1 year caffenol.org – a flashback

Published by dirk on

Back in October 2009 I read some crazy stuff about developing expired color film in Coffee and Washing Soda, and was blown away about the results you could get with cheap instant coffee and cheap washing soda. So I thought I’ll give it a try. During Summer I was hunting for old cameras on several flea markets and already had done some shootings with them, but giving the films to the lab and letting them scan them. After I read about this ‘caffenol’ thing, I bought a daylight Developing Tank from ebay, an Agfa Rondinax 35, some coffee and some soda. I loaded some Fujicolor 1600 into my Zorki 4and walked around through my flat. I don’t remember exactly which recipe I used and had no idea if it would work at all. This is one of the first pictures I ever did in caffenol:

“Scanned” with a Pentax K10D using a self built slide duplicator made out of a box of Kellogs and black tape.It worked. And it hit me in a way, that most of things I shoot is now on Film, developed in caffenol. Of course in a much more improved way with my or your recipes. And even as sucessful to have a picture featured in the flickr blog: So far, there are 41 articels on this site, meaning roughly a new article every 1 1/2 weeks. 29,628 People have visited this site so far, on average there are 220 Visitors each day. www.caffenol.org is listed in wikipedia and is usually in the top 3 if you search for caffenol in Google. So I would like to thank all of you that advertise my blog, comment on my pictures on flickr, and all of you that send me wonderful pictures developed in caffenol. All of you will be published, I promise. A special thanks goes to Reinhold from caffenol.blogspot.com who pushes caffenol to a level that competes with commercial developers and tries to standardise the way we measure and mix up our soup. Thank you all. And Happy Birthday www.caffenol.org

Deutscher Text folgt… Back in October 2009 I read some crazy stuff about developing expired color film in Coffee and Washing Soda, and was blown away about the results you could get with cheap instant coffee and cheap washing soda. So I thought I’ll give it a try. During Summer I was hunting for old cameras on several flea markets and already had done some shootings with them, but giving the films to the lab and letting them scan them. After I read about this ‘caffenol’ thing, I bought a daylight Developing Tank from ebay, an Agfa Rondinax 35, some coffee and some soda. I loaded some Fujicolor 1600 into my Zorki 4and walked around through my flat. I don’t remember exactly which recipe I used and had no idea if it would work at all. This is one of the first pictures I ever did in caffenol:

“Scanned” with a Pentax K10D using a self built slide duplicator made out of a box of Kellogs and black tape.It worked. And it hit me in a way, that most of things I shoot is now on Film, developed in caffenol. Of course in a much more improved way with my or your recipes. And even as sucessful to have a picture featured in the flickr blog: So far, there are 41 articels on this site, meaning roughly a new article every 1 1/2 weeks. 29,628 People have visited this site so far, on average there are 220 Visitors each day. www.caffenol.org is listed in wikipedia and is usually in the top 3 if you search for caffenol in Google. So I would like to thank all of you that advertise my blog, comment on my pictures on flickr, and all of you that send me wonderful pictures developed in caffenol. All of you will be published, I promise. A special thanks goes to Reinhold from caffenol.blogspot.com who pushes caffenol to a level that competes with commercial developers and tries to standardise the way we measure and mix up our soup. Thank you all. And Happy Birthday www.caffenol.org

Categories: NewsPictures

dirk

Dirk Essl is the founder of caffenol.org And has done a tremendous amount of coffee development in the past.

4 Comments

Mathias · March 14, 2011 at 7:57 am

Happy birthday to caffenol.org, and thanks for all the beautiful shots and great articles! 🙂

Jozsef · March 14, 2011 at 7:23 pm

Hi Dirk,

happy birthday to your ‘baby’ and congratulations! Caffenol.org is one of the few sites I check each day. All the best and keep on playing!

Jozsef form Hungary

deivisonamaral · August 1, 2014 at 4:57 pm

Hello there,
very useful site. Congrats!
I am just starting to use Caffenol. I have a Essex 35 daylight developing tank and I have a doubt about agitation. Using standard tanks we invert from time to time. Using Essex 35 or Rondinax like yours, how long should I rotate the knob? is there any time chart to use caffenol with this kind of tank?
Thank you in advance and once again congrats about the site!

Eugene · November 19, 2018 at 3:48 pm

I just consider developing film myself and my son did mention the use os coffee…But is it only for color films or can I try it wit a monochrome film?
Regards, Eugene van Oudheusden
p.s.I am considering of purchasin a Rodimax 35 and a 60….

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