How to Develop Black and White Film at Home

PDF Cheat Sheet:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByaR...

This video shows you how to develop, step by black and white 35mm film , step by step, at home. I have included a PDF cheat sheet/Guide with the complete list of chemicals and supplies needed with direct links to each.

If you have any question or comments please leave them below and thank you so much for watching!

Outro Music: "Bubblegum Ballgame" by JR Tundra

---

Closed Caption:

hey john here with Prime studios
technical
ography now in this video I'm going
show you how you can
develop your own black and white film at
home now if you're new to film
photography and you're not quite at the
developing stage yet there's some other
videos of mine you probably want to
check out first
the first one is up here which is how an
SLR camera works over here is how to
load and unload 35 millimeter film and
then down here are two videos some of
the most popular film cameras used by
students and how to use them
the canon ae-1 and my personal favorite
the pentax k1000 now in order to help
you out
I've trying to make this video as easy
to use as possible and this process as
simple as possible
so I've done a couple of things to
accommodate that the first thing is that
up above me i'm going to put all the
different sections of the video and
links so that you can just click on a
section and jump right to it or you go
through section and you want to watch it
again you just click on that section
again and then i'll repeat therefore you
can very easily navigate the entire
video
now the second thing I've done is
created a special PDF file which you can
find in the description down below and
this PDF file will not only act as a
cheat sheet which you can print out
which will have all the basic
instructions of the developing process
as well as temperature and timing tables
for different kinds of film but it will
also have links to every single piece of
equipment so it's going to have a list
of equipment and next to it a link link
you directly where you can buy that
equipment
now all this being said there are quite
a few ways that you can develop black
and white film but what I'm going to
show you in this video is one of the
most comment and one of the easiest ways
to start off in in film and developing
it by yourself
so therefore i'm going to be developing
one of the most commonly used films
which is
ilford hp5 400 iso film
so one of the first things you're going
to need to do is make sure chemicals
together and others three main chemicals
that you're going to use to develop film
there's the developer itself there's a
fixer which makes the film no longer
sensitive to light and stop bath was
actually stops the developing process so
it goes developer stop bath fixer and
then
photo flow which is this other chemical
but i'm not going to mix this from the
concentrate because i'm a lazy
it's not quite necessary one warning i
do need to give is that these chemicals
can be dangerous in certain
circumstances so you do need to be
cautious
for example if you're using the
developing tank or make some the
chemicals or whatever you need you're
going to get a little bit on your
fingers so if you want to wear gloves
different work gloves you want to do I
protection to our protection lab coat
whatever that is perfectly fine because
you don't want to do something like oh
you know you're missing the chemicals
and then you rub your eye
it's going to get your I that's going to
be really bad if it has prolonged
contact with your skin
that's going to be bad if you ingest it
that's gonna be really bad
so you need to respect the chemicals
that you're working with
alright so the first chemical we're
going to mix is the developer now we're
using what's called a kodak d76
developer which is one of the most
common ones used now comes in these
smaller packets which is for making one
leader so it's a powder that you mix
with water
you can also buy a larger bag so that
you can mix it in larger containers like
this is a 3.75 liter container but we're
gonna we're going to just mix one leader
now we're going to do this one first
because you have to mix it at a
temperature of water temperature of a
hundred twenty-two 231 degrees
Fahrenheit so the tap water that you're
using needs to be that temperature is
one of the first things I'm going to do
and take my infrared thermometer here
which is my preferred method of
measuring the temperature of everything
and i'm going to go ahead and get using
a little thicker here to try to get my
water as close to that temperature as
possible
somewhere between 125 and a hundred and
thirty degrees Fahrenheit
okay so it looks like as i'm sure you
can tell my apartment is older but i can
only get the water temperature up to
about a hundred and forty degrees
Fahrenheit and so that's what I'm going
to have to work with
now you should always strive for a
hundred twenty 135 degrees but for the
sake of the video I'm just going to keep
going
ok the first thing I'm going to do is
going to go ahead and cut open my
developing powder here very carefully
pour it into my delta tango with the
name brand this particular container
which is specifically made for photo
chemicals you can see it's opaque
because exposure to light will degrade
the chemicals faster and what we're
making is what's called stock solution
and that's an important term stock
solution basically means the purest form
of the solution and it's going to come
into play later when we're talking about
how to mix our chemicals later for
developing so we use my files here
now in terms of mixing the chemical you
want to make sure and not shake it
that's not how you do it you want to i'm
going to be using a glass sir rod in
order to stir the chemical up to mix it
up
you want to go ahead and do that so that
all of the chemical is nice and
dissolved and in the hot water
ok so once you're done mixing the
developer very thoroughly stirring it so
that's all dissolved
you're going to want to go ahead and
rinse off your stirring rod because
otherwise when you use it on the other
chemicals that could be cross
contamination you want to make sure it's
nice and clean and because this is that
a nice high temperature now we need to
let it cool off to about room
temperature which can take a while so
you may want to do this the day before
you actually develop all right so
thankfully the next two chemicals we
have to mix can be mixed at a
temperature that's room temperature so
about 75 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit
so the next thing we're going to do is
stop bath which this is in Decatur stop
bath so this bottle right here is a
bottle of concentrated in decatur stop
bath
so this bottle will last you a really
long time because you just a tiny little
bit to mix with tap water in order to
make a hole leader and the nice thing
about stop bath and fixer
unlike developer is that you can pour
them back into the bottle after using
them in the developing process and reuse
them and the indicator stop bath will
actually change color under certain
light to indicate that it is no longer
useful that you need to change it out
now in order to mix the stop bath
basically what it calls for is 16
milliliters of the concentrate mixed
with about 1 liter of water
so in order to do that I have a
graduated beaker here that has much
finer increments than my other sort of
basic beakers and so 16 millimeters is
is right right there
so it's just a tiny tiny amount another
thing is that this chemical is is quite
strong and it smell
in other words don't inhale it
so right right about there
so that's that's it that's all I need
what's kind of cool about this smell is
that it kind of reminds me of when I was
in high school and and and learning dark
room for the very first time that you
want to make sure that your tap water
temperature is at the correct
temperature because you may live in a
colder or warmer climate and you still
want to make sure it's around 75 degrees
Fahrenheit now also the other thing
usually when you are using your little
funnel here
you want to rinse it out if you ever
have chemicals going through it right
now i just have tap water going through
it
ok so now i have my my cleaned off
stirring rod i'm going to go ahead and
stir my mixture here and and mix it all
up and then of course when it rings all
my strength and that's ready to go
alright so the final chemical i'm going
to mix is the fixer
now as you can see the picture comes in
a much larger powder container here and
it's concentrated powder for making 3.8
liters a fixer which you can reuse for
quite some time
so this Delta taner day tater I'm sorry
by Delta one is 3.75 leaders
so it's going to be slightly more
concentrated but it's it's close enough
and this can also be mixed with a room
temperature water so about 75 degrees
so first we're going to do is I'm going
to go ahead and open this up cut this
open
of course you want to be very careful
when you're pouring in the chemicals
that are gonna go everywhere and there
we go
yeah
ok now of course you want to take your
glass during rod and you want to stir
this up as much as possible
ok so now that you have your three main
chemicals mix the last thing you want to
do is you want to grab some little
sticky labels here like these and you
want to go ahead and write the date on
them so that you know when the chemicals
were mixed because it can be very easy
to forget
now the typical shelf-life stored in
sort of normal darken conditions where
they're not gonna be exposed to light so
like in a cabinet or whatever is about
six months after that you're definitely
going to need to remix the chemicals
ok so now you're probably wondering how
can you know the timing and the
temperature in the sequence and all that
of what you're supposed to do with these
chemicals
so one of the easiest ways i found is an
app called massive dev now there's a
free version and a paid version and I'm
I'm cheap enough to where i just have
the the free version that so you hit the
plus button and first we're going to
choose our film
let's see here which is HP 5 plus it's
right here which is our developer that
we're using which is d 76
now there's a couple different options
here you can see it is decently six
stock 1 plus 31 + 21 + 1 now I like to
use the 1+1 you can see the recommended
for is now what this means is the stock
solution is what we just mix so it's
sort of the the concentrated pure
solution but the one to one means one
part developer and one part water so
that's what i like to do because it will
keep the developing time a little bit
longer and leave a little more room for
error if we
our timing so inches is 0 which is four
hundred and now it's telling me here
the development time stop bath fixing
typos clear if you decide to use it
which we're not doing this video and
then the final wash
so the developing times can be 13
minutes then stop bath for one minute
fixing for five minutes and then the
final washes 10 minutes and 30 seconds
ok so now what we're going to do is
we're going to prepare our chemicals for
the developing process so we're going to
get them already so that we can just
pour it right into the developing tank
which is what this is now for me I
typically like to do 500 milliliters
just cuz i want to make sure the film is
definitely covered and that's it
so first thing I'm going to do is I'm
gonna go ahead and do the developer
which remember it's one part developer
in part
stock solution so first I'm going to go
ahead and pour 250 milliliters of stock
solution here and then we're going to go
ahead and add 250 milliliters of water
ok now for the other chemicals are just
going to go straight in and remember the
stop bath and a picture can be reused
so i'm going to go ahead and pour in
about 500 milliliters of each of these
I like to use my infrared thermometer to
take the temperature now all the timing
i just showed you on the massive dev app
where lines on a temperature of 20
degree Celsius which is 60 degrees
Fahrenheit
so if I measure them now so it's pretty
close already 68 72 72
so what I typically like to do is put
things in there put these in the
refrigerator and that way
wait a few minutes and then they'll get
down to 60 degrees and you want to make
sure that these are all as close as
possible to 60 degrees Fahrenheit
because timing and temperature is
everything when developing film
so you can just go ahead and open up
your fridge here and place them all in
there
usually I find about 15 to 30 minutes is
completely sufficient for in the right
temperature now you want to make sure
that when you're checking the
temperature you actually take the thing
out and using infrared thermometer and
then that will give you much more
accurate reading
so the next step is to go ahead and take
your film and load it into your
developing tank
now it's important this is very
important because you need to do it in
an environment that is completely free
of light that its pitch black dark so
you can use something like this which is
called a changing bag so I shot a role
of HP five families on my camera haven't
taken it out yet but what I'm going to
do is I'm going to first take this role
of HP 5 film i'm going to sacrifice it
I'm going to do loading the tank in the
light which will completely destroy the
film
keeping in mind that everything I'm
doing right now has to be done inside
this bag or inside a room that
absolutely pitch black so that no extra
light hits the film and ruin your photos
because the the film still sensitive to
light
ok so i have my my fake roll or two real
role but I'm gonna have sacrificed so i
can have that now have her cap for your
tank you have this little doohickey here
which is for you put it in you can use
it to turn the film reels inside to
agitate them if you want
and the whole thing unscrews so in the
developing tank you have your lid and
then you're going to have multiple film
reels and these are made of plastic
which I strongly prefer or metal I think
they're a lot easier to use and you have
your center column at the center column
combined with the lid on top will make
this a light tight container even though
you're pouring chemicals in and out of
it
another that's cool is that this film
reel right now it's set to take
35-millimeter film but you can also
click it and expand it so that it will
take medium format 120 film
so that's kind of cool but we're doing
35 millimeter film today
you want to make sure you're real is dry
if it's wet it could very easily tear
the film so i'm going to set this aside
and once again you need to do this
completely in the dark
complete blackness within this this
changing bag which I'll show you in a
second but for now i'll show you how to
do it outside the bag
you're also going to need a pair of
scissors and a bottle opener
so the first thing you're going to do
going to have all your pieces here
already in the bag you're going to seal
up your bag
put your arms in here and then you're
going to find your film
now the film is going to be hopefully
all the way wound in so I want to win it
all the way in and out some people like
to leave a little tab out once once a
rewind the film in their camera i found
that rewinding all the way doesn't seem
to have an effect of of the light leaks
or anything like that
ok so the first thing you're going to do
is take your a bottle opener and you're
going to pry open the canister film and
you want to go ahead and do it from the
bottom because that's way easier
so you can see him prying it open here
at this point the film's pretty much
ruined it
it's been exposed to light so really he
just pry the whole thing apart now as
you can see the whole roll of
almost in here and keep in mind you're
going to be doing this all by touch
I feel you won't be able to see anything
at all so you're going to have to to
just figure out what's going on based on
what you feel
there we go ok so we have our entire
roll here which now of course is
completely ruined because it's a little
like here but just for demonstration
purposes
so what you do is you take your field
film role here and it has this action
right here which allows you to Ratchet
it
and so it will pull the film forward so
the first thing you're going to do is
find the end where the beginning of the
film and you want to just go ahead and
cut that off so it's nice and even
so you want to go not going to go ahead
and load that into the film reel like
this and you want to push it a little
bit and then see if you can get a cot on
the little ball bearings which are in
here
sometimes you can just put Forge to a
little bit
there we go now
this can be an especially difficult
thing to do so don't get too frustrated
if you're if you're having trouble with
it's not exactly something that's easy
to learn on the first try
now as you can see as I ratchet forward
it's pulling the film forward to Ratchet
it and when you're doing this in the
dark you can sort of feel with your
thumbs that the film's moving forward
and when you ratchet back it doesn't
really move back and sometimes you have
to kind of put a little bit of pressure
here to make sure it doesn't come back
and so it's going to go on to the real
just like this am almost at the end here
now what this is doing is that it's
putting all the film on this real
but in such a way so that it's all
separated so that the chemicals can go
across the entire film plane without
anything touching each other and
sometimes you have to get a little
creative and
in the last few steps here ok so
eventually you're going to reach the end
here where you have the end of the film
reel and then you're going to take your
scissors again you're going to go ahead
and just cut that end off
so once you do that you can ratchet just
a couple more times and then the film
will be all the way on the role there
so now it is ready to go back and get
the tank so first what you do is you
take your core here you go ahead and put
that through and you want to make sure
that the bottom part of the core goes
down back in here and then take your lid
spirit back on and then you're good
you're your vessel is light tight
the purpose of the red lid is to keep
the liquid inside as you're doing the
developing so you put this all back
together and then you can take your arms
out of the bag unzipped the bag and take
it all out and you're ready to develop
your roll of film
ok so now i'm actually gonna do the real
thing where i'm going to go ahead and
rewind the film in my camera here we
wanted all the way you can feel one
comes loose so when you do that you go
ahead and pop it open and so there's my
roll of film right there
go ahead and take that out so now i have
my roll of film that I've shot and if
this is exposed to light that it's going
to destroy all the photos so i have this
I have all the pieces of my developing
tank i have my scissors i have my bottle
opener and i'm going to go ahead and put
all of this inside my changing bag or I
have everything in there and me putting
my arms in here is going to finish the
process of of sealing it off and as
strange as this might look this is this
is definitely how it works
so now I have all my my tools in my film
and everything in here so first going to
find the roll of film and my bottle
opener was my film ats
ok so now i'm at the end of the roll
it's ratcheted onto the real and i want
to take the scissors and cut off and in
part center column going to get through
the film reel and then go ahead and put
it down in the developing tank and then
on the lid and go ahead and very
securely
screw the lid to developing tank Bank
now you can go ahead and zip your
changing band
films in here I get my film canisters
open scissors into the film reel and now
assuming our chemicals are the right
temperature we are ready to start
developing
ok so now we're finally ready to
actually do the developing of the film
so the basically it's going to work his
first i'm going to do a pre rinse under
the tap for about two to three minutes
i'm going to try and get the temperature
as close to 60 degrees as possible by
chemicals right now are as close to 60
degrees Fahrenheit as i can get them
so everything is all the same and I
wrote down my developing times just a
little note card here developing 30
minutes
stop at one minute 6 45 minutes and then
rinse for 10 minutes and 30 seconds
so everyone
yeah
ok now i set my ipad here for 13 minutes
and what I'm going to do is I'm going to
agitate it for the first 40 seconds on
the stop and then at the top of every
minute I'm going to agitate for 20
seconds
tap it on the counter to get rid of any
air bubbles and then let it sit and for
the remainder of the 40 seconds of that
minute and candy to continue to do that
for the next 30 minutes so here we go
go ahead and pour in my developer
go ahead and put the cap on start my
timer and agitate the way I like to
agitate is like this up and down on also
turning it sideways and you can see it's
going to leak just a little bit that's
okay
and you want to go ahead and agitate it
just kind of gently you agitated too
much than too much of the
light-sensitive chemical is going to be
take stripped from the phone and you
don't want that
so there's my first 40 seconds so I tap
it to knock off any air bubbles that
might be sticking to the film so that
way as it sits there in the developer
there won't be sort of these little
spots that that are protected by air and
not getting developed so you really want
to if you're doing it this way and not
with the app which is a better way to do
it
you want to go ahead and pay very close
attention to the clock for the first 20
seconds of each minute now
there we go so I'm just going to let it
sit for the remainder of 40 seconds of
this minute I'm just going to keep doing
that
the remainder of the 13 minutes now the
next part of what i'm going to do is the
stop bath so I'm going to try and do it
as quickly as possible once i'm done
with the developing in that I'm going to
pour the developer out and because it
can't be reused and then i'm going to
reset the timer quickly for one minute
pouring the stop bath agitate for about
40 seconds and then let it sit for the
remainder of the 20 seconds of that one
minute for the stop bath the stop bath
is there to stop the development prof
is it helps to make it more precise now
technically the stop bath is not
actually needed for the developing
process
technically you really only need the
developer in the fixer as a substitute
for stop bath
if you want to be a little less precise
or you just don't want to spend money
you can just go ahead and run the film
under water for several minutes and
under the tab and that will rinse off
most of the developer and stop
developing process
ok so I'm almost done with developing my
film here
ok so my alarm is about to go off take
my top off here
ok I'm pouring out my developer
I'm not suggesting that you should pour
out your developer down the drain
but that's what I'm doing quickly reset
it to one minute
go ahead and pour in the stop bath
go ahead start i'm gonna go ahead and
agitate this so that gets on the film
and agitated for about 20 to 30 seconds
and then not the bubbles off by tapping
it on the counter and then i'm going to
go ahead and just let it sit and stop a
so this is stopping the developing
process now the cool thing about the
stop bath is that you can reuse it
so you can use your tunnel here go ahead
and take your stop bath and just pour it
back into the canister
ok so at this point things are a little
less time critical
because right now we have already
developed our film and we have used to
stop bath to go ahead and stop the
process now the only thing that's left
is we need to use the fixer which is
coming for fear to go ahead and make it
so that the film is no longer sensitive
to light
ok so for the fixer need 25 minutes when
i said that the five minutes
go ahead and pour this in start
it's the same basic thing so agitate the
first 40 seconds of the first minute and
then the first 20 seconds of each
remaining minute
ok now it is important to know that you
can under or over fix the film and that
can definitely cause problems
so you definitely want to get the timing
right
both with the developing and the fixer
so the fixed you can go ahead and pour
back into its bottle
it's it's developed it's fixed
the only thing we have left to do is go
ahead and rinse it under the sink and
just let it go like that
four and a half minutes
alright so i have rinsed my film under
the water for about ten and a half
minutes
ok so now our film is developed it's
perfectly fine and fixed so we can go
ahead and open our light tight
developing tank here and do our final
steps so you can see we have our fellow
in our cannister here and what we're
going to do is we're going to now use
distilled water and a photo flow
now this is not a very exact way to do
it but I just add just about a quarter
cat full just just a little bit a little
bit goes a long way for that in and then
fill it with distilled water so that it
covers the film we go
the purpose of photo flow is essentially
to kind of clean the film
it's there to get the water spots off so
you can go ahead and just kind of
agitated a little bit if you want to you
can use this thing here
go ahead and spin the film and you want
to watch in the photo flow
maybe two to four minutes something like
that
not too long ok that's good enough go
ahead and close that out
so now have a film on the Real the
easiest way to get it off is to just go
ahead and take it apart like this and
see I still have a whole roll of film
quickly developed so here it is
now you can use a squeegee rubber
squeegee
but these days I i really prefer to use
my fingers go ahead and get all that
excess water off at this point you want
to go ahead and hang it and i found that
the easiest way to do that is just get
some clamps from a local store and hang
it off of the shower rod in
in your bathroom and you have one clip
for hanging it at the top and then you
wait it at the bottom with another clip
so that it hangs straight and it will
come out straight and then so let it dry
overnight and then once it's dry you go
ahead and cut it into strips of five put
it into a a print file like this profile
is a brand name
this is the plastic archival sleeve
basically where you're going to put each
strip of film and you can put that in
the binder and then you can do whatever
you want with the film you can scan it
you can take it to be developed for
pictures
whatever you would like to do the first
time you develop the second of the third
it's likely that you may screw up so
don't feel badly if things go completely
wrong or you completely screwed up
because it
it's it always happens to beginners
happened to me when I was younger I just
keep at it keep going and if you have
any additional questions feel free to
leave them in the comments down below
yeah