Adventures in Filmland
// March 10th, 2010 // No Comments » // Photography
My foray into photography began simply. I wanted to have a “decent” camera to take better pictures of my as-of-yet unborn daughter. So I found my dad’s old Canon EF in the back of a closet somewhere, got it cleaned up, and was on my way. Then I bought another camera, this time it was a Holga. Then I graduated from grad school and as a gift I found myself the pleasant owner of a Canon Rebel XSI dSLR. And even thought I can take some good pictures with the dSLR, I always find myself looking for good deals on film and film cameras (especially this one). So as an adventure I decided to try my hand on developing my own film. I bought a used developing tank and reel off craigslist and a bunch of chemicals (listed below) from B&H. As a typical biochemist, I wrote out how everything went down:
Developing Neopan 400 using HC-110 and Ilford Rapid Fix
- Get chemicals ready
- Initial Rinse: 500ml dH20 in Beaker
- Developer: HC-110 Dilution B (One shot developer)
- To make 500ml mix 16ml concentration + 484ml dH20
- To make Dilution H : 8ml + 492ml dH20
- Stop Bath: 1L dH20 in beaker
- Fixer: Ilford Rapid Fix (Reuse?)
- Mix 1:4 in black 500ml bottle (100ml Rapid Mixer concentrate + 400ml dH20)
- Wash: 1.5L dH20
- Put film on Reel
- Initial rinse with dH20 – 5 minutes with some inverting at the beginning and some stamping to remove any air bubbles – after 5 minutes dump out water
- Developer
- Fill quickly
- Develop for 9min. 15sec in Dilution H in 22°C water
- Agitation: First 30 seconds and then the first 15 seconds of every minute starting at 1:00 – 1:15, then 2:00-2:15, and so forth.
- Dump developer down the drain
- Stop bath with dH20 at roughly the same temp as the developer. Pour stop bath in, invert for 30 seconds. Pour it out. Pour in another 500ml, agitate for 30 seconds, then pour out.
- Fixer – 7 minutes?
- Pour in quickly
- Agitate for 30 seconds and stamp it a couple times to remove air bubbles
- Agitate as you would with developer every minute
- After 7 minutes pour back into bottle. After 4-5 uses, dump or save in a larger gallon milk jug labeled “exhausted fixer”
- Wash
- Fill with tap water invert 5 times and dump
- Fill with tap water invert 10 times and dump
- Fill with tap water invert 20 times and dump
- Fill with Tap water plus 1ml Photoflo and invert
Hope this helps someone out there trying their own hand at developing their own film.

One of my resolutions this year was to blog more. Yes I know – that’s a lot of people’s resolution and so in the month of January the internet gets clogged with extra resolution posts. Part of this blogging resolution was also to take more photographs. Recently, I re-found my dad’s old
I also didn’t realize there are such differences in film. Obviously there’s the speed differences, but even from one company to the next, people love or hate these different films. I can’t really throw my hat into this ring yet since I haven’t shot enough to really say one way or the other on anything.