Caffenol – Processing film with coffee and other supermarket ingredients
Feb 23, 2017
Ross den Otter
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I’ve processed a lot of film. My first rolls were processed in the bathroom sink when I was a 13 year old kid. Later, I had the run of two darkrooms in my high school; they were crazy enough to give me a set of keys and I almost moved in. One of my first jobs was as the darkroom technician (and as an occasional photographer) for the Comox Valley Record on Vancouver Island in Canada when I was 16. That job cured me of any desire to be a photojournalist, but it cemented my passion for processing film.
I went on to work in one hour labs in three different cities, eventually working at a custom photo lab that incubated in what had been the dish washing room of a former Umberto Menghi restaurant location in Vancouver. It was nestled in a heritage building that was originally constructed as a bank. When that lab was set up, the building was split between an antique book store on the main floor, commercial photo studio on the top floor, and that tiny little photo lab in the basement.
Access to our lab was gained by ringing a bell above the door to the alley or by climbing two flights of stairs to the photo studio and then descending down three flights; It was somewhat like finding a speakeasy and my first question to any strange photographer that rang that bell was, “How exactly did you find us?”
That little lab processed film for many of the commercial and fashion photographers working in Vancouver. Rocket Repro moved from the wash pit it started in, to a location in Gastown that it’s occupied since 1994; I’m still there… a few days a week.
With my hands immersed in film processing chemistry for the last 30 years, I’ve developed (no pun) a few things; gnarly cuticles and a sensitivity to Metol (one of the developing agents in popular commercial film developers). It’s a common affliction for those with life long darkroom addictions.
Kids, Wear Gloves!
There, I’ve said it… do as I say, not as a I’ve done.
A number of years ago, I was introduced to an eco-friendly “Do-It-Yourself” film developer mix by my friend Lisa Marr who runs the Echo Park Film Centre in LA’s Echo Park neighbourhood. This developer is a mixture of ingredients that you can find on the supermarket shelves; Instant Coffee, Vitamin C, and Washing Soda (Sodium Carbonate). Best of all there’s no Metol in it. It’s affectionately called Caffenol. My video shows the quantities, and the order, in which the ingredients are added in order to have it compound correctly. Thorough mixing is required between each ingredient to ensure everything is dissolved. Because there aren’t any preserving or specific buffering agents in this mix, it has a limited shelf life; therefore it should be used within a few hours of mixing.
Below are a few of my images that were shot on medium format film, specifically HP5+ and expired Tri-X pan 320 professional, and processed in Caffenol.
About the Author
Ross den Otter makes things using a variety of media. Photography, paint, wax and metal are his preferred options. You can find out more about Ross on his website, follow his work on Instagram, or reach out to him through Facebook.
We love it when our readers get in touch with us to share their stories. This article was contributed to DIYP by a member of our community. If you would like to contribute an article, please contact us here.
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9 responses to “Caffenol – Processing film with coffee and other supermarket ingredients”
Good stuff, and environmentally friendly. My advice is to stick to some tried and true film/recipe combos, unless you just like the tedious process of documenting something that somebody else has likely gone to the trouble of doing already. It’s grainy in the higher speed films, but evens out in your slower ones. Definitely not good for compensating (not to my knowledge anyway), but does well at posted box speeds. I quit using it a few years ago just because my laziness with using d-76 and Rodinal got in the way of me wanting to be edgy and daring with my film developer.
Why would you bother to go through the tedious process of documenting what’s already on the Massive Dev Chart?
http://www.digitaltruth.com/devchart.php?Film=&Developer=Caffenol&mdc=Search&TempUnits=C
That’s my point. I’ve seen a few people feel they need to be in experimentation mode when it comes to caffenol, when there’s actually a lot of trial and error documented on the web.
Maybe you could clarify your point more then because I don’t understand. For every film I’ve tested for Caffenol, the MDC has been completely accurate.
You don’t need to be edgy or daring with Caffenol.
I don’t disagree with you. Without making this too complicated, caffenol is decidedly an alternative developer. That said, it’s been used enough now that there is sufficient documentation on the web if you want reasonably consistent results. I’ve seen a few people not be able to figure that much out.
Fun fact: when I’ve tried caffenol a couple of years back, it gave me better dynamic range results than Kodak Xtol 1+1. I was using nescaffe :)
http://filmdev.org/
Just curious, regular instant coffee or freeze dried? I noticed a mention of Nescaffe down below.
What’s great about this, is what if you were shooting film in the field (like Afghanistan) and you didn’t have access to regular commercial developers. This would work great! Stop bath I can work out in this situation,, even the fixer. But Metol and the like are not easy to find anywhere!
I am just getting into retro photography at the age of 14. Now, i am still very unsure of exactly how to get it processed. I know many companies does things like “Super 8 kits” where you buy a roll of super 8 film, but also the later development at their labs, and a reel to put the final film on. That’s all good, but as i live in little tiny Denmark, i thought it’d might be quicker, (and cheaper in the long run) to do it myself. It might not be better, but i don’t need 4k quality (i know you can’t get that on film, of course).
So here are a few questions:
1: If we say that the result of the usual colour negative developing solution/stop solution/fixer solution/water method is 100%, how good is the result of caffenol?
2: How long does it take?
3: Are the solutions used for the colour negative developing process (let’s just refer to that as method #1 from now on) something specifially made for film, or is it normal chemicals that could be bought at a pharmicist?
4. Does caffenol work with 8mm film as well?
5. Does caffenol also work with colour film?