You might have gathered by now that I didn’t really like the combination of contrast and grain I was seeing from the Delta 100 film that I was having commercially developed and scanned, so I started looking for some equipment on ebay so that I could do my own processing. I already had a few bits and pieces such as measuring cylinders and a thermometer left over from the last time. (I knew they’d be handy one day – it was just a miracle that I managed to find them 40 years and several house moves on). All I really needed was a processing tank and a good sized changing bag.
After watching out for processing tanks on ebay for a week or so to get a feel for the going rate, I put in a bid for a collection of three Paterson tanks and won. Here they are – cost £5 plus £5.50 postage – all complete and in excellent condition. Not bad when you consider a new one would cost £20 or more.
I had originally thought I’d just keep one tank and sell the other two to get my money back but then decided it wasn’t really worth the effort so I now have spares.
When it came to a changing bag I couldn’t find a second hand one so I bit the bullet and bought a new one.
The choice of reagents actually proved to be straight forward. I looked up Ilford recommendations and chose DDX developer (expensive or what) as this seemed a good place to start. I also bought some food grade citric acid to make up a stop bath (1 teaspoon or roughly 5g in 400ml), cheaper than commercial stop bath and odourless unlike the acetic acid based ones), Ilford Rapid fixer and some Fotospeed branded rinse aid.
So now I’m ready to develop my own negatives but how do I get prints. Getting negatives scanned commercially seems to be rather expensive if it isn’t part of a develop and scan deal and of course you have to factor in postage costs too. I’ll need to find a solution.
I BOUGHT AN OLD FILM CAMERA 