I finished shooting my first roll of film around 7pm on the 4th (like 6 hours ago), and now I have developed my first roll. I was a little worried at first because I had never developed film before or anything even close.
I mixed 1 liter of working solution of developer, indicator stop bath and fixer, and 1 quart of the Hypo Clearing Agent (enough to make a full gallon of working solution).
Originally I had intended to wait until I had finished securing light away from my bathroom, but then tonight I discovered that my closet was even darker already, so for the first roll I decided to give it a shot. I set up my table with everything I needed in the closet, my reel and tank on the left, film, opener and scissors in the middle, and my tank lid on the right. Just as with my practice roll, the hardest part was getting the film canister open. It took a little while, but I got it (although, the canister didn’t fully survive). I popped the roll out with minimal trouble (although, it was more “springy” than my 9 year old practice roll of Kodak C-41). Cutting the leader of was easy enough, got it pretty straight too, but had to do it twice, as I didn’t get it all on the first attempt (another area the Kodak C-41 is different). I fumbled around with the reel for what seemed like 5 minutes, but was probably more like 30 seconds, trying to get the feeding started. In my trial runs in the daylight the Kodak C-41 tried to curl and refuse to go onto the reel, but in the actual loading the Fujifilm Neopan 400 there were no such problems. There was some hesitation at the end from the film being tight on the spool and of the reel getting full (practice was 24 exposures, actual is 37). Right as I was getting the reel into the tank I realized something, I could see the white hangers in the closet, and make out shapes of my shoe boxes on the shelf. “Uh oh” was my thought, I was sure that because I could see the hangers that the film had been ruined by the tiny bit of light that was coming in from one corner of the door. I decided to finish up, putting the funnel in place and the lid tightly on the tank. I moved into the light to collect myself and prepare my work area for the developing process. I mostly used my own blog entry as a guide, that and my handy stop-watch on my Casio G-Shock (I’m a nerd). I worked through the process, although partially wondering how such a crude system as a daylight developing tank could actually keep light out (since mine has the funnel thing inside for even-filling, and not the lid with the cap). I was super diligent in my agitation, which I also worried about potentially being too much agitation. I worked through the steps, pretty much worrying about light until I had finished off a full 10 minutes of fixing. After that point it was mostly just following the procedure and trying to not worry about what the final result would look like.
I finished off by adding 8 ounces of water to the tank and adding a splash of wetting agent, then swirling it for 30 seconds. At that point I dumped the tank and pulled out the reel. I was a little scared of what I saw at first, because things looked very dark. Apparently wet film looks dark when there are multiple layers of it. I nervously pulled the film off of the reel and began to notice that my pictures were there, exactly as I had framed them over the last 30 days, almost perfect it seemed. I had a little trouble with frame 36 coming off of the reel, it tried to hang on, but I managed to right it and get all 37 off without a problem. The roll is now hanging in my bathroom from a shelf by its clips (and weights), patiently drying.
In the morning someone will need to cut them film, then I will sleeve it and consider scanning it.