D I Y processing

[Tomd1825]

I am new here but not new to super 8mm, I used to buy my films a long time ago and Kodak processed your film when your purchased one...and they had sound!! I am curious to know how hard is it to develop your own super 8mm film, whether it be reversal or negative. I am talking about doing it from scratch, I have read some posts on how to do it..but no mention on where to buy the chemicals..how much I need etc. Any info on the would be appreciated

Thanks
Tom

[joshgladstone]

Have you ever processed still film before? Because it's pretty much exactly the same. You need a tank, either a purpose built one, or just a bucket. Processing a negative is a lot easier than reversal. At a minimum, you need developer and fixer. You can buy developer at a photo store, or you can make your own with instant coffee and vitamin c, just google Caffenol.

[bottlegardener]

I've been wondering about this myself. I recently started doing some 35mm still film processing in rodinal and I've been enjoying it and having pretty good luck.
I'm particularly curious about b&w reversal processing. I wonder if this 'T-MAX REVERSAL KIT' from Photographer's Formulary (http://stores.photoformulary.com/content/01-0600.pdf) would work well for Tri-X Super 8?
I'd also be curious about Tri-X negative processing. It seems like it'd be easiest DIY approach, but the samples I've seen so far have looked a little too grainy for my taste. I wonder if pull processing would help?

[joshgladstone]

I've processed a lot of Tri-x as a negative in D76, and it works great, but yes it is grainy. (There are a bunch of videos in this playlist, if you're interested: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 28ACB06EE9)
I haven't tried the reversal kit yet, but I did buy pot perm and sodium metabisulfite, so I plan on trying that formula out when I get some time.

[Tomd1825]

Thanks for the info guys, would it be just as easy doing color negative film also, where would I look to buy the developer,fixer and all that kind of stuff. How long do you leave the film in the tanks...is it different times when using color and B&W

Thanks
Tom

[joshgladstone]

Processing color is significantly more difficult; there's remjet to remove, there are more steps, more chemicals, you have to be more careful with temperature, etc. That said, you can process color films as b/w and you will still get images, but obviously the color information won't come out. You can do this even for expired film, so if you buy an old camera and there's a roll of kodakchrome or ektachrome still in it, don't throw it out. You can finish the roll and process it yourself! Here's one I did exactly like that. It was a roll of really old ektachrome color reversal film that I found in a camera I bought, and processed as a b/w negative. I shot the opening shot, but everything else was shot at least a couple decades ago (that formula of ektachrome stopped being made in 1984). No idea who those people are or where they are. A total mystery!



As for how long you leave the film in the tanks, that depends on a lot of things; the type of film you're using, the type of developer, the dilution of the developer, and the temperature. Plus whether or not you're pushing, pulling, or processing normally. Typically if you look on the label of the developer you're using, it will list developing times for common film stocks. If you look up the film stock's technical data pdf on Kodak's website, there are development times listed there too. There's also this database which is huge and always growing: http://www.digitaltruth.com/devchart.php, and there are apps for iPhone and Android that are super helpful as well. You'll find most of these are for still photography, but it still applies. You can also google around, there are tons of forum discussions about developing times.