Developing tanks for 16mm movie film options?

[awty]

Sounds like a good Ardnio or Raspberry Pi project with steppers motors!

You can salvage these motors from old laser printers and such...
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=salvaging+stepper+motors

You can do it mechanically, not hugely complicated. A battery operated reel to reel would be easier to lower the speed.
I just stick to what I know, my Pi was a PIDA, cause I cant program.

There's also potential drum type, but making a suitable reel for the film would be difficult without specialised tools.

 

[Kino]

You can do it mechanically, not hugely complicated. A battery operated reel to reel would be easier to lower the speed.
I just stick to what I know, my Pi was a PIDA, cause I cant program.

There's also potential drum type, but making a suitable reel for the film would be difficult without specialised tools.

View attachment 263419

How about a piece of thick walled PVC pipe with a spiral grove routed on the outside for the reel? Lay the film base down in the groove like the Jobo.

 

[awty]

How about a piece of thick walled PVC pipe with a spiral grove routed on the outside for the reel? Lay the film base down in the groove like the Jobo.

Trouble is getting the spiral perfect. You could easily set up a router to cut precise cylindrical groove but a spiral would require a lathe, which I dont own at the moment. Certanly do able, hard part is making it so the film cant move.

If the capstan spindle is say 5mm in diameter and spins @ 18" per second I only need a 90mm in diameter pulley wheel on top of the film reel to get 1"/sec. can ad a middle pully to go even slower. I still think the morse method is the least complicated method to get even development. When I have some time I will do some experimenting and rig up a porotype to show what I mean.

 

[btaylor]

Here is one for Super 8, could it be modified for 16mm?
http://www.peaceman.de/blog/index.php/inexpensive-super-8-home-processing-tank

 

[Kino]

Here is one for Super 8, could it be modified for 16mm?
http://www.peaceman.de/blog/index.php/inexpensive-super-8-home-processing-tank

That's the same basic idea of the spiral groove system Jobo uses; it just needs to be scaled-up. Problem is on this concept in general is chemical volume and size. Of course, that's always the problem, but I bet it could be done!

 

[AgX]

A morse tank would cost me $300 to import and a Lomo $350 that is to get one in good condition.

About wice that money and you get a new Jobo cine tank that even is fit for rotary processing and for use in their more modern processors. I consider that a lot of money, but in case you already got the respective processor, something really to consider amongst the ready-made options.

 

[awty]

Here is one for Super 8, could it be modified for 16mm?
http://www.peaceman.de/blog/index.php/inexpensive-super-8-home-processing-tank

Looks to be very cumbersome. Does it even work? Fine to have an idea, lot more difficult to get one that actually works well in practical situation.

 

[awty]

About wice that money and you get a new Jobo cine tank that even is fit for rotary processing and for use in their more modern processors. I consider that a lot of money, but in case you already got the respective processor, something really to consider amongst the ready-made options.

Would cost me around the $1300 dollar mark in AUD. And all I need is the film take up reel, if they sold that separate it would be worth considering......thats if it even works.
Does it come with its own heater? Not sure how well it would work with colour processing. Not that I want to do colour, but if I did.

 

[awty]

Well as luck would have it I stumbled onto a antique Morse style developing tank with just 15 minutes to go on Ebay and grabbed it for $51 AUD.
Have no Idea of size but it looks about right, it looks to be either 16mm or 35mm or maybe its both. Any way not too hard to modify. Ive seen these before, but they have always been much larger for air surveying film.
The good aspect of this is you can remove the whole assembly out to load. Wouldn't be hard to rig up a reexposure, also be easier to wash the remjet away and control temperature....if I do colour. Can make up some blocks to displace chemistry to get around 1ltr coverage. Can modify the lid and tank for filling and drainage. Maybe make another lid to take an automated wind. Lots of possibilities.

 

[AgX]

Would cost me around the $1300 dollar mark in AUD. And all I need is the film take up reel, if they sold that separate it would be worth considering......thats if it even works.

Assuming that the tank proper is a standard model, and that for still film reels are/were offered seperately, I do not see a reason why Jobo could not sell the inner drum alone.

 

[Kino]

Well as luck would have it I stumbled onto a antique Morse style developing tank with just 15 minutes to go on Ebay and grabbed it for $51 AUD.
Have no Idea of size but it looks about right, it looks to be either 16mm or 35mm or maybe its both. Any way not too hard to modify. Ive seen these before, but they have always been much larger for air surveying film.
The good aspect of this is you can remove the whole assembly out to load. Wouldn't be hard to rig up a reexposure, also be easier to wash the remjet away and control temperature....if I do colour. Can make up some blocks to displace chemistry to get around 1ltr coverage. Can modify the lid and tank for filling and drainage. Maybe make another lid to take an automated wind. Lots of possibilities.

View attachment 263478

Wow! That must be one of the first ever made! Everyone I have ever seen was made of Bakelite.
Appears to be for ortho film, as you can't crank it with the cover on.

 

[awty]

Wow! That must be one of the first ever made! Everyone I have ever seen was made of Bakelite.
Appears to be for ortho film, as you can't crank it with the cover on.

Yes probably 20's or 30's all the WW2 ones Ive seen are stainless steel. Looks like the top unscrews and flipped over to make 35mm....maybe?. Hopefully the bakelite is good and free of cracks and chips, there usually not too hard to fix any how.
Judging by the handle it looks around the 16" mark and about 3.5" high. Yes probably ortho film and they may of used the lid for fixing.

 

[btaylor]

I had a Morse tank once. Never had the courage to use it. This is one cinematographer’s take on it:

After developing one roll in one of these pieces of garbage, and taking note of the graininess, flickering, streaking, fogging and poor contrast, after hours of slavery, I swore off it forever.
The only excuse for using one would be if you were at the South Pole or in the middle of the Amazon jungle, with no mail service for years, to send the film to a real lab. Even then you would be better off unwinding the film into a bucket of developer sitting in your bathtub and agitating with a stick, to get at least a good image but with some scratches.

I hope you get better results.

 

[awty]

I had a Morse tank once. Never had the courage to use it. This is one cinematographer’s take on it:

After developing one roll in one of these pieces of garbage, and taking note of the graininess, flickering, streaking, fogging and poor contrast, after hours of slavery, I swore off it forever.
The only excuse for using one would be if you were at the South Pole or in the middle of the Amazon jungle, with no mail service for years, to send the film to a real lab. Even then you would be better off unwinding the film into a bucket of developer sitting in your bathtub and agitating with a stick, to get at least a good image but with some scratches.

I hope you get better results.

After one roll hey. Wonder if his cinematography reflex's his lack of substance.
I personally prefer to do as much myself as possible, faults are part of the experience, have already butchered many rolls and sheets of film. If you need certainty stick with digital.
If there are issues with the tank I will first try and rectify, cant be too bad if they used similar for aerial photography, that film is super thin and scratchable.

 

[Jonno85uk]

For those that are into 3d printing, I found this a while ago
https://cinematography.com/index.php?/topic/83456-new-16mm-developing-tank/

 

[Kino]

After one roll hey. Wonder if his cinematography reflex's his lack of substance.
I personally prefer to do as much myself as possible, faults are part of the experience, have already butchered many rolls and sheets of film. If you need certainty stick with digital.
If there are issues with the tank I will first try and rectify, cant be too bad if they used similar for aerial photography, that film is super thin and scratchable.

The Morse Tank system was designed for quick and dirty photo recon development; quality only had to be good enough for immediate intel gathering. It was never intended for studio quality processing results. Take it for what it's worth...

 

[Bronson Dugnutt]

Rather than go for broke, I snipped out and developed with my first partial roll of 16mm film (approximately 40 feet) exposed with a B&H 240-TA in a Morse G3 tank. Loading was straightforward but I did get insight into developing & fixing times as well as possible camera issues. Loading the tank was rather straightforward, even in the dark. Reeling 40ft of film wasn't too onerous, but I can see why 100ft at a time would be too much for some people.

Orwo N74+ 400
Prewet 3:00 (2x reel winds)
Xtol 1+1 20:00 (20x)
Stop Bath 3:00 (2x)
Non-rapid fix 15:00 (15x)
Wash 10:00 (8x)

The negative image was underdeveloped, thin but not un-scannable. Unprojectable, certainly. I'll use a stronger developer or more time in the future. There was also under-fixing which doesn't come entirely as a surprise as I used a non-rapid fix. Rapid fix or more time, again, in the future. It may have been wiser to shoot my ortho stock first so I could have done development by inspection.

I can't speak very well to the evenness of development down a length of film, but individual frames seemed to have fared well. There was an occasional light leak from the camera that appeared to drown out 4 or 5 frames at a couple of places, but more disturbingly, a persistent linear scratch in at least one place along the film. Likely caused by the camera rather than the tank (see left half of chicken frame).

As I currently lack any means to efficiently project or digitize long lengths of film, I'm more than happy to use the 240-ta as a high-speed 16mm stills camera for the time being, shooting & processing 20-50ft at a time. Enough throughput for the occasional vintage gif, perhaps. I'll probably add a couple of teflon washers to the reel spindles to reduce noise but all in all I'm pretty chuffed with the Morse.

Stills


Motion grab

 

[awty]

Rather than go for broke, I snipped out and developed with my first partial roll of 16mm film (approximately 40 feet) exposed with a B&H 240-TA in a Morse G3 tank. Loading was straightforward but I did get insight into developing & fixing times as well as possible camera issues. Loading the tank was rather straightforward, even in the dark. Reeling 40ft of film wasn't too onerous, but I can see why 100ft at a time would be too much for some people.

Orwo N74+ 400
Prewet 3:00 (2x reel winds)
Xtol 1+1 20:00 (20x)
Stop Bath 3:00 (2x)
Non-rapid fix 15:00 (15x)
Wash 10:00 (8x)

The negative image was underdeveloped, thin but not un-scannable. Unprojectable, certainly. I'll use a stronger developer or more time in the future. There was also under-fixing which doesn't come entirely as a surprise as I used a non-rapid fix. Rapid fix or more time, again, in the future. It may have been wiser to shoot my ortho stock first so I could have done development by inspection.

I can't speak very well to the evenness of development down a length of film, but individual frames seemed to have fared well. There was an occasional light leak from the camera that appeared to drown out 4 or 5 frames at a couple of places, but more disturbingly, a persistent linear scratch in at least one place along the film. Likely caused by the camera rather than the tank (see left half of chicken frame).

As I currently lack any means to efficiently project or digitize long lengths of film, I'm more than happy to use the 240-ta as a high-speed 16mm stills camera for the time being, shooting & processing 20-50ft at a time. Enough throughput for the occasional vintage gif, perhaps. I'll probably add a couple of teflon washers to the reel spindles to reduce noise but all in all I'm pretty chuffed with the Morse.

Stills
View attachment 263927

Motion grab
View attachment 263928

Looks promising.
I will do similar short runs to work a system.
Think even development better achieved by mechanized winding, but if you get a good even rhythm going hand winding should be ok.
Wonder if adding a bit of tension to the reels would help keep the film a little tighter on the reels so more even development.
Can always run it through fixer again afterwards if not done enough the first time.
Did you get any scratches?

 

[Bronson Dugnutt]

I only saw 1 or 2 small instances of a 'chemical breach' where, fixer in this case, penetrated vertically through the wound film causing additional fixing. The developer could do the same thing I suppose, but I didn't see any obvious examples of irregular overdeveloped areas. Probably owing to the developer dilution. I re-fixed a portion of the film to confirm the initial under-fix. It was still scannable without re-fixing however.

There aren't any scratches I can attribute to the tank, but the camera itself is suspect. If you've loaded the reels correctly the emulsion side of the film doesn't touch anything except film backing when wound. Scratching the non-emulsion side, even with the tank's roller (if present) would be difficult.

Edit: I should add that the vertical scratch(es) I mention were also present on a length of exposed film protruding from the inside of the reel, so not subject to any winding during development. Hence, the film gate is the culprit, no the tank.

 

[awty]

My tank has arrived. Looks good, does both 16mm and 35mm. 16mm takes 1ltr. The Bakelite is good, comes apart easy and is solid in construction. Will need to work on draining and winding.
The only issue I can see is there are a few riverts that I might need to take care off incase the film rubs on them.
A Bolex 16h rex arrived the other day. Someone managed to cross thread the crank handle. Have fixed that, but it will need a service.

 

[AgX]

What materials is that tank made of? It looks like zinked or tinned...

 

[Bronson Dugnutt]

A great find for sure. It's hard to judge scale from those photos, but for reference, the core diameter of the reels in my tank are about 3 inches (7cm). The wider your cores, the more footage and longer time the emulsion is in contact with the chemistry when winding. Indeed, the most fundamental improvement to be made in the manual performance of a tank-reel system is maximizing the exposed surface area of film emulsion. Wider cores or longer film transport paths will do that... with the 'extreme' case being a lomo spiral/jobo drum where the path is so long, cranking/transport can be done away with completely!

I'd be interested to know if you encounter any 'wander' (?) when winding the film onto open-face reels or if it remains relatively true. That could be another source of uneven development if the film winding becomes misaligned. I'm considering future reversal processing of super8 on these 35/16mm reels and am hoping I can get away without needing to fit a bumper onto the reel.

 

[awty]

What materials is that tank made of? It looks like zinked or tinned...

It does, but Im pretty sure its all stainless steel. Some is polished and some isn't. It has a combination of riverts, spot welds and electric weld. The lid has a coating, but the rest is plain metal. Its very rigid and heavy, doesnt feel like tin or zinc......wouldn't want to drop it on your toe.

 

[awty]

A great find for sure. It's hard to judge scale from those photos, but for reference, the core diameter of the reels in my tank are about 3 inches (7cm). The wider your cores, the more footage and longer time the emulsion is in contact with the chemistry when winding. Indeed, the most fundamental improvement to be made in the manual performance of a tank-reel system is maximizing the exposed surface area of film emulsion. Wider cores or longer film transport paths will do that... with the 'extreme' case being a lomo spiral/jobo drum where the path is so long, cranking/transport can be done away with completely!

I'd be interested to know if you encounter any 'wander' (?) when winding the film onto open-face reels or if it remains relatively true. That could be another source of uneven development if the film winding becomes misaligned. I'm considering future reversal processing of super8 on these 35/16mm reels and am hoping I can get away without needing to fit a bumper onto the reel.

The tank is 15" x 7.5" the in reel is 120mm, outer is 160mm. Spools are 190mm apart. Film fits with 1mm either side, so shouldn't wander too far.

 

[awty]

Been working on making the tank more usable. I found some stainless steel insert handles that were just the right length. Drilled holes either end at 4" and one in the middle. Then drilled a corresponding hole in the tank lid. Need to work out a better internal spindle and light seal etc.
Also found a couple of stainless steel round insert door handles that fit inside each other. Drilled a 25mm hole in the top one and a seriries of holes around the inner handle. Needs another sleeve on the inner to make light tight. Seems to fill ok.
Can simply tip the tank on its side to drain.