grain

[pepper]

Hiya!

Do you want to get into film photography but you’re intimidated by how much there is to learn? This thread is for you! Are you a film photographer and want to share your knowledge? It’s for you too!

Analog film photography has become an obsession for me (I think they call this passion?), and I wanted to offer to share what I’ve learned, and open up discussion on this topic.

If there is enough interest, maybe a guild would be in order? Please let me know if anyone is interested in that, otherwise I think keeping it to a thread is fine for now.

What you need to take photos on film:

• A camera, a good starter camera would be a "point-and-shoot", I got this lovely Pentax at a garage sale for around $5
• Some 35mm film, I recommend Kodak Ultramax 400 for color or Ilford HP5+ 400 for black and white. Both will be easy to use in a variety of lighting conditions!
• thats it

Point-and-shoot cameras are pretty cheap to find at thrift stores, garage sales, estate sales, etc. You can also find decent ones on eBay for around $50 or so. They are meant to be easy to use for amateurs, and will do all the exposure and focusing for you. Film is plentiful, either online or at a camera store/ film lab. After you shoot your roll of film, you then take the film out of the camera and bring it to a local lab! Photo Labs are slowly disappearing, and places like big chain drug stores don’t do the whole 1-hour photo processing like they used to, but that just means that the places that still do film developing have a real passion for it! If you don’t have a lab local to you, there are places online you can send your film to. When I started out I sent my first two rolls directly to Ilford using one of these things. Ilford only does black & white but there are plenty of other options for mail-in film developing, I'm just not familiar with many of them, and I've only used that Ilford option for two rolls before I started developing on my own, so please look around and find what sounds best for you.

Your lab will develop the negatives, scan them (and likely do some sort of post-processing to correct color, contrast, etc), and then email the scans to you. They’ll be super high resolution and very pretty! If you ask, the lab will also send your negatives back to you (always do this! Those negatives are yours and should be treasured imo).

That's everything you need to get started, take some photos on something that isn’t your phone, and play with a neat analog gadget! There is already plenty to explore if you stop here, and I promise once you start carrying around a camera, pulling it out and hearing the shutter actuate, handling your film, and get your scans back and feel the warmth of that natural film grain in your photos, you’ll realize how special this all is and maybe ven want to go further :3

If you want to go further, there’s plenty of ways to get more creative. But first, I want to go into some of the technical details, so you know what I’m talking about when I say things like depth-of-field, or focal length.

Technical Details

how a camera functions

Photography works like this: you have a dark light-proof box with a small hole in it that lets in light when you open the door between the lens and the film. The film has globs of stuff that react to light, and keep what they saw a secret in the dark until they get dunked in acid. You can control the size of the hole, how long the door is open, and how fast the globs can remember the light they saw. The box itself does not need to cost you a month’s rent.

how film emulsion works

ok ok, a little more technical. Film is a strip of plastic with what’s called an "emulsion layer" containing material that is sensitive to light. That material is silver halide crystals suspended in the emulsion, which change in chemical structure when exposed to light. More light = more change. The “image” on the film prior to developing is latent, as in not permanent. We make the image permanent by developing the film, which will allow the exposed silver halides to convert to a dark colored silver, and those that got less light do not have that change. This is why it becomes a negative image: things with more light in the shot make the negative more dark after processing. When this change is done, the image is permanently fixed on the strip of film, and it can be scanned, used to print, or archived!

The small hole and the door

The camera's lens has what’s called an “aperture”, which is a small hole that lets in a specific amount of light. The size is measured in “f-stops”, there is a technical reason for the funky numbers, ask if you wanna know, but the values, from largest hole to smallest hole, are typically: f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16. The “f/” is important to include when writing about these things, otherwise you’ll be confusing to your reader. Each of these values is called an f/stop, pronounced “eff stop”. Also, yes: small number == big hole, and vice versa.

A larger aperture, that is to say a smaller f/stop, will have a narrower “Depth of Field”, abbreviated DoF. This is the area that the lens is able to keep in focus. Keeping your aperture at f/16 is good for landscape type of stuff where you want everything to be in focus. Keeping the aperture wide open, say f/2.8 or f/4, will result in what is called “bokeh”, or blurriness behind and in front of where you are focusing the lens, which is popular in portrait photography.

The door I mentioned that lets the light in is called the “shutter,” and the amount of time it’s open is called “shutter speed”. It might be a curtain, or concentric blades that open and close real quick, no matter what it looks like its a shutter. Shutter speeds typically range around: 1, 2, 4, 8, 15, 30, 60, 125, 250, 500, 1000. These are fractions of a second, so shutter speed of 30 means “1/30th of a second”, and bigger number == faster shutter speed. Shooting under 60 speed is likely to require a tripod, because at those slow speeds you will have the film exposed to light for so long you’re no longer getting a “snapshot” and more getting a constant stream of light, and so your hand’s subtle movements will likely cause the shot to look blurry. Additionally, if your subject is in motion, slower shutter speeds will result in streaks of motion. Sometimes you want that look though! This is an element of creative control as well as technical requirement, just like choosing an f/stop for the DoF you want.

Your film will have a number on the box it came in called the "ISO", or “film speed”. If you are familiar with digital photography, you may know that ISO is something you can change to affect exposure. In film, you’re locked in to a specific ISO for the entire roll of film! The film speed determines how quickly the film is able to capture light, I go over it a little more below but for now let’s assume you’re using good starter film stock at a nice friendly 400 ISO.

Exposure, Light Metering, and Sunny 16

“Exposure” refers to controlling the levels of light that hit the film, so that your image comes out clear, or otherwise so that it comes out looking the way you want. As a film photographer, you have two ways to control exposure when out shooting photos: aperture, and shutter speed. ISO is locked in, which is nice in that we don’t need to concern ourselves with adjusting it.

There are two ways that you can manually determine correct exposure: using a light meter, and using the Sunny 16 rule of thumb. A light meter is a tool or an app (often times newer SLRs will have a light meter built in to the camera) that reads the amount of light hitting a sensor and tells you what shutter speed to use for your desired f/stop value, or what f/stop to use for your desired shutter speed. The two metrics are inversely related: so a slower shutter speed gives more light (door is open longer), and to compensate you need a higher f/stop (smaller hole). The values can be plotted on this thing called the Exposure Triangle

Sunny 16 is a rule-of-thumb guide to estimating exposure without a light meter. Basically, it says that in bright and sunny lighting conditions, you set your shutter speed as close as you can to your film's ISO, and use an f/stop of f/16. As lighting conditions change, you stop your aperture down to adjust. “Stopping” refers to moving from one value down or up to the next, so going from f/16 to f/8 is “one stop down". (it can also refer to moving along shutter speeds, so moving from shutter speed 120 to 250 is one stop up).

So, following Sunny 16, in cloudy weather I might be using my shutter speed at around 500 and my aperture around f/5.6 or f/8. In practice, I tend to use my light meter app on my phone when I get to wherever I’m taking photos to double check my instincts, then mess around and shoot using whatever I think will work. This does mean I get several underexposed or overexposed photos, but it’s a lot more fun than checking my light meter before each shot!

OK enough technical things back to the hardware!

The Camera

So you’ve got your point-and-shoot and that’s fun and all, but the next step is to get your hands on a camera that lets you change lenses, or choose your exposure settings, or manually focus, or all of these! My favorite cameras are the mechanical beauties: completely manual, don’t use batteries, everything is mine to decide. But, I also really like using my Canon AE 1 Program, which can do auto exposure if you want it to, or “semi auto”, which will for example handle shutter speed for you while you choose aperture, if you want to have some control over exposure but don’t want to think that much on the fly. Something like the AE1 Program is nice for beginners because it is relatively affordable (I got mine at an estate sale with a 35mm lens for $200 USD), and also because you can let the camera do as much or as little of the work as you like as you learn at your own pace 

A camera like the AE1 is what's called an SLR, or single lens reflex camera. It uses a mirror inside the camera body, so when you look in the viewfinder you see exacly what the lens sees. This is in contrast to a Rangefinder, which I actually personally prefer as they tend to be more manual and smaller. A rangefinder, like the Canonet I linked as a mechanical beauty, is focused by moving a dial to adjust a little dot over the image you see in the viewfinder, but what you're looking at isn't what the lens sees. This can be tricky when taking picures close up with a rangefinder. There are also Mirrorless cameras, which are like an SLR except they don't have a mirror and they do cost a month's rent.

Lots of cameras to choose from, but they all have something pretty much in common: you can swap your lens out!

The Lens

Different lenses have different behaviors and feelings, even when using the same focal length. At different focal lengths, you’ll get more/less stuff in the frame, and the depth of field changes: telephoto lenses have a narrower DoF than wide-angle lenses. Some common lens focal lengths are 35mm (not to be confused with 35mm film), 50mm (the Nifty Fifty!), 28mm (wide-angle).

Different lenses may also have different values for aperture f-stops: my 28mm on my AE1 right now goes down to f/2.8, but the 50mm lens for it goes to f/1.2. You can have a prime lens (one that has only one focal length), or a zoom lens (one that can change focal lengths). And the actual handling and texture of a lens will differ: there are lenses I prefer simply because they are nice to hold and look at!

A good standard lens to use is a 50mm, the “nifty fifty”, but using more uncommon focal lengths can be really fun! My favorite daily carry is my Canonet, which uses a fixed 40mm lens, which is pretty weird to see 

The Film

There is so much you can do with your film! The films I listed earlier are standard, good film stocks that can handle a lot of different lighting conditions, but there is a range of ISO values that affect your exposure. ISO ranges are: 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200. Lower ISO film speeds will be slower, so they have fewer globs of silver on the emulsion and need more light (more exposure) to get an image. But they can look super buttery smooth and have very low film grain. Higher ISO film speeds have way more globs of silver, can handle much darker environments (my personal favorite for basement punk shows is 3200 ISO), and have very high film grain. Loading a different ISO than you've used before will require you to set the film’s speed on your camera to the new ISO so the light meter knows the new film speed (remember the Exposure Triangle? ISO is the third part of it!), or if you’re shooting manual just knowing how to adjust your exposure to compensate (each ISO value is also a stop, so if your ISO went up two stops, you need to stop down aperture or shutter speed by two stops, or one stop down each, to compensate).

You can also "push" and "pull" your film when you get it developed! It may cost a little extra for the lab to develop this because it is a custom request, but you can shoot ISO 400 film as if it were, say, ISO 1600 film, and have the lab “push” the film to 1600. This means they will develop your 400 speed film at their Minilab’s settings for 1600 speed. This produces different results from just shooting on stock 1600 speed film, and when doing color pushing more than 2 steps will make your photos have distorted colors, but that’s just more creative freedom you have to play with in my opinion!

There are also experimental film stocks like Lomochrome that will produce different effects on your film, and Infrared film which requires an IR Red filter on the lens but which will filter out visible light and only capture infrared light, which is also super cool! Again, so much creative freedom you can have with just the film alone.

Other film sizes

This so far has only discussed 35mm, but there are also other film sizes  . These require different cameras, but it can be fun messing around with these older, nonstandard film sizes. Medium format cameras can be super pretty, and the photos off them can have much more detail than 35mm, because the negatives are able to capture more light. 110mm is an old kind of film that was meant for “pocket” cameras. The photos come out looking not super “professional” and lacking details but I think they are super cool and weird, and I really enjoy using my 110 camera.

Next up I will post in this thread my home development process so look forward to that! I have it mostly drafted up I just need to edit it a couple more times 

Please please, if anyone wants to get into film photography, it is such a cool and fun hobby and there is so much to explore! Come here with your questions! And I'm self taught and learned most of this through trial and error, if I missed anything big or got something wrong and other photographers wanna chime in feel free 

till next time :3

[stellarfieldanomaly]

Good write up!  

I dunno how guilds work here, is there a critical mass that's needed for one?

I think you covered the basics pretty comprehensively.


One thing I'll add is that, to anyone looking to dive in, try to avoid kit redundancy. By that I mean, focus on things that offer real functional diversity beyond a different brand name. Having a point and shoot and an SLR with 4 lenses will let you do so much more than 3 SLRs with functionally identical mechanisms and 50mm lenses.

Two things actually, pushing and pulling film as outlined above can be very useful. But keep in mind that pushing especially will necessarily result in an increase in grain and contrast in your final image. You can't squeeze blood from a stone and you can't use chemistry to extract information where there is none. Personally, I really like the look and often push process my black and white to intentionally get that crunch. But your mileage may vary!


To me, film photography is 80% enjoying the process and 20% chasing a unique result. I compelled by the tactile experience of using old cameras and the mindfulness needed with such a materially limited medium. I do most of my skill building work on digital, the instant feedback and sheer volume of work you can attempt is eclipsing. That said, pursuing film exclusively is totally possible! You'll just need to dedicate more time and resources to it.

Anyway, look forward to seeing what else people have to say here!


Bonus: family photo!

[RNotteLovesOwls]

very nice information! i can tell this is something you're passionate about. i was wondering, have you ever used a super8 video camera? one animator i've been following, phil evans, does traditional animation by drawing on super8 film using paint markers and then using a scanner to render the animation on his computer. he, along with the resurgence of polaroid, is getting me more interested in analog photography

sadly, i don't think there's a photo lab anywhere nearby where i live, so i might have to settle for polaroids and super8 (with a scanner) if i ever choose to get into this hobby

[pepper]

Good write up!  

I dunno how guilds work here, is there a critical mass that's needed for one?

I'm not super sure how they work either, I'm in a couple but the only one I'm in that has any activity is the Wednesday Website Club, and that's really just to help keep one another accountable and it's a weekly check-in sort of thing.

I only hesitate to start a photography guild because if there isn't much interest it would be more likely to flounder, as opposed to a thread that gets bumped as new posts are made on it, etc.

Also, thanks for the input! Kit diversity is a great point, my "kit" consists of anything I can get my hands on that's cheap and works  But it has become naturally very diverse. I have a compact rangefinder, a small SLR with a 50mm lens, another SLR with a 35mm and a 28mm, and a super nice rangefinder that's an heirloom I only use on special occasion. I also have usable antiques: a medium format fold-out, a Brick (Argus C3 it works so well still and I love this thing!), and a couple Brownies. I also have a 110 format camera, and a toy 35mm when I wanna have some fun (a purple Holga  ).

I'm in the rare position of, I do all my creativity with the film! All my black & white I print on my own enlarger, and any processing I do in the darkroom at the enlarger, so contrast filtering, dodging and burning. Color is still a bit of a novelty for me, I mostly use it to be experimental, and don't do any post-processing on my color scans I get back from the lab.

i was wondering, have you ever used a super8 video camera? one animator i've been following, phil evans, does traditional animation by drawing on super8 film using paint markers and then using a scanner to render the animation on his computer. he, along with the resurgence of polaroid, is getting me more interested in analog photography

sadly, i don't think there's a photo lab anywhere nearby where i live, so i might have to settle for polaroids and super8 (with a scanner) if i ever choose to get into this hobby

No I haven't used a Super 8 camera but it sounds so interesting!    polaroids are very fun to use as well and I have a friend with a sizeable Polaroid collection she loves using!. That said, you can always have your film mailed out to be developed if you ever want to get into 35mm

[spookyboogie]

Really nice write up!

I've had a hard time fully launching off of digital photography despite snagging an SLR for myself because I feel pretty dependent on my DSLR's built-in metering and autofocus. Not to mention the cost per photo makes it easier to feel like I can be lazy with my lighting choices and take the same shot over and over until I'm happy with it. This alone makes me want to pursue film more because I'd like to reduce some digital clutter and take more intentional photos.  A guild for consistency sounds cool, but I definitely agree that it'd need a decent amount of interested folks.

For my own curiosity, do you look for anything special when choosing a film lab? I've also seen some folks online developing at home with darkroom bags, etc., but I know I'd be way too likely to screw that up while I'm solidifying my skills behind the camera haha. Too many variables.

I'd also love to hear if anyone has advice for exploring double exposures!

[pepper]

For my own curiosity, do you look for anything special when choosing a film lab?

I've taken my film to a few local labs simply because they are close to me to avoid a long drive, although my city is a very creative place, and some of the best film labs in the country are here, so I'm admittedly a little spoiled. I am not meaning to advertise or anything (sorry mods ) but my local place, Blue Moon Camera, can develop film through the mail and they are a very well respected lab.

Definitely look around locally to you though and see if there is anything you can physically go to, it's nice to have that human connection, especially with a creative hobby like this 

I haven't played around with double exposure but I would also be interested if anyone has experience with it 

[stellarfieldanomaly]

@RNotteLovesOwls

That's a cool workflow! Just be aware that super8 will require development at a lab the same as any other film! Motion picture film is way to expensive for me to dabble with haha.

Polaroids are fun, especially if you want that imperfect retro aesthetic. If you want instant film with a higher fidelity look into fuji instax!

@spookyboogie

My main criteria for a lab is proximity and scan resolution. I am lucky to live in a city with multiple labs now, but when I was in Florida I shipped my film to reformed film lab in Daytona (not sponsored haha).

I don't want a lab that scans under 3000px by 4000px for 35mm shots personally.

For double exposures you first need to pick a film camera that supports that functionality. The olympus SLR's i use for 35mm technically do but only by misusing the rewind mechanism. Whereas my Bronica has a dedicated double exposure lever. I'm not too knowledgeable about that process of actually getting them to look good yet though.

@pepper

Argus's are so funny to me, completely inelegant, but durable and bulletproof mechanically. Kind of quintessentially midcentury American.

That's super cool!I want to dry darkroom printing someday. I do my own dev for B&W but I don't have access to enlarging equipment or a darkroom so I only scan mine digitally. Don't be afraid to touch stuff up in post! The lab scans are either an aggressively neutral conversion for editing, or the lab techs own opinions on what it should look like!

Also! Use the heirloom! Film cameras, especially older ones, need to be used semi-frequently to stop the old lubricants and parts from seizing up! 

[mini]

Next up I will post in this thread my home development process so look forward to that! I have it mostly drafted up I just need to edit it a couple more times 

Heck yeah! Are you doing it for C41 or only for B&W? I wanna get into home developing and scanning with a DSLR so bad...

@RNotteLovesOwls
My main criteria for a lab is proximity and scan resolution. I am lucky to live in a city with multiple labs now, but when I was in Florida I shipped my film to reformed film lab in Daytona (not sponsored haha).

I don't want a lab that scans under 3000px by 4000px for 35mm shots personally.

tfw my city has multiple labs but the best one scans at 1808x1228 ;w;

[stellarfieldanomaly]

Heck yeah! Are you doing it for C41 or only for B&W? I wanna get into home developing and scanning with a DSLR so bad...

tfw my city has multiple labs but the best one scans at 1808x1228 ;w;

Noooo that's terrible 


Home scanning would definitely be the play then IMO. Some labs will even do dev only for cheaper than scan/dev.

I can't speak for pepper, but I only home dev B&W. It's very flexible and the chemicals last forever if you go with something like rodinal. Whereas color negative dev is a highly standardized process that requires more chemical steps and extremely specific temperature control. Plus Black and white is easier to scan, color negative requires a more sophisticated backlight to get good results.

Out of curiosity, what DSLR do you plan to use for home scan?

[pepper]

Developing Film at Home: accessible mad science!

^{note that I am only going to cover Black & White developing! I don’t have experience developing color yet (C41 processing), but I’ll give a quick rundown of the differences at the end of this post.}

So you’ve got your little camera collection, have your negatives and scans and maybe some prints you’ve ordered, but now you want to go one step further. A lot of photographers (I want to say the majority of film photographers? Certainly the majority that I personally see posting online) will develop their film at home and scan it themselves using a film scanner or a very well-position digital camera with a light table. Developing your film yourself involves chemistry and a light-proof room, but it isn’t as scary as it sounds! I make a light-proof room in my bathroom to load my reels and develop my film in my kitchen, makes for a nice quiet afternoon activity when I have a few rolls to develop 

The Tools

• paterson tank
• reels
• film canister opener
• graduated cylinders (or equivalent measuring device)
• chemistry
• one or two glass or opaque plastic jars for chemistry storage
• clips to hang and dry the film

You can find a nice starter kit online if you want to get everything new. However! You can get most of this stuff secondhand for very cheap if you are patient and keep an eye out. Again: garage sales, estate sales are your friend! I’ve seen some of these items (cylinders and tank) for sale at a garage sale last summer, so I can promise they are out there, even though it might be more uncommon to find developing stuff than finding camera bodies and lenses at garage sales. Ebay or Craigslist may also be a good place to look, and if you have a local photo supply store check them out too! (I will always recommend you to go local whenever possible :3 ). However if you want to buy these new, you can find kits for sale online, I personally like B&H, they have one that's around $140ish, which includes starter chemistry (you’ll want to get more chemistry if you want to do more than a couple batches though!)

The main part of the kit is the Paterson tank. It's a plastic tank with one or two plastic ratcheting reels to hold your film, and a funnel that screws and clicks into place. When you hear the click, it is light-proof. I've heard that loading the reels is much easier nowadays than it was back when these things were typically aluminum.

the chemistry

There are a lot of options out there for black & white film processing, but the main components are generally going to be: developer, stop bath (optional, you can use water but I prefer using a stop bath to be safe), fixer, rinse-aid (optional). The fixer is going to be the most expensive of the bunch, and you’ll use more of the concentrate to make a working solution, but fixer can be reused a bunch before it is spent!

I use Ilford chemistry: developer (I’ve used Simplicity and Ilfosol 3, and have a bottle of Ilfotec DD-X to try out), stop bath (Ilfostop), and fixer (Rapid Fixer). I use it mostly because it’s just what I know, it’s what I did my first batch of film with when I first learned in the one class I took on this subject, and it’s pretty affordable. There are other developers and such out there, Rodinal is a popular option I see used a lot. Eco Pro is a brand of more environmentally friendly chemistry, but I’ve heard mixed opinions on the results, and frankly if you are following your local requirements for disposing of chemistry, the environmental impact at the hobby level is minimal (more on this at the end of this post!!). Another alternative for developer that I have been meaning to try is caffenol, which is literally just developing film in coffee! 

A “one shot” developer is usable only once, or rather, for only one developing session (I’ve used the same Ilfosol 3 developer for 4 rolls of 35mm film and it was fine, but it will get weaker the more it’s used and it should not be saved after the session if it is “one shot”). Some developers might let you reuse them, but for film developer I’m not familiar with any.

For whatever chemistry you choose to go with, you’ll mix each concentrate in its own graduated cylinder according to the instructions printed on the bottle, using water that is around 20-21 degrees C. I use tap water, not sure if it’s best to use distilled water or something, but tap water is fine for me. But I’m not a perfectionist so others may have stronger opinions on this    Also the nice thing about b&w is that the temperature is forgiving, as long as you’re around 20 degrees-ish. You should use a specific cylinder for each chemical to avoid cross-contaminating, you do not want fixer to get in your developer! My cylinders are each labeled 

So, you should have: Developer, Stop Bath (optional but I recommend), Fixer. Wash-aid is optional.

The Process

The process is simple, and BH Photo describes it well so I’ll link that here for the details.

But, the gist is: you get into a light-proof space (I put up a curtain over my bathroom door and put a second curtain against the bottom of the door), bust open your film canister, take out the film (you’re doing this in pitch dark!),  blindly cut the lead off the end, and load the film onto your reel (practice this first!! A lot!! You can sacrifice a cheap roll of unused film to use as practice). When you reach the end of the roll blindly cut the film from the end spool (still in the dark), and put the loaded reel into your tank and seal the funnel on the tank. Now you can turn the lights on.

Go to somewhere with a sink, I use my kitchen. Get yourself a timer and know the processing times for your chosen chemistry, I recommend using the Massive Dev Chart app, it has crowd-sourced develop times for pretty much any developer out there and I rely on it probably too much.

Develop

Pour your developer in the tank, turn the timer on, and agitate (slowly twiddle the stick in the tank) for 5-10 seconds every 30-60 seconds, depending on your desired agitation method (Massive Dev Chart will tell you when to agitate!). The developer will make all silver in your film undergo a chemical reaction that makes it darker if it had been exposed to light. The longer the film stays in the developer, the more silver is changing and the darker the film is getting. If you agitate too quickly, you’ll get bubbles, spots, and bands on your negatives. If you don’t agitate at all, you get very uneven negatives. Nice and slow agitation on a clear schedule is the way to go!

Stop Bath

Once the develop timer is done, you: dump out the spent developer if it is one shot (in the sink with running water, see my note at the end of this post regarding disposal  ), or pour back into a container if reusable, add your stop bath to the tank, agitate. I usually agitate my stopper for a whole 60 seconds. The stopper smells like vinegar, and it is a highly acidic solution that works by chemically neutralizing the developer. This isn’t strictly necessary and you can get away with rinsing under running water for a couple minutes instead of using a stop bath.

Fix

Dump your stopper (again: running water!), and add your fixer, agitating based on the timing schedule (see why I like Massive Dev Chart?). Fixer washes away any silver halide globs that were not hit by light, and thus were not processed by your developer, making the film no longer light-sensitive, and "fixing" the negative image in place.

When done, put your fixer into a container of some sort (I use an old glass beer growler but any clean reusable bottle will suffice as long as it can be sealed shut). Fixer is expensive and can be reused until spent, and unspent fixer is not usually able to just be thrown down the drain like developer and stopper (see note at end of post).

Rinse

Now that your film is done developing you can safely open up the tank and rinse your negatives! It’s easiest to keep your film on the reel for this next step, so don’t open your reel just yet. First, place the reel in a largish container, I use an old cooking pot, and run clean water, around 20 degrees C, over the reel to rinse it. I let it rinse for around 10-15 minutes, but you can never rinse too much. After rinsing you can optionally dunk the film into a rinse-aid to help avoid water spots.

Dry

Now hang your negatives somewhere dry and without much air circulation, I use coat hangers and little metal hooks that I hang up on my shower curtain rod. I will also cut the negative strip in half, roughly, so that they can hang more easily without touching the floor (obviously, while avoiding cutting through a frame). Make sure to not clip the clips directly over any frames you care about because no matter what they say, they will leave marks. Once the negatives are hanging I’ll use my index and middle fingers, get some water on them, and use them as a squeegee once or twice to remove excess water to further avoid water spots. They sell actual film squeegees for this but those freak me out and the finger trick works for me.

After around 4+ hours the film will be dry enough that you can safely take them down, cut them into smaller strips, and put them into sleeves for archival.

And you’re done!

At this point you can use your negatives in a negative scanner, which I don’t have any experience with    But if someone here does please chime in!

OR you can go even further down the rabbit hole, and get yourself to a darkroom    In a black & white darkroom with red safelights you can use an enlarger to project the image from a negative onto photographic paper, which has the exact same kind of silver halide globs as your film did, and which is developed in a similar process. The nice thing about this is that when printing, unlike when loading film onto the reel, you don’t need to be in complete darkness. This is why a traditional darkroom has that red safelight: black & white photographic paper for use with an enlarger is not sensitive to red light.

Here’s my darkroom-on-a-cart, that I wheel into my bathroom for printing, but if you’re interested I recommend looking into local classes before becoming too invested to make sure you like it! Your city’s parks and rec, or maybe a community college, may offer intro darkroom classes. You can also maybe find luck with local builder spaces, community darkrooms, and the likes. My local art center has a darkroom that is open for studio time, but space is limited and scheduling things got in the way when I tried going that route long-term. My city also has one or two community darkrooms that you need to apply for, from what I could tell these have a waitlist to get in. I opted to just DIY!

My next big update to this thread I will introduce my darkroom, what the printing process is, and all that madness, as well as some advice on setting up a cheap(ish) darkroom at home if you’re as crazy as me!

^{Note: Color Developing (C41 processing) is very different. For color, you use a developer and a bleach-fixer called blix, both of which need to be heated to specific temperatures. Developing times are also very strict for color processing. BUT you can do fun things like film soup: letting your film sit in things like lemon juice and dish soap for a couple months prior to developing it, to get cool effects in the colors! I have not done any C41 developing yet, but I intend to learn at some point this year! If anybody else on the forum does have experience with color home developing, it would be cool to hear your advice :3}

the safety note at the end of the post

Do not directly touch these chemicals with bare hands if you can avoid it. It won’t do immediate harm, the acids aren’t that strong, but you don’t wanna be touching film fixer all the time or you’ll turn purple. Also DO NOT ingest any of these! That one is obvious but, hey. Don’t drink developer, kids.

An important note on film chemistry disposal:

Be careful with these chemicals and your local environment! It is your responsibility to not poison your surroundings with your hobbies. Pouring spent developer and the stopper down the drain with plenty of running water is generally safe to do within large municipalities in the US, but make sure by checking with your own local waste management or similar. If you’re on a septic system you can’t do that and will need to utilize other options, namely taking the spent chemicals to hazard materials disposal/ waste management directly, or taking them to a photo lab for disposal.

You’ll want to re-use your fixer until it is spent. Once spent, I like to put my fixer in a different container, which I then take to my local hazardous material disposal site. I make trips there for medical sharps anyways so this works for me. Alternatively I heard that you can place a piece of steel wool in the spent fixer, which will extract the silver, making the fixer safe to put down a drain. I have not tried that so I can’t confirm if it is accurate information And yet another disposal option is to take your spent chemistry to a local film lab for disposal.


Till next time :3

[mini]

Out of curiosity, what DSLR do you plan to use for home scan?

EOS 1100D, it ain't much but it's what I have (and it's almost 3x the res that labs here have so...)

I was looking into finally upgrading gear and possibly switching to Fuji after like 12 years of having this camera but idkkk :3 camera gear is so expensive...
 

Also big thanks for the film development pepper!! I swear I'll use this some day :3

[stellarfieldanomaly]

Also DO NOT ingest any of these! That one is obvious but, hey. Don’t drink developer, kids.

:(

EOS 1100D, it ain't much but it's what I have (and it's almost 3x the res that labs here have so...)

I was looking into finally upgrading gear and possibly switching to Fuji after like 12 years of having this camera but idkkk :3 camera gear is so expensive...

Ahhh a 2012 vintage.. 4,272 × 2,848 isn't bad at all for scanning though, assuming you have a sharp enough macro lens to saturate the APSC censor.

Fuji cameras are nice! My first interchangeable lens camera was a used X-E1 that made very pretty jpegs, but it was pretty slow to use.

Unfortunately they're hyped now as a brand due to people chasing the "film look" trend, so even the used stuff isn't that cheap anymore. If I had infinite money I'd definitely try out a GFX.