Making film

As I'm sure many of you have a camera that uses film no longer available, be it 127 or some other.
I have a couple of 127 kodaks that I really want to use.
I watched a very useful video on cutting 120 down with a cigar cutter to fit a 127 spool, but I would like to make the film myself, I can get a supplier for the film base, but what would be the best film emulsion recipe that I could use for the film, and how would I coat the film?
cheers

Go and have a look at this excellent website. The LLight Farm

Everything you need to know

Ian

There are a couple of 127 films still made, freestyle and macodirect sell them. Not a lot of range though...

If you really want to make film, that's a huge adventure. Best to start with plates though as it's much easier to coat a rigid surface than a flexible one. A film-coating machine is a non-trivial piece of equipment, whereas you can coat plates by hand and shoot them in a large format camera.

Adventure, to be sure. "Huge"? Not so sure about that, unless you're talking about all the fun getting out and about and using your film . Interesting coincidence -- I'm photo'ing today with my Yashica 44 at our Buccaneer Rampage Mud and Obstacle Race. It's a total hoot.

Thanks for posting the Light Farm link, Ian!

Tobychrome: No need at all for film coating machines. Here are three pages that talk specifically about making roll film: http://thelightfarm.com/cgi-bin/htmltutgen.py?content=24Jul2013

Those pages are part of a whole emulsion making series, so for more information go back to the beginning. Good luck and fun! Welcome to APUG!

d

as always thanks for your posts denise !

Quick follow-up on handmade film in a Yashica 44 (127 mm): I hadn't had the little darlin' out in a while. I had a great time with the camera. It handles easily, but I totally forgot that it is advisable to have along reading glasses. The camera's view screen is very small. Handheld action photography is a challenge! (at least for me.) The negative is only 1.5 inches square, so with the grain that comes with faster film (~64) the enlargements look very retro. I personally love the smooth-as-silk look of slow film, but you can't photo pirates racing through the mud with slow film! To get a decent depth of field (f/8) when the UV levels are starting to retreat again for the winter, I could only get 1/50 sec speed. That's fast enough for shooting without a tripod and for normal movement, but not quite fast enough to stop really fast motion.

I cannot resist (even if I should)...

Denise, don't you think the results look a bit muddy?

(actually, I think they look great!).

Ha! I've lived for decades with a hopeless punner and I didn't see that one coming! Excellent. (and Thanks!)
d

dwross said:

Quick follow-up on handmade film in a Yashica 44 (127 mm): I hadn't had the little darlin' out in a while. I had a great time with the camera. It handles easily, but I totally forgot that it is advisable to have along reading glasses. The camera's view screen is very small. Handheld action photography is a challenge! (at least for me.) The negative is only 1.5 inches square, so with the grain that comes with faster film (~64) the enlargements look very retro. I personally love the smooth-as-silk look of slow film, but you can't photo pirates racing through the mud with slow film! To get a decent depth of field (f/8) when the UV levels are starting to retreat again for the winter, I could only get 1/50 sec speed. That's fast enough for shooting without a tripod and for normal movement, but not quite fast enough to stop really fast motion.

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Hats off!
This is great!

Wow, that's amazing.
was the film hard to make?

Georg: Thanks!

Tobychrome: "Hard" is such a hard word to define . Let's face it. Anything is hard compared to holding your phone camera out and sending a pic to the Cloud for magic app processing. Or, to put it in terms of cooking, which every emulsion writer from the beginning has done: Why would you even have a kitchen in your house when you can buy everything you need to eat ready-to-go? Making emulsions involves the exact set of decisions that doing any of your own food prep does. Do you have a room for it, or a room that you can use when needed? Do you have a few important pieces of equipment -- low tech to high tech, depending on your budget and personality? i.e. a knife or a mandolin slicer or a food processor? Are you willing to read and understand a few recipes, start with simple ones and practice cooking regularly as you add techniques and complexity to your cooking? Can you see yourself not knowing how to boil an egg or make a loaf of bread today and believe that next year you'll be making and eating egg salad with homemade mayonnaise on homemade bread? If so, yes, making emulsions is very easy.

I haven't published the recipe I used at the Rampage Race because I don't want to add more fuel to the meme that making an emulsion is too hard to even bother trying. There's about a year's worth of learning how to make emulsions on the Light Farm. There are step-by-step instructions and a few videos. "X2Ag" (my fast emulsion) is only a few extra steps longer or more complex than "TLF #2". I'll publish it in 'TLF, 2nd edition', but that might be a while. I enjoy cameras a lot more than keyboards!

All my best wishes for your fun and success.
d

Exact!!! From boiled egg to homemade bread & mayonnaise lol

Tobychrome,

If you're thinking that making film is a bit too much work, don't worry about it. A simple dry plate is really, really simple. Start simple and stop at whatever level makes you happy. I've never seen a reason to take any of this too seriously. Curing ebola, slowing down the extinctions, ending war and famine -- these are all serious. Our art is for ourselves. Art (making or appreciating) makes the serious things more bearable.

Back to the cooking analogy: photography is in transition and none of us know where the Whole is going. It's like people who can't cook, but religiously watch TV cooking shows so that they can go out to restaurants and then write reviews (most often, negative) for social media.

At some point, for most people, being a spectator becomes unsatisfying and they either lose interest altogether or they start learning how to participate. I think the next couple of years are going to be a very interesting time in photography as we settle in to accepting that everyone is a photographer today. To be something beyond that will take some work. Few will want to (nor should they) but some will and they will be the artists.

I sincerely hope that the conversation about emulsion making, here on APUG, doesn't stop. At the very least, it informs people new to photography about an important slice of history. Nothing wrong with being a spectator! (Although, spectators who make a hobby of criticizing performers can be annoying ).

I was wondering because way back when George eastman was starting out, he taught himself the chemistry of how film works and how to make different emulsions.
And from what I've read he did all that in his mothers kitchen, without the internet and everything.
Where could I find the information something like what he would have read to learn his skills?

http://thelightfarm.com/Map/LiteratureList/LiteratureListPart1.htm

When Mrs. Eastman was being so generous with her kitchen, there were already a lot of people experimenting with silver gelatin and making materials. Her son's genius was as much in business as chemistry. As soon as he could he hired the best minds -- C.E. Kenneth Mees and S.E. Sheppard among them. These guys had serious chemistry and photography obsession chops.

Tobychrome said:

I was wondering because way back when George eastman was starting out, he taught himself the chemistry of how film works and how to make different emulsions.
And from what I've read he did all that in his mothers kitchen, without the internet and everything.
Where could I find the information something like what he would have read to learn his skills?

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hi tobychrome
in addition to what denise said ...
there were publications "back in the day"
called photographic annuals that had recipes for
emulsions and formulae for developers &c ...
back when i was a college student in the 1980s
i had an annual from what seemed like the dark ages
with recipes for emulsions and made one through trial and error ( and $$ )
in my kitchen with pots procured from the salvation army /thrift stores ...
no internet, no groups of peers to help or tell me what i was doing right or wrong ..
just an old brittle acid-paged coverless book in a plastic bag ...
making emulsions really isn't as hard as it may seem ( i am out of practice but lucky for the light farm come a few months from now ! )
non panchromatic emulsions are just a few ingredients and a few steps, and like anything that involves chemistry
( bread making, beer making & emulsion making ) clean / bacteria/germ free sterile tools are necessary.
unfortunately like everything from developing film or printing prints or using a view camera, there is a certain mystique
and most people think all this stuff is extremely hard, but it is just a shroud around it. and like anything
it isn't hard to make things extremely difficult, it is just a matter of choice. i mean i have seen people struggle with peeling a carrot ...
they make it seem like a life-test ... its just peeling a carrot

have fun at TLF, you won't regret hanging out there and learning all this fun stuff, i know i don't

john

Does anyone know a good emulsion recipe?
and could I change it by the speed I add the ingredients like, the faster the silver is added, the faster the film is?
cheers

dwross said:

I've lived for decades with a hopeless punner

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A punishing existence...

Tobychrome said:

Does anyone know a good emulsion recipe?
and could I change it by the speed I add the ingredients like, the faster the silver is added, the faster the film is?
cheers

Click to expand...

There are pages and pages of information both in the stickies at the top of the forum and on dwross' website (the light farm) which give most (if not all, in the case of the the light farm) the answers you need, from the basics of how emulsions work and what variables change speed etc. up to recipes and formulae and all the detail on how to actually make and coat emulsions.

Might be a good idea to start by reading the resources that are available and then if you still have questions come back and ask

Tobychrome said:

As I'm sure many of you have a camera that uses film no longer available, be it 127 or some other.
I have a couple of 127 kodaks that I really want to use.
I watched a very useful video on cutting 120 down with a cigar cutter to fit a 127 spool, but I would like to make the film myself, I can get a supplier for the film base, but what would be the best film emulsion recipe that I could use for the film, and how would I coat the film?
cheers

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You must be kidding or you must like a major hedache.put the booze away.you went too far.

infinit said:

Exact!!! From boiled egg to homemade bread & mayonnaise lol

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Hi! Welcome to APUG. I just noticed that you are new. Hope you are an emulsion maker!
d

And a tip of the hat to all of you for mentioning my book, advertized at the top and bottom of the page here on APUG on a rotating basis with other ads. It contains several formulas and methods for coating. I am working on V2 as the first volume is selling well.

Best of luck to you all from an old EK Emulsion type guy.

PE

Photo Engineer said:

And a tip of the hat to all of you for mentioning my book, advertized at the top and bottom of the page here on APUG on a rotating basis with other ads. It contains several formulas and methods for coating. I am working on V2 as the first volume is selling well.

Best of luck to you all from an old EK Emulsion type guy.

PE

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yourbook must be the only key left to an otherwise lost art. that's worth having it alone.

dwross said:

Hi! Welcome to APUG. I just noticed that you are new. Hope you are an emulsion maker!
d

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I am one of those silent readers (for years) that suddenly started to post.
Now I'm at the sensitization stage. Need to get some gold chloride to experiment.
Had some luck with hypo sensitization, but I really need some free time to try variations...