Tools for Developing Film

Series Summary

As digital photography takes over, traditional film processing is gradually being phased out. No longer do people get the thrill of watching a photo develop right before your eyes in a darkroom. They just pull them up on a computer and there they are. But photographs printed the old-fashioned way are somehow still magical. The tones, especially for black and white photos, are much richer than those from digital images. This is the reason why traditional printing continues to have a stronghold in the art world. A job well done in the darkroom can't be beat!

In this series of free photography videos from our experienced photo printer, you will learn how to develop a roll of film. Anthony Maddaloni demonstrates the entire process, from opening a film canister and spooling the film onto a Hewes reel to squeegeeing and drying the film after developing. Learn about the benefits of a Hurricane film washer and using a steel lock Patterson reel instead of a plastic one.

Video Transcript

"When you begin putting film on these reels, you're going to be in complete darkness. There's no safe light for film development. So, when you're setting yourself up, I like to have all my stuff laid out in a way that I have memorized exactly where it is. So when I'm reaching for something, I don't knock it on the floor, I don't freak out, I just know ok this is where my reel is, my scissors are, my can opener, my lid to my container is. And you'd be surprised how sometimes you can get very discombobulated in the dark. One way that I practice that helped me feel a little bit more comfortable was, and this sounds kind of silly but it was I closed my eyes and I got to feel where everything was and another little trick I had was that I always made sure the floor beneath me was clean. So if I did knock something down, I wasn't picking up dog hair or something gross. I made sure I had a nice clean floor below me and that I knew exactly where everything was even before I did anything."