Fomapan 400 in Caffenol-STD – Experiments and Results. And Large Format

This is an article of fine art figure photographer Scott Nichol from Allentown, PA, USA. You can visit his blog at http://www.silverystars.com/somanystars/. The Original article can be found here. I wanted to experiment with the recipe for a coffee-based film developer commonly called Caffenol. Dirk Essl at caffenol.org does an excellent job of keeping track of development times for Read more…

Density testprint

Density

f you read a bit about caffenol development or development in general, you will quickly learn phrases like “my negatives came out very dense” or “negatives where thin, but scanned fine”. So what does all that mean?

If you develop color films in caffenol, most likely you will get dense negatives (dense meaning you cannot see through the film in this case), positive films and High ISO films will be denser then low ISO films. These negatives are not very good to produce prints on paper, as contrast is quite low and they have an orange mask. High ISO B&W Films will most likely come out very thin and will look like underdeveloped negatives. Both types will scan fine and with a small amount of Post Processing (Level adjustments) they will look good on a screen.

Hold on. Color film?

Well, you can develop every kind of film in Caffenol (a B&W process, that is) as long as it contains silver. So why not push that to the extreme and use an expired ISO 1600 Film and develop it in Caffenol.Well, you can develop every kind of film in Caffenol (a B&W process, that is) as long as it contains silver. So why not push that to the extreme and use an expired ISO 1600 Film and develop it in Caffenol.