Yesterday, I took good friend Michael Kalus up on his offer to try home film development for a change. It was a crazy day of which I can only relate the film development part. I came away from the experience now seriously looking into developing in my apartment -- black and white for certain.

Junkie for pro labs

Ever since I got back into film a couple years ago I've become the patron of nearly all of Vancouver's remaining pro labs. They've all done a creditable job for the most part and I've been able to live with each lab's individual quirks. But living with the cost of development is another matter, especially when I've been routinely wasting shots.

After I was hit with a $60 bill last week for some 4x5 development I realized two things: #1, I had to become a better photographer (obvious) and #2, I either had to cut down on large format development or I had to take on some of that development myself.

So, yesterday after a fruitful walk around Stanley Park (gorgeous!), we escaped from the heat back to Michael's apartment to develop some of that film. It wasn't 4x5 but it would be a handful of 120 medium format.

Michael's setup

Michael develops both color and black and white. I was lead to believe that color was a lot of work but after running through three rolls -- with lots of pain of learning -- I conclude that isn't all that. Sure it helps to have this massive Jobo machine that does the agitation and keeps chemicals warm for you but I believe those jobs can be handled by humans just as well with some patience.

The round cylinder is the light tight tank that you keep your negatives. You load your negatives into round spools -- in the dark! -- and then seal them in the tank. You pour chemicals into the top of the tank and, at different stages, you put the tank into the machine which then agitates them. Underneath the agitator is a warm bath of water that keeps chemicals at the right temperature. That is probably the trickiest thing for someone without the machine to keep track of really.

That said, it was reallly nice watching that machine do its thing. All we had to do was change the chemicals at the right time with the aid of a stopwatch (or iPhone).

Oh, and then there was the matter of me overcoming my ignorance.

Loading film into reels nightmare

I was terrible at loading film. I spent an hour in the darkened bathroom tub trying to load 120 into reels. I nodded my way through Michael's tutorial on how to load and then promptly forgot it. I then spent close to an hour on my knees in the dark dropping film, scrunching it, and finally forcing the long negatives into the reels. When after an hour I finally succeeded in getting the negatives into the development tank I escaped out into the light hating the experience.

My problem was not adequately understanding how the reels took up film and advanced it. I know now. Finger on the film on the right side on the up movement. Finger on the left when spooling back. If I had really practiced it in the light before hand I wouldn't have been cursing the experience.

But then after practicing again I finally understood what I had been doing wrong. The aha! moment hit. Next time it will be different.

Chemicals chemicals

Everything I'd heard of the actual development process was that it was a nightmare of stinky chemicals and tricky timing. But from my experience yesterday it really is no different from cooking. If you can follow a recipe and you have everything in its right place ready for you to pour and mix you can develop film -- even color.

Wash -> Develop -> fix -> wash -> preservative

The Jobo machine really does some of the manual work for you. It agitates and keeps the chemicals (Tetenal C-41) the right temperature. For the 120 negative development there were really only two chemicals that needed to be kept at that temperature and everything else was either room temperature or whatever you got out of the tap. The whole process took only about 20 minutes for the three rolls. There was really minimal stinkiness too.

Then after that was just squeegeeing and drying the developed rolls.

Having gone through this once, and accounting for the pain of learning, I'm now re-educated and now am researching how to do this again with less pain. I may not get a big machine like the Jobo but the process is now demystified.