First Rolls of Film Developed at Home

A few days ago, I scored a major victory: I developed my own black and white film at home for the first time.

Between my return to film photography in the summer of 2022 and last month, I had shot exactly 116 rolls of film 88 of which were black and white. All of that film was processed by a variety of developing labs.

I had always known I could develop my own black and white film at home. The main thing that was holding me back was the handling of the spent chemistry.

Three years ago when I was considering a return to film photography, I came across this learnfilm.photography article which discussed how irresponsibly dumped developing chemicals endangers the environment. I learned that stop bath can be safely poured down the drain because it consists mostly of acetic acid (vinegar) or citric acid. It’s the other two types of chemicals that are the problem.

To begin with, most developers contain hydroquinone, which combines with the chlorine used at waste water treatment facilities to produce chlorophenol, a carcinogen that persists for long periods in water.

More insidious is spent fixer, which contains unexposed silver halides stripped from film during the developing process. Silver halides are a toxic heavy metal that are nearly impossible to remove from waste water. They also bioaccumulate and are very difficult to clean up once they work their way into the environment.

That same article advises that one safe method to dispose of environmentally unfriendly developing chemicals is to take them to a local hazardous waste facility for proper disposal. Some processors are apparently glad to take spent fixer because of those silver halides are rather valuable and can be recovered and recycled. Another option is simply to pour it over cat litter and let it dry before placing it in the household trash.

But my region doesn’t have a facility that regularly accepts spent film developing chemicals, and the cat litter option just sounded like a pain to me. Maybe out of laziness more than anything else, I opted to send my film out for developing. Maybe this was a bad assumption on my part, but I always believed that whatever lab I worked with disposed of their spent chemistry safely. Besides, I enjoyed getting packages in the mail.

But the downsides of working with developing labs eventually emerged. The perfectionist in me chafed at one lab whose prices were great but who regularly left water streaks across many of my negatives. Another lab returned clean negatives to me, but they also routinely lopped off half of the last exposure on each roll. Yet another developing lab ignored my requests to send me USPS tracking numbers that I knew were being automatically generated for the return of my negatives to me. No matter who I turned to, I managed to find some annoying or otherwise fatal flaw in what those labs offered.

I think what started to push me over the edge was my recent introduction to darkroom printing at Franklin Foto in Portland. Working with physical photo paper, watching an image appear in a bath of chemicals, and doing all the work myself caused the scales to fall from my eyes. I wanted to pursue more of a hands-on approach to my film photography.

Finishing the job was the simple matter of cost. After my experience at Franklin Foto, I was curious to know how much money I had spent on film processing, so I tallied up the total cost. Long story short, I discovered that I had spent far too much. On average, my cost came out to be about $9.50 per roll including shipping both ways. The lab I had currently been working with was costing me almost $16 per roll including shipping. In the end, I realized I was spending significant amounts of money on sometimes flawed service.

When we were having work done on our house a while back, a friend of mine once advised me that, for certain jobs I could do myself, no one would ever do it better than me. Color film processing requires C41 chemistry, which is difficult to do at home. But with a modest investment in some developing gear, I knew that I could process black and white film at home with relative ease and that I could probably do a better job, too.

What about dealing with those spent chemicals? My plan is to hang on to my spent chemicals and, when I go on my next road trip, take them to a developing lab who accepts them. If I have a growing backlog, I can also pour them over kitty litter and dispose of them in the trash.

Having rationalized the problem of spent chemical handling, I finally took the plunge and ordered gear for developing my black and white film at home.

Over the course of a few days, I shot through two rolls of Kentmere Pan 400, an inexpensive student-grade film stock that punches way above its weight in terms of performance. My focus wasn’t necessarily on artistic achievement but rather producing two rolls of exposed film that I wouldn’t feel too broken up over if I ended up ruining them.

Two days after placing an order for Ilford and Patterson’s Film Processing Starter Kit, a film squeegee, and a few storage bottles, my gear arrived at my house. I was ready to go!

The hardest task by far was getting my film onto the developing tank reels. This process must be done in complete darkness. Using a few undeveloped rolls of film I had inadvertently ruined a while ago, I rehearsed loading my reels in the light.

Satisfied that I had gotten the hang of it, I waited until evening when I could turn off all the lights in the house and use our windowless bathroom to do the task. In spite of my earlier practice, it wasn’t long before I was fumbling it up.

The biggest problem I ran into was dealing with the curliness of the tightly wound film as it came off the spool. Ratcheting the film onto the reel, there came a point when the film got jammed on itself. After struggling but finally succeeding with getting the film onto my reels, I realized that I could have used my weighted film clips to suspend the film from the shower curtain rod and keep it straight as I loaded the reel. Lesson learned.

The next day, I turned to developing. I had done a ton of reading on various websites (see below), but I found that Ilford’s documentation was the most useful. Their instructions on how to use Ilfosol 3 developer, Rapid Fixer, and Ilford stop bath and wetting agent chemistry guided me through the process with little if any ambiguity. The computer programmer in me loves good documentation, and my respect for that company only deepened.

Turning our bathroom into my temporary developing lab, I got all of my gear in order. I printed out my procedure on a piece of paper and taped it to the wall. I donned a pair of gloves and safety glasses, prepared my chemistry, and, with the courage of my convictions, jumped in.

After pouring developer, stop bath, fixer, and a wash including wetting agent into my developing tank for the prescribed amount of time for each, I hung my developed film and used my film squeegee to remove excess moisture. I observed no water marks or streaks of any kind across my film negatives which were now hanging nice and straight from my film clips. No more dealing with curly negatives wound into a coil by developing labs when they shipped them back to me.

What emerged, in other words, were two rolls of beautifully developed black and white film. Success!!!

Of course, the final test is image quality. Upon visually inspecting my negatives, I had a gut feeling that they appeared perhaps a bit overexposed compared to lab-developed film. Did I keep them in the developer too long?

After scanning them, however, I realized they were just fine. If anything, I think the scanner may have had more to work with than what I was getting back from various developing labs. When I developed my film, I was very careful to bring my chemistry to the proper temperature (20° Celsius or 68° Fahrenheit) and to keep the developer in the tank for the specified time as recommended by Ilford. Imagining the situation at your typical developing lab, I began to wonder if any of them are as scrupulous with observing proper developing times if they have a jumble of various types of undeveloped film to get through in any given day.

Knowing I would be developing my own film at home for a small fraction of the cost of sending it out, I also began to feel freer to be creative and experiment. As I shot through my two test rolls, I found myself gravitating toward window reflections. I mentioned earlier that I shot those two rolls of film with an eye not towards artistry but rather producing a test round of film for my first developing attempt. But many of the photographs I produced were quite pleasing to me. It seems artistry had won the day after all.

All in all, I’m really happy with the outcome. Part of the satisfaction I feel is knowing I can shoot through film without a lengthy turnaround time and without feeling like every shot I take will cost me around a dollar in total. I still have to buy film and chemicals, of course, but my per-roll cost should plummet substantially. By my calculations, processing had been costing me almost $16 per roll. Now it should cost about $3.20.

There’s also satisfaction to be found in knowing I did the work myself.

If you’re considering developing your black and white film at home, I can recommend these articles:

• How to Develop Film at Home in 9 Simple Steps (format.com).
• How to Develop Film at Home in 12 Steps (masterclass.com).
• Developing Film at Home: Everything You Need to Know to Get Started (dpreview.com).
• Develop Film at Home! A Step-by-Step Guide (bhphotovideo.com).
• How to Develop Black and White Film at Home (amateurphotographer.co.uk).
• Beginners Guide to Processing Film (ilfordphoto.com).
• YouTube video by Ilford Photo demonstrating the use of their Simplicity Film Processing Starter Kit.