Processing my 1st film

When I say processed my first film, what I really meant is that I have just processed my first film for a very long time. As mentioned in my previous post, I haven't used 35mm for over fifteen years. I put a roll of Ilford HP5 Plus in my Olympus OM4ti last year and took a series of photographs during a trip to London, especially around the bustling Borough Market. I also took the camera with me on a recent trip to Cambridge and this morning took the last half dozen frames in and around my home. This is due to the family self-isolating as a result of  having a high temperature over the weekend.

In fact I see this period of self-isolation as a good opportunity to rediscover my love for film. I bought the chemicals from Ilford, namely Ilfosol 3 film developer, PQ Universal print developer, Ilfostop and Rapid Fixer. The last two, the stop and the fixer, can be used for both film processing and printing. Currently you can purchase an Ilford Paterson film processing starter kit with chemicals, developing tank etc, for further info contact : sales@patersonphotographic.co.uk

When I was in the RAF we mainly used black and white, predominantly 120 roll film but also 35mm.  These were all processed in Paterson dev tanks, exactly the same as the one I used today. I used to process and print several rolls of film every day, it was second nature to me. I acquainted myself with the tank and the spiral and went over in my head the correct procedure. Not feeling 100% confident I checked online and watched a very good video from Ilford Photo - I will post the link below - I turned the light off and started to pull the end of the film onto the spiral. After a bit of fumbling I managed to feed it through and it all felt very familiar.

I prepared the chemicals, with temperatures as close to 20°C as possible. The development time for HP5 using Ilfosol 3 1:9 (30 ml to 270 ml water) is six and half minutes, with agitation for ten seconds every minute. The Ilfostop stop bath 1:14 (15 ml stop to 285 ml water) is agitated for about twenty seconds and the Rapid Fixer 1:4  (60 ml to 240 ml water) for approximately five minutes.

I nervously pulled the spiral out of the tank to check there were images on the film. Success. I will never forget that sinking feeling many, many years ago when I was processing a couple of films in the Air Force. I can't remember the actual film job, the memory must have been too painful...I took the film off the spirals and two films of 36 exposure totally blank, no edging numbers, nothing but clear acetate. It dawned on me that I had mixed the chemicals up and so fixed the films first, then used the stop bath and finally the developer. Thankfully no such disaster today and I was very relieved to see images.

I hung the film up to dry, put the kettle on and sat down and had a cup of tea. With the next two weeks at home, I look forward to the printing stage and also maybe using my Nikon Super Coolscan 8000ED for scanning the negatives onto the computer. We may be living in uncertain times at the moment and for the foreseeable future but there was something extremely gratifying to go back to something which played an important role in my life a long time ago.

Another useful introduction video about processing film from Ilford Photo :

Setting up my darkroom

When I was about 15 years old, my Dad got me interested in photography. We had a toilet under the stairs and we set up a little darkroom in there. The trays were precariously positioned on a board across the toilet and you used to have to kneel down in front of the developer, stop and fixer trays to process the paper. I still can't remember where the enlarger would have gone, presumably on the board. Not ideal by any standards but it was a start. I was hooked. Later, we set up in the spare room, much better with considerably more room and also we could both go in there at the same time !

 A few years later when I was 21 I joined the RAF as a Photographer and did my training at the Joint School of Photography at RAF Cosford. Here I was trained in many aspects of photography, including developing and printing and where I had access to the very best in facilities. A far cry from the balancing act in our downstairs loo.

After I left the RAF and when I bought my first house, I set up a darkroom in my spare room. I even had a plumber friend of mine install hot and cold water into a large industrial sink which had been removed from a steel works in Rotherham. I would print my 35mm and medium format negatives taken on my travels right through the night sometimes, unaware of the time sometimes.

After the birth of our first child the darkroom became the nursery and the developer trays in the large sink were replaced by a baby bath....ideal for bath time. This was about sixteen years ago and coincided with me buying my first digital camera, again perfect for the hundreds upon hundreds of images taken of our young daughter and later on my son who was born two years later.

Recently I got thinking about negatives and printing again. Although I had sold my Mamiya 645 camera, I had still kept by Olympus OM1n and OM2n, in addition to acquiring an OM4ti. I had also kept all my darkroom equipment, kept in storage in my parents basement. So, much to their relief I have dug it all out and set up a darkroom in my garage. Although not quite as well equipped as the spare room in my old house, it is perfectly adequate. There is no hot water in there so I have made a print washer out of a large plastic storage box and plastic piping and this then connects to the shower in the bathroom. I like to print on fibre based paper so a continuous water replenishment is needed.

I haven't yet finished the roll of Ilford FP4 Plus film currently in the OM4ti. When I do I will process it, mix up a batch of developer and resume a hobby of mine which I never thought I would ever go back to. I can't wait......

Here's the first video of a very informative new series on darkroom printing from Ilford Photo :