Java Jive

 

Pictured, my recently-acquired darkroom changing bag and System Four developing tank. I'd decided that getting a lab to process my speculative test films from unknown-quantity old film cameras was getting a bit expensive, so I focussed on getting back into my old haunt of developing my own stuff, which I have done professionally in past lives; and as the prospect of building a pukka darkroom is fast joining the morass of projects unlikely to get done, I relented and bought the above. I've got some conventional chemistry down in the studio, which I might as well use up for the initial few test rolls, as they will at least give a standard output by which to judge the cameras rather than the film/dev combo.But as these days I'm more into the serendipities of the photographic process, I'm going to investigate the alternative world of Caffenol: film development based around coffee.

The ingredients involved are all household and non-toxic, unlike most, if not all, traditional film chemistry, and so, apart from from the benefit of being cheap, they are environmentally friendly to boot, which can't be at all bad. Although there are reports of such concoctions being employed during WWII due to the short supply of chemicals, it's modern incarnation was formalised in 1995 by Dr. Scott Williams at The Rochester Institute of Technology. I look forward to seeing the results, and I might just get around to tidying the studio and getting one of my enlargers installed into a workable space down there. In the short term, I can scan any 35mm films I process, but the medium format stuff will have to wait for the attenuated darkroom! Keep you posted...