Coffee paper developer?

[patrickjames]

I was wondering if anyone has tried to make a coffee paper developer. from what I have read, the dev. times for coffee developers on film are really long, so I am wondering if a dev. could be made strong/active enough using coffee.

Yes I know it will stain the paper, and that's kind of the intention. Anyone have any ideas? Feel free to throw them out there.

Patrick

 

[rwyoung]

It took about 20 minutes in the tray and produced a very "grainy" print. I say "grainy" because it looked finely mottled but I didn't like the overall look enough on this one to figure out if it was paper grain or just the random staining. Fomabrome Varient RC paper by the way.

The smell of 1/2 gallon of Folgerol in an open tray was pretty harsh too. So I only tried this in one session. Don't know if I'll try again, right now I'm thinking NO.

 

[robert e]

There's very little data, so I hope you decide to experiment anyway.

For me, 25 minutes using the non-optimal instant coffee+lye+baking soda recipe and Ilford MGIV RC. I liked the stain (Maxwell House Instant Dark Roast), but times were too long for hanging out in my tiny bathroom so I only tried it a couple of times. I used bulb exposure with a makeshift contact proofer, so I can't speak to potential print quality, but I didnt' find my results grainy or dirty.

I found very low capacity. I wonder if the long times have to do with rapidly declining potency and larger quantities are called for.

I've heard of people adding vitamin c.

Some say it's the many organic compounds in coffee that make it a developer, so maybe freshly roasted, ground and brewed coffee would be more effective than instant.

 

[laverdure]

Same results as above. 25 minutes, no capacity. Concentration didn't seem to affect it much. C might work better. Post if you get any results.

 

[htmlguru4242]

I've tried this once or twice.

Admittedly, my test conditions were not well controlled or scientific, but I did not see good results. Development was very slow, image tone and contrast was odd, and there was a strange patterned stain on the paper.

I'd stick with regular paper.

The only non-standard development that I've done with paper was submerging Kodak Polycontrast RC in a moderately strong sodium hydroxide solution. No control over contrast or anything, though development was, for all intents and purposes, instant (between 2 and 10 seconds). I'm assuming that the strong alkalinity activated the integral developer. It was pretty neat.

 

[patrickjames]

My original idea was to make a developer that would stain the paper and develop all in one step. I'll probably try adding coffee to a normal developer and see what that looks like. Oh well!

Patrick

 

[robert e]

My original idea was to make a developer that would stain the paper and develop all in one step. I'll probably try adding coffee to a normal developer and see what that looks like. Oh well!

I'd like to know how that works out.

Have you considered pyro? Googling "pyro paper developer" turned up some experiments and what looks to me like a refined recipe, with examples.

 

[laverdure]

In the bath last night I came across the original RIT article in Darkroom & Creative Camera Techniques (sep/oct 1995). It has a small segment on print development:

"Coffee-based Print Development

An exceptional result, shown in Figure 5, was achieved when a negative developed in D-76 was used to expose the RC paper which was then developed in the same coffee formulation under identical conditions. With one development step, the print developed with sufficiently sharp image features and a favorable brownish color! The brown toning represents staining much like that found in the negative. We observed staining over the whole print, including the paper support, suggesting that the tannin penetration occurs by gelatin swelling. A development time of 20 minutes was used to produce the results shown." (p. 37)

Figure 5 is a group portrait of the people involved in the study. Can't tell much from the reproduction other than that it's brown, and looks fine.