Developing at home

Well I guess I haven’t mentioned it, but im quite a fan of photography, mainly the cool old film stuff. Sure ive dabbled in the digital realm, but it really doesn’t cut it for me. I guess ive been spoilt, using the beautiful Olympus OM system for the past year or so. What more could someone taking photos ask for though, simple, small, robust, cheap and a real pleasure to work with – probably the main reasons im having trouble shaking the film habit. You see I can get myself a full pro-level camera that operates independent of batteries and the size of a digi cross-over for the order of 50 bucks.. Don’t get me started on the lenses, which are both ridiculously small and super sharp., and equally as cost savvy as the camera. So im sitting here with somewhere near 500 bucks invested in kit, which leaves me 2 professional bodies and 6 or so lenses to play with. Not bad given that to take similar images id be looking at a canon 5d.

I guess the one flaw in my image taking process that was casing my wallet to bleed was developing and film costs – something like 25 bucks per film for the develop and scan alone. Well a few weeks ago, I decided the buck stops here, selling my trusty OM4 (that started the whole obsession), to free up some cash for some chemicals and a whole host of old dark room ‘junk’, not to mention the cheaper replacement of the om4 with it’s older brother – another om1.

With developing most pro lab’s would have you believe that developing is a black art acquired over many years, and that by entrusting your films to them, your going to get the best results possible. Not so ive just found out. Most of the labs in Brisbane im lead to believe are using only the basic Kodak D-76 / Ilford ID-11 developers for everything – what about those films for push processing? Or those that are shot for extra detail, or where grain would add something?
So a few weeks ago, when my ebay purchases arrived, I took the opportunity to turn my kitchen into an alchemy lab. Now given it was Australian summer – a few things were a bit awry – air tep - 35 degrees, water - 28. Normal developing temp? 15-24 degrees - time to cool things down with a home made ice bath in the sink. After all the pissing about guessing, punting, and filling in the details where you simply haven’t thought about what’s next, my first film emerged perfectly developed, shot with the new untested dodgy om1 with the fired metering circuit. Some days things just work, or is it that developing istn that hard?

Next on the menu was push processing – an absolute dark art if you believe the pro lab hype. Not really – its simply uprating the films ISO at the shooting stage, then increasing development accordingly. So that’s it – set the meter on the camera differently, then put the film in the soup for a couple extra minutes? Dead easy. Well I guess to say im happy with developing at home would be an understatement. Its definitely something that’s helped me to fight off the digital realm for a little while longer.

Oh and the results


APX 400 - nice and contrasty


APX in rodianl - classic toanlity


HP5 @1600 in microphen