film

Third batch of expired film from 2004. Llangrannog, portraits, and the most hipster photography I've ever taken. Put your iPhone fauxlaroid apps away. Step away from Instagram. This is how it's meant to be done.

I'm currently emptying my fridge of expired and exposed films. Towards the end of the week I sent nine such films for developing and scanning (on the cheap) and this is one of them that came back. It's always a little strange coming across pictures from the past that you've not seen before. It's also a bit strange when you find photographs of someone you lived with and loved for many years. What surprised me most, however, was the fact that I shot some portraits and didn't remember it!

I shot three films today with a view to testing the use of paracetamol as a reducing agent in film developer. The two I ran off in Southern Cemetery (36 exposures of HP5+ and 36 exposures of Delta 400) were both developed in the following solution, following a Tylenol recipe on the ascorbate-developers blog:

• Na2CO3 (anhydrous) — 24g
• Vitamin C — 7g
• Paracetamol — 1g
• KBr — 1g
• Water to make 650ml

Hardly believing it myself, it turns out that coffee can act as a film developer. This I had to try. Three different films (XP2 at 400, FP4+ at 125 and HP5+ at 400), all developed at the same time:

• five minutes soaking in water
• 16g Na2CO3 (anhydrous) added to water
• add 10g Vitamin C
• 1.5g KBr (anhydrous)
• 40g Red Label instant coffee
• make up to 1 litre of water
• 1 minute of agitation
• rest for 59 minutes (at 21°C)
• wash, stop, wash, fix, wash

Cheap colour film which expired years ago. Shot and developed this week. Full set.