• 1231: Banning State Park (4 April 2021. Rollei RPX 25 @ EI 25.) (On top.)
  • 1229: Minneapolis / St Paul (1 Apr 2021. Kentmere Pan 100 @ EI 100.)
  • 1224: Minneapolis Institute of Art. (28 March 2021. Arista .EDU 400 = Fomapan 400 @ EI 400.)
  • 1223: drive north of Minneapolis / Cherokee Regional Park (21-?28 Mar 2021. Kentmere Pan 400 @ EI 400.)
  • 1222: Jesus / Owatonna / drive north of Minneapolis. (20-21 Mar 2021. Adox CMS 20 II Pro @ EI 20.) (On bottom.)

Five different rolls, all film I’ve never before developed in Caffenol, all shot at box speed, on 35mm rolls in the five-roll tank. All are new-to-me film types that I’ve previously developed in Rodinal. This is just a standard sixty-minute semi-stand development with one agitation interval after the first minute.

Pre-wet film for about an hour, changing water three or four times. Mixed 1L Caffenol CL with enough chemicals for 1.15L: 18g waterfree washing soda, 12g Vitamin C, 20g iodized salt, and 46g Kroger Original Roast instant coffee. Topped off the tank with water to ~1.15L. Agitated 40x over first minute, then 10x over 15 seconds at 30:00. These are half-agitations, gently (i.e., gently twisting to a 90-degree inversion, then gently back); I want to see if that helps to reduce grain. Kept orientation the same throughout development: this larger tank leaks a bit.

After 60 minutes, disposed of developer, rinsed in 68 degree water, filling and emptying the tank until the water rinsed completely clear, then four more times. Fixed in Ilford Rapid Fixer 1+4 for 6 minutes (that’s now 22 rolls from this batch of fixer), inverting 10x over 15 seconds at the top of every minute. Recaptured fixer and rinsed for ten minutes, then emptied tank, added a few drops of Photo-Flo, filled tank again and agitated 20x, and hung negatives vertically to dry.

Evaluation and notes

Roll 1222

Interesting experiment, but it mostly didn’t pay off. The contrast really is too high in Caffenol, at least with this formulation; many shots have effectively no detail in highlights or shadows or both. Perhaps exposing at a lower EI would get more detail in shadows, as is commonly suggested. In many cases, DNG-via-HDR scanning gets a lot more detail. But in some cases (19, 21, 23), DNG-via-HDR-to-JPG tricked the automated postprocessing created weird artefacts during the HDR merge; in some cases these might be fixable. There are sets (23, 25, 27, 29, 31) where overlaying the non-HDR and the HDR might pay off.

Some pictures (9, 13, 35, 37) came out acceptably despite the contrast. Some have other reasons for being appealing despite the high contrast: 39, 41, 45. 49, 51, 55, 61, 71, 73. Some of the lonely-country-type photos are quite moving in their way. Lots of photos have extreme vignetting.

Unlikely to do this again unless trying to reproduce effects that happened here. If I do, I’ll want to overexpose the film.

Oh, and this film stock is a real pain in the ass to handle physically.

photos posted

Roll 1223

All in all, this turned out well: I like Kentmere Pan 400 in Caffenol CL. There’s a nice crisp graininess to it, and the grain is comparatively light for a 400-speed film in Caffenol. The roll is noticeably underdeveloped, but not so much that it makes compensating while scanning impossible.

There is uneven development on some frames, especially towards the beginning and end of the roll. More agitation next time may pay off. A few frames that were damaged by not being wound properly are disappointing, but nothing substaintial was lost.

Bark texture is gorgeous. Everything is quite crisp.

Roll 1224

Grain is huge, and that ruins some shots; bumping up the amount of salt more might help in some places. Shooting location here was just dim, too, and that lost some shots; so did the inevitable cat hair, which shows up periodically no matter what I do.

But there’s some good textures here, and that was one thing I was hoping for for these shots; and sometimes the dim lighting works well (27). Shots of paintings largely didn’t work on this roll, though there are exceptions (43). Shots of sculpture largely did come out well.

All in all, roll seems a little underdeveloped, and HDR-type scans sometimes show evidence of unevent development. Next time, increasing the developing time to 70 minutes might pay off.

All in all, I think I prefer Rodinal for Fomapan 400.

Roll 1229

Unevenly developed, and some haloing: needs more agitation? This ruins some otherwise good shots. More developing time may be needed, in the end, but I want to try more agitation first. There’s places where the brick texture looks good on there, too.

Kentmere 100 in Rodinal looks better.

photos posted

Roll 1231

Contrast is extreme in many shots – much too high in Caffenol, in fact. Some otherwise-unusable shots are salvaged by via-HDR scanning.

There’s plenty to like here, though: it’s a contrasty base with nice rich blacks and some detail in the highlights (again, especially with HDR-type scanning).