Color on caffenol.org

Kodak Portra 100T

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

While sorting out my Camera Cabinet I found a Roll of exposed Kodak Portra 100T (Tungsten). This film is not available new anymore, used prices of expired film go from 6 to 20 EUROs.

I had no clue when, what and with which camera I shot it. That’s one of the things I like with analog film: You never really know what you get until you develop the roll. I developed it in Delta-STD for 14 minutes and it came out quite nicely, but most of the pictures where badly composed, under or overexposed, so I can only show 3 examples. From seeing the pictures I could identify the camera: My lovely Russian Rangefinder Zorki 4. I had no Lightmeter at the time, so exposure was off on most shots. Auto Levels in Photoshop gives a nice brownish toning, but that doesn’t work on all pictures, so I converted one of them to ‘real’ B&W.

more Kodak Porta 160 NC

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I went to a Photo fair the other weekend and bought another, small camera that I always had an eye on: The Olympus XA. It is in excellent condition, came with the A11 Flash and a small bag. It had already batteries installed and as I always carry a Film canister with some film with me, it was obvious to put it in: 36 Exposures of 2007 expired Kodak Porta 160 NC. A wonderful color film, that comes out great in caffenol. The XA has only full ISO stops, so I dialed in ISO 200 and began shooting. I immediately fell in love with the little rangefinder. the aperture setting is in a bit weird place, but very nice to operate. Maximum shutter speed is 1/500s. so medium speed Film is ideal for this camera. So lean back and have a look on the pictures:

Density

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

If 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.

Neutral Color in B&W

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I have a fair amount of Kodak Professional Portra 160 NC (Neutral Color) but never tried it out. Having still the Hartblei Tilt-Shift on my Canon 3000N, I thought I should give it go. And low ISO film always comes out great in Caffenol.

Here are the results: