Photon Detector » processing

Video tutorials: loading 120 film on metal and plastic reels

Nicolai Morrisson — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 08:03:59 +0000

Check out these how-to videos by Luke Healey on loading 120 film onto reels for at-home DIY film processing.

Loading metal reels:

Loading Paterson plastic reels:

Adventures in year-old DIY C-41 chemistry

Nicolai Morrisson — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 17:53:12 +0000

See what happens when alspix—the man who brought us the now-legendary matchbox pinhole camera—processes film in year-old, over-used C-41 colour negative chemistry from a DIY kit. The results are surprising!

Read about it at Alspix Stuff.

He used this Nova C-41 kit, which is available in the UK. For those in the US, check out the variable time, variable temperature Arista quart and gallon C-41 kits, as well as pint, quart, and gallon E-6 (slide/positive/reversal) kits from Freestyle Photo.

DIY 4×5 sheet film processing tube

Nicolai Morrisson — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 19:13:51 +0000

Check out Eben Ostby‘s plans for a 4×5 large format sheet film developing tube. View a larger, more legible version of the plans and construction notes on the photo’s page on Flickr.

Combi-Plan 4×5 daylight tank still sucks donkeys

Nicolai Morrisson — Sun, 07 May 2006 03:47:07 +0000

It turns out that when I reviewed the HP Combi-Plan T 4×5 daylight sheet film developing tank and called it a "dodgy, leaky piece of shit", I may have vastly under-stated my case.

It was nice today: the trees in a local apple orchard were flowering, it was warm but not hot, and the light was good. I loaded up some Velvia and FP4, grabbed my field camera, and spent half an hour waiting for a cloud to move out of the way of the sun.

It’s been a while since I shot B&W 4×5 and I forgot that I never actually ordered the rotary tube I was looking at to replace the Combi-Plan. Oh well. You know how sometimes you have a bad experience with something, time passes, and you start to think that it couldn’t really be as bad as you remember? The Combi-Plan can’t be that bad, can it?

It can. Now that I’ve given the tank another go, I think it’s still dodgy, it’s still leaky, and still a piece of shit, but that doesn’t really begin to cover it. This time, most of the sheets escaped their carrier channels and were floating around loose inside. One sheet had a few chunks of emulsion scratched out, which could be my sometimes questionable film holder loading skills, but my money’s on it floating around and scraping against sharp film carrier parts.

I’m frankly amazed that this thing is actually sold. If I hacked something this bad together, I wouldn’t even lend it to a friend, let alone attempt to charge money for it. Either the company who make this have never used it or they’ve got balls the size of the moon. This product needs to be melted, dunked in piss, and stabbed in the face with a fucking schoolbus.

UPDATE: The scratches are my fault. I forgot to affix the thing that holds the film in place to the top of the film carrier.

Review posted: HP Combi-Plan T 4×5 daylight film developing tank

Nicolai Morrisson — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 23:48:13 +0000

I just wrote a review of the HP Combi-Plan T 4×5 daylight film developing tank that explains why I think it’s a steaming pile of crap for daylight processing.

Read the review