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Caffenol: Developing Film with Coffee, an Intro
Ask any analog photographer who has developed their own film, and they will talk your ear off. They will wax eloquent about the process and the romance of the whole doing-it-yourself-in-the-darkroom.
It’s intoxicating—I admit—and not in a chemically-induced way. There’s a mystique around developing your own film rather than waiting for the film to return from the local film kiosk.
You get more of an “ohhhh” effect when you first take out the freshly developed and glossy film that you did yourself; you don’t get that feeling when you finally get your film back from CVS.
There are a few ways to develop film, but they all rely on the same basic process: an acid is applied to the exposed film, another acid is used to stop development, and a fixer is applied to “fix” or prevent the film from reacting further to light—a really simple process overall.
Typically, the developer comprises hydroquinone, phenidone, or dimezone—all of which are acidic. Acid is needed to bring out the silver halides in the film. Sometimes other chemicals are used to increase the acidity, like sodium hydroxide or sodium carbonate.
A stop bath is added to prevent over-exposing the film by halting the developer and washing it away. Acetic acid is used in this step, however, water and very thorough rinsing to wash away the remaining developer may also be used (there’s a lot of debate over this aspect, but if you do it thoroughly and quickly as I do, you never notice a difference).
Lastly, the fixer. This step is typically made up of using either ammonium thiosulfate or sodium thiosulfate. The fixer washes away any unexposed silver in the film and prevents any further reaction to light. The image is now “fixed” on the film. Clever name, eh?
So, with names like acetic acid and hydroquinone, one has to wonder . . . are these chemicals really necessary?
They can be, but that’s not what Caffenol is all about.
Back in 1995, a clever bloke named Dr. Scott Williams, Ph.D. of Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) discovered an alternative way to develop black and white film using household items that aren’t toxic and can be bought at your local market or pharmacy.
