Tank, developing, 16mm

I've asked this question elsewhere, but figured that the 16mm crowd might be a better audience:

I'm looking for a tank or some spirals that covers multi-format. I already have one covering 16mm what I'm looking for is something covering APS format. It strikes me that someone that was able to find a special spiral for 16mm somewhere also might have a lead or better yet HAVE a spiral that covers both 16mm, 24mm (APS) and 35mm? maybe even willing to part with it?

Among my several tanks here I have a' Paterson Universal 3' which comes ready to take 16mm 35mm 127 and 120.

The clip side is unusual insofar as it is above the spirals. I pushed it all the way down and the spacing is perfect for Minox. I therefore filed a groove at the right place and it now accepts Minox. It could as easily be made to take any size at all by the same trick.

I used a saw initially then widened and deepened the groove with small files.

And, no I don't want to sell it.

Cheers

Murray

OKAY Murray. Inspired by you, I dug out one of my old tanks that has been a mystery tank, it might be a Paterson Model 3 or it might be a US tank, I got it in a deal about a year ago.

I did as you said and filed a groove about 9,5mm (3/8") further down the stem and it worked like a charm! I now have a test roll of APS loaded, I will develop it in Caffenol C tomorrow.

After such a success I dug out another tank also a Paterson #2 this one covers everything from 25mm to good 'ol 116, so its a valuable asset in case I'm struck by old Kodak flatbed-folders-craze....
But I noticed I could slide the spiral further down, and lo and behold, although theres no locking ring so far down, when the sopirals are smack shut, the distance between them is almost exactly 24mm or maybe a fraction shy. So I can use a lock-ring from my regular Paterson #4 tank (have several) and a thin spacer, about 1mm between the spirals and be all set!

After I have developed the test film, I will take pictures and show, APS film is selling durn cheam, and so are the cameras....

That mystery tank BTW has a lock ring for 16mm - its one of my 16mm tanks, ordinarily reserved for Minolta/Kiev etc etc.

I will develop it in Caffenol C tomorrow.

I must admit ignorance here, what is Caffenol C ? and I am correct in thinking this is used to develop colour film?
If so can you please give me more information. I have goggled and it looks interesting.
I am especially interested in colour film as I have some Fuji 200 asa in my fridge (up to now I've been throwing it away for the cassettes).

Dai.

Caffenol -C is a brew that is becoming quite the 'in' thing. Basically coffee has caffeic acid in it and its structure isn't all that different to all the other developing agents we know. It is also related to cinnamic acid.

On its own it doesn't do much. Put it with some alkali and things start to happen and add a bit of Vit C and you get a pretty good developer. KBr helps because it can fog.

There are lots of formulae out there now but Donald Qualls set the tempo IIRC some 7/8 years ago.

Eric reckons it works pretty well on CN-41 film. Others do, too. Like you I sacrificed some 110 cassettes to learn how to crack them open for reloading but I did save the film first. I am frugal. My initial tests with 'normal' developers like Rodinal with this CN-41 film were pretty hopeless but maybe a coffee developer is an answer? Worth a try, anyway. Rodinal isn't exactly your gentle developer of choice.

I don't believe anyone expects CN-41 to come up with full colour in coffee but it's a legitimate dev agent, so why not? Only the colour balance might be a bit odd. And normal CN-41 devs need KBr and KI. I've had that pushed home to me often by Ron (Rowland) Mowbrey (PE elsewhere) in discussing Brian Dignan's two-bath for colour.

With normal B&W films caffenol-C and its variants are a quite legitimate alternative if you believe the threads. Rob Keppen is another experimenter with it and has impressive results, too.

Keep an open mind! That Instant coffee may actually be better than brewed for something?!!.

BTW - did you goggle or google? Gargoyle?

Murray

I must admit ignorance here, what is Caffenol C ? and I am correct in thinking this is used to develop colour film?
If so can you please give me more information. I have goggled and it looks interesting.
I am especially interested in colour film as I have some Fuji 200 asa in my fridge (up to now I've been throwing it away for the cassettes).

Dai.

Dai. I develop C41 films with Caffenol all the time, Kodak Gold 200 has been my test vehicle, since I got a case of 58 films on the -bay. Caffenol acts as a pretty good B/W developer on Gold 200. I have had some difficulties with other brands, especially Fuji, and havent pinpointed why yet, got a case durn cheap of Fuji on the Bay too.

I have developed chinese B&W with great succes, both Lucky and Shanghai, 35mm and 120 respectively. Caffenol works as a compensating finegrain developer that gives you full ISO, the compensating part says it will also faciliate push processing, but I'm not currently into that, that was the 1970's and "super developers" thing for me.

I also tried Kodak Advantix film, from an APS camera. Here the amazing thing happened. the B&W developer did yeld color negatives! I'm still very, very surprised by that and will do some more tests. Had to modify an old tank (5 minutes work) and the hard part is breaking open the APS casettes without damaging the film.

Caffenol is very easy to use, except for some strange films reported by others, you can more or less mix and match fims in the tank and develop all just the same.

There is a group on APUG, just like this for Caffenol, in there is also a link to a blog in Germany, run by Reinhold, its in english, read all you can, especially Reinhold has his head screwed on right and backs his claims with excellent pictures, as are my negatives, excellent, but being modes I don't like to show technically perfectly developed picture disasters.....

Unicolor also made an adjustable reel universal tank that could be used for all formats up to 120.

Jay