How to Develop Film for Black and White Photos

Develop your own film and you will have much more control over the contrasts that you, the photographer, want. Otherwise, you rely on some lab technician to do it for you. When you develop film for black and white photos, the contrast ratio and gray scale are yours to command.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

1. Arrange all of your equipment on your workspace so that you won't be looking for something in the dark and wondering if it is there.

2. Look at the box the film came in and find out the processing time for the developing solution you have chosen. Now load your film.

3. Extinguish your darkroom lights and begin to remove the end of the film canister with your can opener. Gently push the film from the canister until you feel the tapered leader of the film. After you cut the leader, load it into your film developer by first locating the spool. Finally ensure that the film is firmly in place before continuing.

4. Fit the film spool into your development tank taking proper precautions to make sure all parts are in the proper place. This will make the tank light tight so that you can turn on the light to proceed to the next step.

5. Mix your chemicals and pour them into the tank-remembering to turn off the lights before opening the developing tank. Hit the bottom of the tank on the table a few times to remove air bubbles from the film.

6. Agitate your tank rapidly for the first minute. Next shift to agitating every 30 seconds for 5 second intervals. Do this until the last minute of agitation where you will shift back to rapid agitation. Once agitation is over, you will be done with development and need to add a stop bath and then a fixer.

Tips & Warnings

• Too much agitation will result in overdevelopment and streaking in the negatives.
• Too little agitation will cause under development (lighter negatives).