# Developing with coffee



## rom4n301

so ive herd that you can develop a roll of film using coffee, so i wanna try this out for myself. Ive looked at some of the stuff you need for it, and ive looked all over but i cant find any washing soda. can someone please give me a recipe, i dont know what to call it, that i can use. oh and i have a 120 roll of t-maxx 400. so if you could give me the times too thatd be great. i need this stuff bye tonight because im doing this for a project in school. if someone could give me all the info that would be awesome, thanks ={D


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## ChasK

this might help you out   How to Develop Film Using Coffee and Vitamin C! Srsly! | Photojojo


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## rom4n301

thanks, but that requires washing soda, i looked all over for it and i cant find it =/


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## rom4n301

actually.. now that i think about it.. it doesnt have to be coffee developer, it can be anything out of the ordinary. just cant be developed using normal developer. so any recipes?. thanks again


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## ChasK

I thought you might pick up on the health food store for washing soda.


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## rom4n301

ieght.. yea.. i just found washing soda.. but for the vitamin c.. can i just buy vitamin c pills and crush them up?


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## ChasK

I don't know but it seems the washing soda is more important than the coffee mixture.


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## ChasK

here's another page:  A Use for that Last Cup of Coffee: Film and Paper Development


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## rom4n301

thanks for that!!.. my film is sitting in the developing tank right now!!!.. but i just realized im out of fixer.. so that will have to wait till tmro..


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## icassell

rom4n301 said:


> ieght.. yea.. i just found washing soda.. but for the vitamin c.. can i just buy vitamin c pills and crush them up?



How about orange juice?  A photographer's breakfast .... coffee and orange juice


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## rom4n301

lol.. oj is were its at.. ill try it next time if i can find some **** film for free. btw.. for anyone who also wants to try this i found this chart it has everything times, recipies.. everything Developer formulae, dilutions, and times


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## rom4n301

here are some scanned shots from it, i overdeveloped it.. i developed for 30 min. next time ill try 20


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## icassell

These are really cool!  Did you use caffeinated or decaf? French Roast or Sumatran  ?


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## rom4n301

it was nescafe tasters choice original actually..lol.. i assume its caffinated.. idk... i HATE HATE HATE instant coffee and think it is absolutely disgusting.. i have no idea how people drink that crap


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## ArtphotoasiA

Interesting reading mates...

What about some toast! 

By the way the results are not bad at all.... I love the 1 one

:greenpbl:


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## PinPong

wow photographers know what they doing hey.. love it


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## ChasK

Nice job, your pictures look great!


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## rom4n301

haha, thanks everyone.. next time ill try and use orange juice instead of calcium pill lmfao.. but i wonder what the citric acid will do.. we shall see


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## webmaster705

MMm something new to me, well really nice and excellent work


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## jefra

here are a few i did recently with caffenol - as i understand it, the vitamin c is only important to speed up the processing. and you can go with the powder you use in for canning and preserving fruit.


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## rom4n301

oh, your shots came out WAAAYYY better then mine


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## jefra

lol! i think it's largely luck. I just had two rolls I tried processing and totally blew it. They were awful.


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## rom4n301

haha true true.. maybe


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## Antonio Bunt

How about ISO? The processing time has to be proportional to the ISO when using caffenol?


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## nemopaice

rom4n301 said:


> here are some scanned shots from it, i overdeveloped it.. i developed for 30 min. next time ill try 20



Don't care much for the second image there, but over all I actually love the way these came out. They looked aged. I've always heard of these weird concoctions for developing, but never had the guts to waste a roll and attempt any of them.


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## GoonjoshGoon

The 1st one is really good, I actually want to try this now


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## Boogeyman

ChasK said:


> this might help you out   How to Develop Film Using Coffee and Vitamin C! Srsly! | Photojojo


 that is crazy! i looked at some of the examples at the end of that tutorial and while some had that aged look others looked amazingly clear. i might have to try this when i have a finished roll i dont care too much about. thanks.


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## dots

rom4n301 said:


> it was nescafe tasters choice original actually..lol.. i assume its caffinated.. idk... i HATE HATE HATE instant coffee and think it is absolutely disgusting.. i have no idea how people drink that crap


  Douwe Egberts' instant decaf is ok.


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## unpopular

If you add some potassium bromide, you'll get better results. If anyone is interested, I can haul out my old books and try to guess how much to use. Also back in college I started looking into tobacco-based developers. If anyone wants to continue this research, send me a PM for details.

And AFAIK it's not the caffeine doing the developing, I believe it's another chemical found it coffee (and tea for that matter and blackberries and a lot of other stuff) called gallic acid, which is related to the historic developer pyrogallol, which is related to the modern developer pyrocatechol. Coffee also contain Catechin, which may act as another phenolic developer.

ETA:

Looking back on the first page there seems to be a lot of confusion about what these materials are doing. The 'washing soda' I am pretty sure is just increasing the pH, making it more basic. I need to take out the garbage and take the kiddo for a walk, when I get back I'll pull my textbooks out of storage (i.e. the car) and get back with some technical details.


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## unpopular

DISCLAIMER: I am not a trained chemist, pharmacist or laboratory technician. The following is provided as conjecture, and not for educational or instructional purposes. It is the reader's responsibility to confirm any information herein. The author may not be held liable for any damages resulting from the actions inspired by this publication.

Ok. I did some looking around.

All commercial developers consist of a few basic ingredients. Of the most basic, is the developer and the accelerant. The developer is doing the actual reduction while the accelerant is reducing the pH such that it can be done is a matter of minutes, and not hours.

The pH of most developers is around pH 10-12. Catechol is the closest commercial developer to coffee and needs a pretty high pH to work, according to a thread I read over at photo.net. To get this pH, you'll need a strong buffer, such as sodium carbonate: washing soda.

But their isn't anything really special about washing soda either. You can use any sufficient buffer to lower the pH of the developer. You might want to stay away from ammonium hydroxide (cleaning ammonia) just because I've never heard of it being used this way. Commonly they use sodium or potassium hydroxide, which is just hardware store lye and you can find as the Red Devil brand used for cleaning pipes.

Lye is pretty nasty. If you don't respect it, you'll get burned - literally. Always wear gloves, the moment hydroxide touches moisture, it will get hot. It is extremely caustic and will irritate your skin on contact, will blind you if in contact with eyes, and ruin your gut - if not kill you outright in a slow and torturously painful death - if swallowed. It will leave a chemical burns if your hands are wet. Never EVER wash lye off exposed skin with water, instead use distilled white vinegar to neutralize it. Always have a bottle of vinegar, or perhaps better, some acid stop around you when working with lye as a precaution to clean up any spills, stop burns or if it comes into skin contact.

Always add lye to the solution slowly, and NEVER add the solution to the lye. Doing so will result in excess heat which can result in cracked glassware or melted plasticware and spills.

You won't need much lye at all to bring it to pH 10+, we're talking a matter of grams not ounces.

Less effective but probably better than carbonate is borax (sodium borate) which you can find in the laundry department at Wal Mart and some better stocked grocery stores. Borax won't burn you, and can be handled with the same level of precaution as any other laundry soap.

You'll need a bit more borax than you would lye.

The last and less desirable solution would be to make calcium carbonate from baking soda by placing dry baking soda in a pan on high, while stirring. You might want to turn of your carbon monoxide detector, because this is going to emit a lot of carbon that will build on your oven's hood and will make a giant mess, make sure the fan is on and the windows are open, and don't come to me if you asphyxiate yourself. I don't recommend this, and certainly not in large quantities, but people have done it successfully.

Honestly, I think borax is a better option all around, provided you aren't prepared to work with hydroxide. If you're really set on this recipe, or you don't want to bother with pH measurements (which I really, really recomend if you're planning on playing with chemicals) you should consider purchasing sodium carbonate from ebay or photographer's formulary.

You'll want some pH paper, or an inexpensive pH meter (I have a Hanna handheld pH/temp meter which you can find at a good pet store), you want the solution to be around pH 10-12, for this, I'd think closer to 12 than 10.

Now, the Vitamin C. Ascorbic acid is in itself a very weak developer (in part because it is very acidic). But, in this case I think it's working as the "preservative". I don't know much about preservatives in developers, this is kind of going beyond my scope of understanding. It has something to do with oxygen, and usually the preservative is a sulfite.

In Fundamentals of Photography, 2nd ed. by P.E. Boucher (1947) the preservative is discussed on page114:



> An essential component of a developer is the preservative. This usually consists of sodium sulfite. [&#8230;] sodium sulfite combines only with the free oxygen at the surface of the developer. In effect, all oxygen all oxygen entering the developer fails to reach the oxidizing agent because it is removed [&#8230;] by the sulfite



The only reason I am assuming this is because ascorbic acid is a strong anti-oxidant. IDK really, it might be a developer, too, since developers tend to synergize.

According to Boucher, even the best developers will leave some unexposed regions will develop out. He goes on to explain that even a totally unexposed film will develop if left in the developer long enough and the longer a film is required to develop, the stronger the fog (p. 114). To address this, a restrainer of potassium bromide is added. Looking through the formulary section of this book, most developers call for between 0.5g and 2g potassium bromide per liter of prepared working solution. If I were to add bromide to a Cafenol-C prep, I'd add 1.5g per liter and go from there.

Be aware, that with proper pH adjustment, the film will develop out much MUCH more rapidly than if it were at a lower pH. Even slight adjustments to pH have enormous consequences on time.

Above all, when getting information on forums double check with others. I'm not immune from providing inaccurate advice by mistake. ALWAYS do research before proceeding, and ask others for their opinions.


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