Developing Film With Coffee..by Tom Kirkendall

This is the first in a lineup to feature some of our members. Tom is one of our first to join and his method caught my attention. More than a morning wake up..it can do film as well.

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From Tom Kirkendall
A beaker full of Jo

I live in the land where Starbucks Coffee flows more often than rain. With so much caffeinated liquid around there must be something you can do with it besides drink it!?

Through the Fine Art Photography Group on Linkedin I heard about processing black and white film in coffee. I volunteer in the photography class at the local high school where the students are always looking for something wacky to try and this sounded wacky.

There is a lot of info on the web and numerous formulas for giving this a shot. Some of the best advice came from Specialty Color Services Lab (www.color services.com) in Santa Barbara CA. They will process your film if you no longer , or never had, a darkroom to play in. As a bonus they will donate part of the fee to a charity. Way cool.

What do you need……for 1 roll of 35mm...................................(4)
5 large tsp. of instant coffee…..not decaf
3 ½ tsp. of sodium carbonate. I got a life time supply at a pool
supply store
½ tsp. of Vitamin C powder or finely chopped 2 1000mg tablets
2 beakers or glass cups to mix the soup in
1 measuring cup 8 oz to 16 oz
And all the other normal darkroom stuff to process film with like
stop bath, fixer, film washer, photo flow, drying rack and a loud
music system.

Time to brew.
A) Mix the Vitamin C and the coffee in a beaker. Add 6 ounces of HOT water ( 170 - 200 degrees). Stir until everything is dissolved.

B) In a separate glass mix up the sodium carbonate with 6 oz of warm to hot water stirring until dissolved........................................................(5)

C) Let the two mixtures cool in there own beaker until almost at processing temp. I use 70 degrees.

D) Mix the two together ( must use in 30 min.) cool it to
processing temp and pour into loaded processing tank. If you
chopped up your own V- C you may want to pass it through a
coffee filter it strain out undissolved bits.

E) Be sure the tank is full to keep down foaming during agitation.
Agitate for the first minute then about 5 seconds every 15
seconds. Do not be afraid to agitate to long. A JOBO processor
May be a good tool for this formula using continuous agitation.
Process for 15 min. as a starting point. Your time will be?????

F) Stop bath ( I use water), fix, wash and dry as normal to you.

So the results! I did two rolls. I roll of Ilford 120 HP5+ (with a plastic Diana Camera) and one roll of 35mm Arista Ultra 400. I cut the ISO in half for each film and was not afraid to over expose from there. Each film came out a little flat in contrast with a tight granular almost rocky grain structure. Not unpleasing, but not wacky enough to put it into its own category of “wow cool”. I liked the results of the 120 roll better, results may vary. I could see where it would be fun to do a series of portraits of people …..say…..in a coffee house. Print them up and stain the prints in the left over developer??............................................................................................................(6)......

Sample prints, 1+3 is the 120 Ilford film and 4-6 the 35mm Arista Ultra.

Tom Kirkendall

Thank you Tom for sharing

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