Caffenol-C, my blog

grommi · Mar 14, 2010

Hi there,

since I made my first development with Caffenol, I'm very happy with this developer. You can use it for serious work like the best commercial developers available.

http://caffenol.blogspot.com/

I'm not a professional and don't earn any money with my photography. So please don't regard this as an advertisement but as an additional info source about serious development with Caffenol-C.

Best regards - Reinhold

Christopher Walrath · Mar 14, 2010

Thank you for sharing this with us, Reinhold. I beleive there is a user group here on APUG dedicated to the photographic use of Caffenol. And welcome to APUG.

piticu · Mar 20, 2010

thanks for sharing. i'll post some samples later tommorow — my first attempt to develop in cafenol

removed account4 · Mar 20, 2010

hi rienhold

thanks for the link to your blog
and for the interview ( the other thread ).
i too love caffenol C. it is my developer of choice.
i don't really like the stink too much though,
that is why instead of inversion / agitation i
figured out a way to stand develop my roll film ( so i can escape the smell ! )
i don't have a fog-issue with higher speed films ( process asa 400 all the time )
i'm not so lucky when i process sheets of film though, the tank i have ( FR )
is terrible, so i have to tray process my sheets in caffenol c.
in the end, i can't complain, it makes great negatives!

john

grommi · Mar 20, 2010

Thank you John, also for the additional info in the interview thread. Great images on your site, I especially love the portraits very much.

Reinhold

pcyco · Mar 21, 2010

hallo grommi

from austria ;-)

gruss

Sim2 · Mar 26, 2010

Hi there,
Interested in this alternative dev, even just to see it work. However, I am assuming that it leaves a stain on the negs - does this stain affect the contrast control if printing using Multigrade variable contrast paper?
Think I am going to give it a go... out of curiousity, but advice on affecting the printing will be useful.
Thanks,
Sim2.

removed account4 · Mar 26, 2010

the only way it affects the film
is it makes it EASY to print

have fun!
john

gainer · Mar 27, 2010

Has anyone tried NoDoz as a source of caffeine for developers?

E76 · Mar 27, 2010

gainer said:
Has anyone tried NoDoz as a source of caffeine for developers?

I'm not sure if that would work. IIRC, it's some of the other chemicals in coffee, not the caffeine, that do the development.

Athiril · Mar 27, 2010

E76 said:
I'm not sure if that would work. IIRC, it's some of the other chemicals in coffee, not the caffeine, that do the development.

Caffeic acid by looking at the chemical structure.. and from what others tell me after I bought pure caffeine. Oh well. I've done a denatured alcohol extraction of instant coffee, will see how that goes.

In any case, I have 250g of pure caffeine powder on the way, guess I can try and see if does develop on its own.

grommi · Apr 11, 2010

Updated with some thoughts about fog and new examples. I was surprised by the very fine grain of APX100 35mm film.

http://caffenol.blogspot.com/

Best regards - Reinhold

grommi · May 11, 2010

New post added: Caffenol-C-H for fast films 400 ASA and more: http://caffenol.blogspot.com/

ntenny · May 11, 2010

That's an interesting analysis about fog as a kind of post-exposure. I hadn't thought of it in those terms but it makes some sense. Someone with a densitometer should be able to take some measurements to quantify the effect...

Correspondingly, KBr as fog control seems like a natural adaptation to faster films. I've experimented with it a bit but could never get consistent results. The best I got was at around 0.7 g/l KBr, but I was still getting uneven development (for reasons I've never understood but that seem to have nothing to do with the KBr one way or another) and occasionally it would just fail to restrain the fog.

I did some experimenting with lower levels of sodium carbonate, in case the problem was that the pH was too high and was causing unevenness early in development, but that didn't seem to help either. I'm a bit frustrated by this inconsistent behaviour from what is otherwise a really terrific developer.

-NT

cpnp · May 11, 2010

developing time for caffenol c

I have tried caffenol c a number of times with 100 film. The neg's are coming out so dark i cannot scan them. What developing time are you using? What an I doing wrong???? I even tried developing for 55 minutes still no luck. Thanks for your help.

ntenny · May 11, 2010

cpnp said:
I have tried caffenol c a number of times with 100 film. The neg's are coming out so dark i cannot scan them. What developing time are you using? What an I doing wrong???? I even tried developing for 55 minutes still no luck. Thanks for your help.

Surely too dark means you're developing too long, not too short?

My times for most films are around 12 minutes at room temperature.

-NT

mhcfires · May 11, 2010

ntenny said:
Surely too dark means you're developing too long, not too short?

My times for most films are around 12 minutes at room temperature.

-NT

That stuff ruins the coffee.

removed account4 · May 11, 2010

cpnp said:
I have tried caffenol c a number of times with 100 film. The neg's are coming out so dark i cannot scan them. What developing time are you using? What an I doing wrong???? I even tried developing for 55 minutes still no luck. Thanks for your help.

35mm film ?
you will be surprised how nice the film contact prints
even if you can't see through it!

get a flood light and a contact print the film
using regular old photo paper. your printing times will
be long, even with regular paper.

good luck!
john

grommi · May 12, 2010

This thread becomes entertaining

ruilourosa · May 12, 2010

chemistry?!?!?!?!?!

what is the chemical in the coffee that works as a developing agent? i know that tea has some catechol (as human urine) and some leafs have gallic acid, can anyone help?

by the way i´m trying to develop an alternative processing resource paper can anyone give me formulas with some day to day products

thanks

Steve Smith · May 12, 2010

mhcfires said:
That stuff ruins the coffee.

You can't ruin coffee, it's ruined already. Try a proper drink - like tea!

Steve.

ntenny · May 12, 2010

mhcfires said:
That stuff ruins the coffee.

The way I do it, there's no coffee involved. Just Folger's. The carbonate and antihalation dyes and development by-products probably make it taste better.

(That said, I have a bag of green _robusta_ coffee, of incredibly horrible quality, that I keep meaning to roast and turn into developer in the interests of seeing if it works. You know, in my Copious Free Time.)

-NT

mhcfires · May 12, 2010

ntenny said:
The way I do it, there's no coffee involved. Just Folger's. The carbonate and antihalation dyes and development by-products probably make it taste better.

(That said, I have a bag of green _robusta_ coffee, of incredibly horrible quality, that I keep meaning to roast and turn into developer in the interests of seeing if it works. You know, in my Copious Free Time.)

-NT

Folger's isn't real coffee, just a pretender. Glad to see you have finally found a good use for robusta beans. ( they rank down there with cat pee and cheap gin)

Glad to see you have some free time.

removed account4 · May 12, 2010

ntenny said:
The way I do it, there's no coffee involved. Just Folger's. The carbonate and antihalation dyes and development by-products probably make it taste better.

(That said, I have a bag of green _robusta_ coffee, of incredibly horrible quality, that I keep meaning to roast and turn into developer in the interests of seeing if it works. You know, in my Copious Free Time.)

-NT

i am sure your developer will taste and work fine,
most of the instant coffee is made of robusta

i heard several years ago that most of the world's supply of
robusta coffee is grown in vietnam ... what variety do you have ?

cheers!
john

ntenny · May 12, 2010

jnanian said:
i am sure your developer will taste and work fine,
most of the instant coffee is made of robusta

i heard several years ago that most of the world's supply of
robusta coffee is grown in vietnam ... what variety do you have ?

It's a mass-market Vietnamese _robusta_ that Dead Link Removed sold as one of their "educational" offerings---a dollar a pound or so for an example of a coffee with something terribly wrong with it.

We roasted and sampled a bit once...*ONCE*. It tastes like the worst imaginable caricature of bad truck-stop coffee. I've never had a worse cup of coffee in my life, except in some hotels in East Asia...

-NT

Caffenol-C, my blog

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