Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
In the last couple of months, the whole world it seems was on hold due to the rampages of COVID-19/ Corona Virus. In the Facebook groups I’m in many users were seeing shortages in supply. Some online stores stopped shipping Rodinal (caustic liquid) and other stuff was just not to be found.
Adding to this was the fact that a lot of users were not consuming chemistry as quickly and were looking at spoilage/oxidation of partially consumed jugs of developer turning brown on the shelf.
By now most everyone dabbling in analog photography has seen articles on the use of “Caffenol”, “Beerinol”, “Redwineol” where people have developed film in mixtures of coffee, beer, red wine. While these can be fun experiments with show-able results they are somewhat pricey developers. Aside from the coffee-beer-wine you also need fairly consumptive amounts of sodium carbonate (wash soda) and ascorbic acid (vitamin C) to make it work. We are going to pare that down a bit.
A lot of us analog film photographers love to shoot film but new film stocks can be pricey. A 100ft roll (30meters) of fresh Tmax is about $80 US these days. Deals can be had on “vintage” (expired) film but many purists will disregard this as results are inconsistent and sometimes just awful. I teach on the side and I am always looking to save student monies but give them a positive experience so there is no discouragement.
I believe you’ve seen the photos taken with expired rolls of film. Even after 35 years, they can often still develop nicely. But what happens when you combine a roll of film that expired 35 years ago with developer produced somewhere between 1949 and 1963? Tucson-based photographer Daniel Keating decided to try it: and he was successful.
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