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Homemade Rapid Fixer

Grocery Store Development – Part 3: Fixing Film with Pool Chemicals and Fertilizer – By Josh Vickers

By / / Learning Journeys, Processes, Tutorials & Guides / 12 Comments

Fixer is both cheap and abundant, which is great for those of us that enjoy developing our own negatives. However, in the search for local alternatives for film development, it presented a problem. Because it’s so easy to acquire, few have bothered to try making it themselves.

This is not to say that no one has; in fact, there is an active community of folks that buy and mix their own chemicals and achieve a high degree of nuanced control over their results. But ordinarily, they buy from reputable photography suppliers and not from the supermarket.

Lighter and higher-contrast photo of a lizard

Grocery Store Development – Part 2: Developing with Caffenol (and Salt) – By Josh Vickers

By / / Learning Journeys, Processes, Tutorials & Guides / 17 Comments

After my success with reversal processing, I wanted to try my hand at making a homemade developer. Caffenol was the obvious next step, and I, being a temperamental machine fueled and lubed by large amounts of coffee, had certainly run across the idea of developing film in caffeic acid. But I had never felt ready to try an alternative process, possibly wasting film. I had never felt secure enough in what I was capable of. This had changed.

Reversal (positive) of a drainage culvert

Grocery Store Development – Part 1: Reversal Processing with Peroxide & Vinegar – By Josh Vickers

By / / Processes, Tutorials & Guides / 22 Comments

What if you could develop and fix film using only products from the grocery store?

What if some supernatural event caused every brick-and-mortar photography store to disappear in a puff of silver? What if you needed to develop film on the very same day, just about anywhere in the world, and couldn’t wait for chemistry to be delivered?

The idea began to nag at me a few weeks ago. I had only just learned about reversal processing, making a positive filmstrip instead of negatives, and high price tag and hazardous materials of the kits to do it had me looking for alternatives.

Sabatier effect

Sabatier Effect with a B&W Negative and Color RA4 Process – by Séverine Chauveau

By / / Photos & Projects, Processes, Tutorials & Guides / 4 Comments

I am a photographer based in Reunion Island (a French territory in the Indian Ocean), and for a few years now, my practice has been focused on experimental photography. I really like error, randomness, surprise; they form part of my process. Photography, for me, means freedom to create – not just a list of precise techniques you must respect to obtain a “good photo”.

A Tale of Two Processes – Quality Coffee and Film Photography – by Cody Allen

By / / Humour, Philosophy & Reflections / 27 Comments

As a fan of manual processes that have since become more automated over the span of history, I couldn’t help pondering the similarities between two of my main interests; quality coffee and film photography. I know I’m not alone in sharing these hobbies so with this crowd in mind, I thought I’d wax poetic on the similarities and relation between manually brewing coffee and shooting/self-developing film.

To preface, I have shot film for around three years and have had an “above average” appreciation of quality coffee for maybe the last ten years or so. Just like there are many ways to skin a cat as they say, such is true for brewing coffee and developing film.

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