Loading & Unloading Film During Development

Series Summary

Ever wondered what went on in the darkroom and what that red light was for? Photographers have been using darkrooms for at least a hundred years to develop their film and make prints. Only recently has the digital medium somewhat supplanted film photography. Yet there still remain some photo effects that are, some would claim, most effectively produced in the darkroom; and some photographers swear by chemical baths and fixing solutions as the only real way to bring a photograph to light.

Whatever your particular bent on the art of photography may be, learn how to use the darkroom as one of your tools for developing and printing beautiful pictures. Our expert will walk you through the step-by-step process for developing black-and-white photos, including removing the film from the cassette, loading it on a spool, using the proper agitation method, prewashing, and the developer process. He’ll also show you what supplies you need and help you decide which brand of chemicals to use.

Video Transcript

"Welcome back this is Brian on behalf of expertvillage.com. Today I’m going to show you how to develop your own black and white film using a small tank developer in your very own home. In fact the most important step and obviously the first step is to obtain your images and to do that it’s important to know how to properly load your camera, this is just a typically SLR style camera it’s single lens reflex and you can see inside once you open it the film chamber, just line up the guides of the roll of film with the sprocket and string it across, make sure you do not touch this surface right here that’s the shutter, if you damage that it will ruin your camera, so be very careful when unloading and unloading not to touch the shutter. Simply string it across to where you see a little label marked film tip…and then simply close the back of the camera and now we’re ready to go. Now when you go to rewind the roll of film either your camera will do that for you automatically or you’ll have a rewind button that you can hit if you need to pull a roll out before you’re finished with it and to do that simply however your camera rewinds film on this particular one you got a selection on the dial and a separate button here which initiates the film rewind process, hit those together to rewind the film, many other cameras just have a single button that you press or another set of buttons it must be hit to accidental rewind. Remember always make sure the film is completely rewound before you open the back of the camera cause any stray light will damage the film."