October 13, 2010

Tmax 400 @ 1600 - 4800 in Caffenol-C-L

Hello again,

good news from the coffee. For the appearance of this Salsa rock band I needed a fast film but only had Tmax400 available. First tests in Caffenol-C-L from 200 to 800 ASA showed overexposed and overdeveloped negatives, EI 200 and 400 were so dense that they were practically unsuable. 800 was OK, but still quite dense. So I thought that EI 1600 would be possible at least, maybe more even if I reduced the dev time or temperature slightly.

The picture of the drummer is exposed at  EI 1600 and is very fine imho. The singer/guitarist was poorly lightened, so the same settings as in the first pic lead to EI 4800. Exposure for both was 2.8/60 with the fabulous Rokkor 2.8/135 mm lens for my Minolta SLR, of course using a tripod. Grain is still quite small for these speeds and base fog low for a fast speed film.

Developed semi-stand in Caffenol-C-L with 1 gramm per liter potassium bromide (KBr). 5 minutes prewash, 60 minutes development at 18-19 °C, agaitation 30 seconds continuous initially, 3 times after 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32 minutes. Still low base fog, perfect even development. For EI 1600 - 3200  I would probably prefer 20-21 °C and 60 mins. Maybe even EI 6400 is possible. Maybe lowering the KBr to about 0.5 g/l could help, but watch the base fog.

Best regards - Reinhold

5 comments:

FiatluX said...

That's plain ol' awesome Reinhold, stunning results!

Greetings from the desert in Arizona, I hope my 60+ 4X5' s survive to be caffenol'ed :)

/Bo

tjo said...

Hey,
Was that a fresh roll of Tmax? Or was it expired?
Regards, Timo

imagesfrugales said...

Hi Timo, that was a fresh one. I can't recommend using expired fast films. F.e. a Delta 3200 exactly at the expiring date is already worse than a really fresh one. Best - Reinhold

Dave said...

Hi I shot some Tmax400 at 1600 and tried the C-C-L recipe 20'C 60min (scaled down ingredients for 280ml of caffenol - checked and double checked amounts), but after fixing and washing I was left with no image! the first (normally black) frame of film was barely visible as a brown cast, the rest was missing. Either I made a mistake or developed too long? Any help appreciated.

imagesfrugales said...

Hi Dave, I bet there's something wrong with the ingredients. Did you check your washing soda for water content. I bet aghain you didn't.
http://caffenol.blogspot.de/2010/03/soda-myth-and-truth_07.html