Developed my 1st roll of 35mm film!

This weekend, after having acquired all the necessary chemicals a few days earlier, I had a go at developing my own film. To my surprise it went really well. Preparation was key of course. I read up a lot online and chose a developer, then checked a great YouTube video which helped me determine the developing method to follow.

I was very anxious and excited about the removing of the film from its cassette, and then spooling it onto the reel. This stage I practiced with an old dead roll that I'd previous sent to a lab but was not developed (there was nothing on it!). With this spare film I was able to go through several practice attempts with my eyes closed in the days and weeks leading up to the main event! This practice was crucial. I don’t think there is any way I could have successfully spooled the film onto the reel, first time, in the pitch black without knowing what I need to do and becoming familiar with the tools and my technique.

It is a very good job I had practised as when loading the reel, in the pitch black dark, it jammed on me. I could not get the remaining few feet of film onto the reel! I tried not to panic and started from scratch. The second attempt worked out fine, and once the reel was in the light tight tank I could turn on the lights and relax. This was such an exciting step. I was so happy I could do it. It is a great feeling to do something for the first time and for it to actually work!! !

Next came the developing. I chose to stand-develop the film for an hour in Rodinal at a dilution of 1+100 (deironised water). I wanted to give myself time to prepare carefully between the development steps (after development chemical comes the stop bath, then fixer, then wash), but also I’d seen how good the results could be with stand development after watching Pictoial Planet's fantactic youtube as linked above. The steps are not complicated, it is not rocket science to measure out the correct amount of chemicals and keep them at the right temperature, but it does benefit greatly from preparation. Getting bottles ready, having everything at hand, knowing what step will be next, and how to deal with your used chemicals -some you can reuse. I took the time to write down the steps I would need to follow and made notes next to each step to aid me. I used the air con to get the room temparature to 20 degree, and had all the chemicals sitting next to each other to keep them at the same temp. Little things like this I'm sure helped me a lot with the end result.

I will continue to learn and develop this skill. No pun intended... terrible. I'm sure I'll learn more on the way, I'll also refine my process, try other types of development (not just stand-development, tho I plan to stick with it for now), and first and foremost simply enjoy the process. One day I'd like to go into a darkroom and develop images to paper as prints. That is another huge step in this form of photography. One day!

If you'd like to see some of the images from this roll check them out here!