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…
