Daniel Pietzsch

Developing my first roll of 35mm film

Last week, I’ve been developing and scanning my first roll of 35mm film. I’m going to share some thoughts on this process and of course, I’m going to share some of the photos.

All the black and white photos shown here were shot using my Nikon FE with a 50mm E-Series lens on a beautiful and relatively warm Sunday afternoon two weeks ago in Düsseldorf. The film was a black and white Ilford HP5 Plus.

Developing

The developing was a bit of a daunting task, since I didn’t want to screw up and ruin the film – either by accidentally exposing the film to light, or by making a mistake during the developing process using the chemicals.
So, I first spent some time to read about how to develop a black and white film and also watched a couple of YouTube videos. And ultimately, I found a PDF from Ilford’s website to be the best guide. Although, I specifically developed an Ilford film – a HP5 Plus – I think this PDF would be helpful regardless of the film.

Here some resources I found helpful:

• Ilford: Producing your first black & white film (PDF)
• Ilford: film processing chart (PDF)
• Ilford website on black and white photography
• FilmDev.org: Developing recipes. A good resource to see how other people are developing their films and for reassuring yourself that you’re doing the right thing.
• Loading 35mm Film onto Plastic or Stainless Steel Reels - YouTube
• How to Develop Black and White Film from Start to Finished Results - YouTube

So, the first step was to get the film onto the reel.
After I shot the film, I didn’t wind back the film completely, so the leader was still outside. This gave me the option not having to crack open the roll in the dark and thus having to handle all steps in complete darkness. Since the leader was out, I could insert the first bit of the film into the reel with the lights on.

Winding the film onto the reel was quite fiddly, and I didn’t quite manage to get it on there as shown in the videos. But eventually, I got it on there by simply pushing the film in bit by bit.

Then, I had to develop the film in four steps:

1. Developing it with the Rodinal-solution (Adox Adonal).
2. Stopping development with a stop bath.
3. Fixing the film (using a Adox Adofix solution).
4. Washing (and using Adox Adolfo wetting agent at the final rinse).

For each process, I used a chemical solution, and all of them had to be tempered to roughly 20°C. It was a bit tedious to prepare all the solutions and especially maintaining them at 20°. But as I found out later, you probably don’t really need the chemicals for steps 2. and 4. And keeping all solutions at 20 degrees seems not to be too important, either. So next time, I’ll try without the chemicals for these steps and just use water.

And, what I should have done after washing (the last step), is wipe the whole film with a sponge to get rid of any remaining solution residues and also to get rid of the first few dust particles that might have already settle onto the film.

Then it was time for drying for which I just hung the strip over the bath tub.

On last word of caution: you should be aware that these chemicals are not harmless. I had a lightly irritated eye a bit later, probably from the solution fumes. So take care with those chemicals!

Scanning

To be able to scan the images, I had to cut the film-strip into sets of six images, so they fit into the scanner’s tray. Pretty easy. Just use regular scissors.

The scanning itself was pretty straight forward, too. I used a Epson Perfection V200 Photo scanner. The Software – “Epson Scan” – automatically recognises the individual images and it’s just a matter of choosing the resolution and file-format you want. I chose JPEG with 600 dpi for a 10x15cm target format, which gives me 8.7 megapixel images.

What I can recommend – and what I didn’t do right from the beginning – is to examine the negatives once again before putting them into the scanner and wiping them with a dry and clean cloth. This should get rid of any new dust.

Here are two helpful resources for the scanning process:

• Film Grains Meet Digital Pixels: A Complete Guide to Scanning Film | Photojojo
• Film Scanner Lite iOS App to examine the negatives.

Conclusion

And that’s it.

Overall, it was not really difficult to develop the film. And next time I’ll probably be considerably faster, since I’ll be more familiar with the process, and – as I said – will skip preparing the stop-bath solution.

So, I’m going to do this again. Especially since I really enjoy the whole workflow.
It’s really different to shoot film. I tend to shoot more deliberate, and also pay more attention to composition right away. There’s the suspense having to wait for your photos and not knowing how they turned out. And in the end there are way less photos to edit. And, I think I end up with a much higher percentage of “keepers”. And of course, I like the look of film.