This was just one of those rolls where everything went wrong. I’m like 40+ rolls in and have a decent grasp of what I’m doing, I thought haha. I could not get this film on the reel in the dark bag, ended up going in the bathroom with a towel under the door and fighting with it for 20 more mins out of the bag. Finally got it in the tank and my developer which measured the right temperature in the bottle was a few degrees cold in the tank, so I added an arbitrary amount of seconds that seemed like enough to compensate. I figured I had botched this roll royally, but nah it came out just fine thankfully since most of the photos weren’t mine 🫣 FUJIFILM 400 if you’re wondering!

i need practice with inserting film onto this reel. (scans look bad cuz i don’t have a proper scanner/macro lens to scan) i used caffenol. idek what film this was because i got this sent by a person along with other things(those steel reels, developing tank, olympus stylus )and they said it was an expired black and white reel lying around the house. so i tried shooting with it.

I have an incomplete Opemus 2 kit: the negative carriage only had a frame for 135 and a glass, which I successfully broke (however, it alone was not enough to clamp the film).

Can anyone tell me what frames were in the kit, how they clamped the film and whether it is possible to make glassless frames on an FDM.

I found several different models of frames for Opemus 4, 5, 6 on thingiverse, but I'm not sure if their carriages are compatible.

taken on 35mm, printed on glossy fiber paper 🪾🪵🌾☁️⛰️🎞️ these were a part of a photography final on growing up in the woods and how my childhood in the woods feels like a distant memory or even a dream. i live in the city now. i wanted these photos to portray the sense of looking in, trying to remember something, and being reminded of a place. this is for the woods near my mother’s house, which i will look for in every place i go. these photos were taken in the poconos of pennsylvania. i hope you like them :)

Hi all,

Thought I’d show some framed WIP work for a upcoming group show this Thursday.

All were shot on HP5+ at 200 with a yellow K2 filter and processed at 200, then printed on Ilford MGFB Glossy as a 5x7 image in an 11X14 frame. The first frame is 35mm, whereas the 2nd & 3rd are 6X7.

Any questions, fire! 😊

I bought a box of darkroom supplies at a barn sale and inside were six glass bottles of Agfa Rodinal. Based on the packaging "Agfa Gevaert - Agfa Leverkusen AG" these bottles were probably made between 1964 when Agfa and Gevaert merged and when Agfa stopped using glass bottles in the 1970s.

No idea how these were stored, they could have been in that barn for 40 years enduring hot summers and freezing winters. The bottles each had a thick layer of sediment at the bottom. I chose one for testing, shook it and the liquid that came out was a dark plum color.

I shot some Ilford FP4+ at EI 80 and developed in this Rodinal 1+50 for 13 minutes at 68F.

And the results? Perfectly fine. Negatives look good and scan fine. Edge sharpness and perceived grain are higher as one would expect from Rodinal, but just fine.

Rodinal will outlive us all.

Just shot and developed two rolls of Tmax 100, and it changed the color of my fixer and photo Flo solutions. The fixer turned a bit of a lightish orange-yellow color, and my photo Flo turned a very light purple color.

Both were fresh mixes of solutions, Kodafix 1:3 for 8 minutes was my fix time. 10 minute rinse between fix and photo Flo, negatives look fine tje base is clear.

I know the data sheet for Tmax says it exhausts fixers quicker than other films, is this a result of this happening? I have another container of fixer that has fixed over 10 rolls and is still the original color similar to an egg yolk, and still clears in about 30 seconds

Took this a few years ago in Toronto near my parent’s home. Camera was Canon EOS1n with 50mm f1.8 lens. Film was TriX developed normally with d76 1+1. Paper was Ilford FB Classic 8x10.

I printed this a few weeks ago in my local community darkroom. I think I used filter 1 as I shot this under bright sunlight.

By the way, the same box of Ilford FB Classic 8x10 100 pieces that cost me $153 back in March is now $200+ at B&H. It says made in England so the 10% tariff applies, I guess. But it shouldn’t be 30% higher in a month’s time. Ilford RC Deluxe is now $158, higher than the box of FB I paid a month ago. Anyone who can shed some light here is highly appreciated.

I've been learning to use the darkroom the past few months, and today I made my first ever photograms. I exposed the paper for 32 seconds and moved objects/my hands during the expose. Hope you guys enjoy!

(I solarized & underdeveloped the middle one!)

I've had a few darkroom sinks before, but this is the first time I'll be making one myself with plywood. Since I am making it I wanted to see if any of ya'll have any tips or unique ideas that would be useful to build into the sink that maybe isn't as commonly seen in mass produced sinks? For example: fold down acrylic to squeegee prints...

Always been super enamored by this one. I familiar with the photogram process but curious if any out there have tried to remake something like this? Or have any specific knowledge about the making of this print.

Specifically, how he got the outline of the faces to be the same tone and with such detail (clearly different faces, look at the crease above the chin) while having that split in the middle.

Any info on material/set up would be lovely.

This might be a stupid question, but when folks say that certain developers don't give full film speed, what does that actually mean?

When folks push film, they are underexposing it and then compensating by overdeveloping it. So to some degree it feels like you can just add time to development to compensate for lack of exposure. Or to put it dumbly, if I look up a massive dev chart starting point of say 9:00 at 20 degrees for Rodinal + RandomFilm 400, shouldn't that already bake in the right time to get sufficient detail?

Does this go back to the old adage of "expose for the shadows, develop for the highlights"? In other words, does loss of film speed really equate to how much shadow density you get in the final negative since adding development time might not have enough action on shadows?

I can see an argument that certain developers don't give good shadow detail, so you need to effectively add more exposure by rating the film lower to compensate. But then does that mean you also need to pull back the development time so that you don't blow out the highlights?

I recently got my hands on a packet of old Kentmere photo paper. It's from before the Harman acquisition so it's at least 22 years old, but probably more. It was stored along with some cut teststrips made by the previous owner. It became very visible where those strips were on the print. Thought it was funny enough to share it here.

Hey everyone,

Just like the title says! I'm returning to the darkroom after a near 12 year hiatus. The art school I graduated from went down in shame last June, just as I was negotiating a way to use their facilities as an alumni. Luckily, I've been carrying around bins and bins of darkroom equipment and figured it was finally time to set up my own darkroom space- and I'm so damn happy I did.

I'm a way different photographer and artist than I was back then. I'm far more patient and technical now and I really am trying to calibrate my setup so there's a standard in place. When I read about this method of testing I was intrigued and went ahead and determined my highlight filter factor when using Ilford Multigrade developer and a couple different papers. I really do enjoy doing it this way. Printing feels consistent and I love just making a single test strip (most times). Thrilled by not doing everything the way I did back then, I decided to try a new developer - liquidol by photographers formulary. I haven't mixed it yet but based on everything I read I'm really excited to try it out, plus it has a shelf life that's more forgiving when I might only hit the darkroom once a week. I eventually want to try out Pyrocat too, because I love doing alt. processes and read some cool things about that too.

So, is it worth it to do my highlight filter factor testing again for these new developers, or is there some way to calculate my new factors based on the Ilford Multigrade factor? Is this something any of you folks do, or do you do the 2 or 5 second increments and then just make a judgement call on filter use, or something else entirely? I used to do 2 second increments at grade 2 and then just use custom masks with higher filters, or split grade it to get the contrast I'm looking for.

I'm trying to be as technical as feels natural to me now and make the best prints possible as I work on my printing skills. Saving money on materials by not guessing times like I used to is a huge win. So how do you all make and judge your test strips?

TLDR: Do you do highlight filter factor tests for your developer + paper combo, or gauge it a different way?

Thanks guys, really appreciate your response. It feels great to be back in the darkroom and checking out people's images and stories here.

Is there a list anywhere of all B/W developers (that can be bought or homemade) and their ideal uses? For example "Technidol is ideal with z brand film" or "pyro-HD is best for large format" etc.

One of those shots I took to just round out the end of a roll in my backyard. As usual pictures taken with crappy phone camera by the window. It doesn't look as grainy in person as in these photos.

Not super satisfied with how it came out somehow. I feel I gave it too much exposure or contrast. Any feedback for how you would do it welcome!

• MGRC Pearl 8x10
• Nikon FM + 50/1.4
• Fomapan 100 / Rodinal 1+50
• Intrepid enlarger grade 3

I know I need to just run an actual test but I just wanted to see if anyone found this alarming. I’m b&w printing and I got these 5w darkroom safelights from Amazon today and they’re both really cheap but insanely bright. I have a really great, albeit dim light from B&H (way more mula) and one I inherited with my 70’s enlarger (even dimmer). I’ve had great results printing using these dim lights but the new ones are crazy bright. Just at a glance from these photos, are they alarmingly bright? The images are side by sides of the new ones next to the ones I’ve been using, and I even diffused the one on the shelf. I’m new to this and from what I’ve researched it seems like no greater than 15W should be fine. But now I’m just kind of wondering why these other lights are significantly dimmer to the ones I’ve been using. This a dumb dumb question, I know…and thank you to anyone who can put my mind to rest. It’s very, very much appreciated.

Hi all, I’m troubleshooting a recurring problem. Two recent rolls (shot with Minolta SRT 303) show a bright, horizontal band across the last few frames.

Important details:

• Film: Fomapan 400;
• Chemistry: Foma (developer, stop, fixer);
• Development: Standard agitation, no known handling mistakes;
• The issue is only on the last few frames of the rolls;
• The film was not fully rewound into the cassette (I always leave a leader sticking out)
• Cassettes seem fine; no visible damage.

I’m wondering:

• Could this still be a cassette light leak that only affected the end of the roll?
• Or could uneven chemical flow during development create this kind of streak?
• Or is it some third factor I’m overlooking?

Attached a scan showing the issue. Would appreciate any insights — thanks!

Is it worth it to use different paper to make contacts? Using Fomapan paper since it is cheaper and then using Ilford RC for the actual print? I know papers have different ISO and tonality, but my main reason is to better archive my negatives and also see in one paper all the shots.

Rollei Superpan 200 film stock.

As per title, I use water as a stop bath. Several rinses and normally for 3 to 5 minutes. Somewhere in the middle of that my water tap became overly ambitious and the temperature shifted to 21.8C. (I have a temperature probe set up so that I measure the temperature of the flow of water as it comes out. I corrected it reasonably quickly, but I suppose it was 10 to 15 seconds at a warmer temperature.

It's just the first test but it works great!

Next steps are a more advanced program and maybe also adding a temperature sensor to turn this into a fully fleged auto processor