Caffenol contact prints on Ilford warmtone fibre paper

I tried my first-ever caffenol developer last night and was quite pleased with how it turned out. I'm definitely planning to do more prints with the stuff.

This contact print is on Ilford multigrade warm tone fibre paper, which I found gave nicer results with the caffenol than the non-warm tone paper.

Nick in Caffenol by Dead Link Removed, on Flickr

My recipe was roughly 900 ml water, 6 tsp Arm and Hammer washing soda, about 30 500g Vitamin C pills, and 10 heaping tsp of no-name brand instant coffee. I was finding 3-4 minutes at 20-25 degrees was working well.

By comparison here is the same print on non-warm tone paper and developed with Ilford paper developer.

Nick by Dead Link Removed, on Flickr

Very very nice, I really like the coffee blotches in the unexposed part of the print too!

for the subject, I actually like the second one better, but as an effect it looks really nice. I also really like the surrounding blotches

First image seems flatter for my eyes..but I like those tones.

I definitely prefer the caffenol version. I'm tempted to try caffenol as well.

great stuff !

i like making prints with caffenol too

I did print the two images a bit differently. The background of the caffenol print has a bit less exposure than the background of the regular print so it is a bit flatter. I was lighting the background but I could have backlit the head to try to get better separation.

In person I find it hard to choose between the two but I do really like the look of the caffenol. My scan might be a little too brown but it comes across with a nice skin tone for a black and white print. I'm thinking of some projects that would lend themselves to this look.

The subject (my brother) liked the caffenol version better.

Looks great , can you tell me how long you exposed it for when making the contact print?

Thanks Dana

wow!