Photography: Developing Black and White Film

A History of Bad Men (Tmax 100; developed in Ilfosol 3 [1:9]).

For the past year, I have been fascinated by film photography, having been introduced to it from my late grandfather. Shortly after starting to shoot 35mm film, I began to scan my negatives using my Nikon Zf with a 105mm f2.8 MC lens and a Valoi Easy35. This allowed me to pay a lab to develop the film for me, but digitize and edit the negatives myself, rather than paying for the lab to scan them (and often give low quality jpegs unless you pay over $20 per roll). This reduced cost while also affording me more control over the process. Despite this, I could not escape the feeling that I should also be doing the development myself too. My grandfather would often talk about how he used to develop his own black and white film and even had a darkroom for a short while. After doing some research, I discovered that the process is relatively straightforward, only requiring a single developer that can be used at room temperature (20oC/68oF) and a fixer. To my delight, I was given a Paterson Film Processing Starter Kit as an early birthday gift, and wanted to share some of my initial results!

My current black and white film developing setup, mostly consisting of components from a Paterson Film Processing Starter Kit.

The Starter kit contained a Paterson tank to develop two rolls of 35mm at a time, along with 50ml graduated cylinders for measuring and mixing the required chemicals. The chemicals provided were part of Ilford’s Simplicity line, which provides pre-measured packets of chemicals, only requiring water to bring them up to the required final volume. Importantly, the developer included is Ilfosol 3, which is typically used at a 1:9 dilution and should be discarded after a single use. I followed the developer instructions provided in the Ilford data sheet, but also cross-referenced the Massive Dev Chart (a continually updated, the developing chart that has been online since 1995 and contains both manufacturer's published times and user submissions) and used their Timer app to remind me all the correct steps and when I need to agitate the developer tank. All of this, along with a great YouTube video by Kyle McDougall, made the process painless and straightforward. The most difficult part was loading the film onto the development spools, since it needed to be done in a lightproof darkbag. Kyle’s video showing this loading process was very helpful, and I was able to do it without issue.

After developing my first two rolls of film using the Ilford Simplicity chemicals included in the Paterson kit, I purchased larger bottles of the relevant chemicals. I decided to replace Ilfosol 3 with DD-X as the developer, since I read it was better for finer grain films and that Ilfosol 3 can pronounce the grain in film. I have been using Ilfostop to stop the development process, but I am told you can just use water to wash off the developer.

Below are some shots from my first roll of Tri-X 400, developed in Ilfotec DD-X (1:4) for 7:30 (min:sec):

A spyrehead of the Diocese of the Adamant Spires, created by Ana Polanšćak of Gardens of Hecate.

Ada Fortescue, Arbites sniper.

Kirill Blokhin of the Church of the Red Athenaeum.

A Silver Snake Space Marine.

Roland Arnesen Missionary of Church of the Red Athenaeum.

I have even had great success printing out some of the developed images on my Epson ET-8550. This one was printed as large as 13x19!

I am really excited that my first venture in developing film went so smoothly! I plan to focus on using black and white film for the foreseeable future, so that I can keep experimenting with developing, and hopefully settle on a film stock I really like. So far, I was really impressed with Kodak Tmax 100, with the resulting images looking almost like digital ones. Let me know if you have any experience with developing film or have a particular film stock I should try!

- Eric Wier