35mm Film Processing questions?

PH01

Going to buy myself an old fashioned SLR and a film scanner, but I want to know something about how does one process 35mm film? I hope someone can help me with.

1. If I was to do film processing at home, what do I have to do?

2. Anyone know how much it costs to get a film processed (no prints) in the shop?

Lennoxschips

I used to do this with black and white film, are you working with black and white or colour. I'm not sure of the process for colour, but here's how it went with black and white. You probably know some of these steps already.

You have to have a room where it is absolutely and completely dark. For processing film you can't use a "red light" as it were, because the film picks that up to. Red light is only for when you are developing the prints themselves.

You have to pull the film out of the roll in the pitch dark, and twist it on to a special reel, which you then insert in a sort of light-proof tub which you fill up with developing liquid (resuable for a certain amount of goes) for 10 minutes or so (if I remember correctly) after which you empty it out and fill it with fixer liquid (also reusable). The light proof tub I had could hold multiple canisters so you could develop multiple rolls at once.

I think you can buy home development kits that come with reel, tub and the neccessary liquids. Twisting the film onto the reel in the pitch dark takes practise.

I'm not sure how it goes with colour, if you need only one developing liquid or multiple ones for red, green and blue.

jArgHA

Lennoxschips (must be from Cork) summed it up pretty well there. Basically if you want to do your own colour processing forget it, its too costly and tricky.

Black & White processing can be tricky at first but is a lot of fun. The initial cost of equipment isn't too high, here's basically what you need:

developing tank (comes with one reel) ~ €20
extra reel (for loading film onto) ~ €10
thermometer ~ €15
b&w film developer ~ €7
b&w film fixer ~ €7
measuring cylinder ~ €7

i'm sure there is loads of developing tutorials on the web so i won't go into it here. one word of advice tho, before you try and develop a film, practice loading a junk film onto a reel in the dark again and again.

jArgHA

i have a question of my own on b&w film loading. it struck me (while i was loading a film onto a reel in my flatmates cramped wardrobe yesterday evening) that it would be far simpler if you could load the first part of the film (say about 3-4 inches just after the 'leader') in full light.

does anyone know if there is a trick to winding back your film (i do this manually with my SLR) so that the whole film does not go back into the canister, but say a couple of inches remain 'sticking-out' after winding back. maybe you could put a 'nick' in the film at the time of loading into the camera ?

cheers, jAH

DotOrg

a few answers:

to have a colour film developed only with no prints varies but I charge €2 a roll normally

and as for a trick to winding back a film so it doesn't go back into the cannister, it doesn't matter. for a few euro you can buy a little plastic device that pulls out the film leader such as: http://www.jessops.com/search/viewproduct.cfm?PRODUCT=ILFCR&BRAND=&CONTINUE=false&FEATS=&FIRSTPRICE=0&KEYWORD=&LEVEL=&MODELNUMBER=&NEWQUERY=True&NODE=377&ORD=ASC&ORDERBY=&QUANTITY=40&RECENT=0&REFINE=&SEARCH_FOR=&SEARCHNODE=0&SEARCHURL=dointellisearch.cfm&SECONDPRICE=999999&SHOWCASEID=&STARTROW=1&SUBS=&WORD_SEARCH=N&

DotOrg

developing tank (comes with one reel) ~ €20
extra reel (for loading film onto) ~ €10
thermometer ~ €15
b&w film developer ~ €7
b&w film fixer ~ €7
measuring cylinder ~ €7

and although it's not the for sale section of the board, i have a full set of this stuff unused if anybody is interested in buying as i doubt I'll ever use it after turning digital

PH01

Thanks for the feedback guys.
I've never developed my own film but I had imagined that it should easy enough and wouldn't cost the earth.
I was hoping to do colour film but by the sound of things it seems pretty difficult, or is it?

DotOrg wrote:

to have a colour film developed only with no prints varies but I charge €2 a roll normally

That's certainly cheaper than the €4.50 at my local Fuji Shop. How do you work it?

jArgHA

DotOrg wrote:

and as for a trick to winding back a film so it doesn't go back into the cannister, it doesn't matter. for a few euro you can buy a little plastic device that pulls out the film leader such as: http://www.jessops.com/search/viewproduct.cfm?PRODUCT=ILFCR&BRAND=&CONTINUE=false&FEATS=&FIRSTPRICE=0&KEYWORD=&LEVEL=&MODELNUMBER=&NEWQUERY=True&NODE=377&ORD=ASC&ORDERBY=&QUANTITY=40&RECENT=0&REFINE=&SEARCH_FOR=&SEARCHNODE=0&SEARCHURL=dointellisearch.cfm&SECONDPRICE=999999&SHOWCASEID=&STARTROW=1&SUBS=&WORD_SEARCH=N&

do you know if that gadget works well, how exactly does it work?

DotOrg

i use that gadget 30 times a day every single day so yes, it works
takes a bit of practise but it only takes about 10 seconds when you get used to it

it works with different bits of plastic grabbing the film leader, go into any photo lab in any pharmacy etc and ask to see theirs