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Back in 2004 a group of us (led by Mark, the promoter of Infest) tried starting a club and gig night in Manchester aimed at the hard industrial and noise music genres. Unfortunately our venue, Sound Garden, closed a few days before our third event leaving us completely in the lurch. It was about six years before the venue opened again.

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

I shot a fair amount of this "straight out of camera" on my 7D using Reala, EtoC and ZERO custom picture styles. Lenses used were mostly the 135mm f/2.8 and 50mm f/1.8, with my Sigma, and Jeff's 70-300mm and 18-135mm making an occasional appearance. Started to get "in the zone" with street photography. Great fun. And amazing architecture in York.

Highlights: Utah Saints. "Stand back, kids, this is how it's done!"

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