I've been souping (developing) my own black and white film for years. It's cheap (or was) and convenient with a black bag at home. I didn't bother with color film because I didn't want to wrap my head around the temperature control thing. So I spent a lot of money sending my color film away and being unhappy with the results. Ultimately I started to shoot less of it and boxed what little I did shoot with the intention of sending it out for developing.
Enter the Cinestill TCS 1000; I bought only the device and not the kit (you can check out an image of my set up on Instagram). It's incredibly easy to use and I've been playing catch up on developing my color film. Color chemistry for C-41 runs about $30 depending on where you buy it and you can develop roughly 30 rolls of film with one kit.
This is a huge savings when you're charged $11 or more to develop one roll of film. At any rate the best part of this story is that I'm no longer a procrastinator about my color film. I've been busy busy busy developing and scanning images that were taken a while ago.
If you follow my Facebook page I posted about a week ago how I put off developing two rolls of black and white film (I'm focused on color). I usually shoot Ilford Pan F or any Ilford film; I like Rollei too but it's very expensive. During a quick film change I grabbed what was in my bag which was Pan F. I usually use this at night for long exposure images. I loaded it in my Holga 120FN (during a bright sunny day in New York) that had a polarizer and a Tiffen black softnet filter attached (the Holga eats light and I added two filters that basically cuts light; I definitely live on the edge). A last minute thought was to push the Pan F to 400. When you cut light with a slow film and a toy camera your head has to be in the game when it's time to actually produce the negatives.
Some images from my mad recipe.
Comments