# Finally:  Kodachrome and Caffenol with good results



## 480sparky (Jan 9, 2016)

Finally got my Kodachrome/Caffenol-C exposure and development fairly nailed down today:







Kodachrome 40, exposed at ASA 25.

Developed in Caffenol-C*, 68°F 15 min w/60-sec agitations, clear water stop bath, Ilford fixer for 5 min.

* 40ml washing soda
7ml ascorbic acid
64ml Coffee
Water to 400ml.

Scanned with PlusTek 8200i @ 7200 dpi as 8-bit JPEG, converted to b&w in GIMP 2.6.


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## limr (Jan 9, 2016)

Gorgeous tones and detail!

(And kitty!  )


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## 480sparky (Jan 9, 2016)

She may be cute, but she's a terrible poser.  I wanted to get her eyes in the sun, but she (like all cats) refused to cooperate.


100% crop:


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## timor (Jan 10, 2016)

Very nice looking picture. As Leonore said.
My own experiments with ascorbic acid came to not much. I was using it as an additive to HC110. Despite later test shown, that mine ascorbic acid has zero developing power there was some influence on development. Pan 400 is showing almost no difference in frames exposed at nominal value of ISO 400 and frames exposed at 800 and 1600. But the grain and lose of acutance is horrible in all of them. Maybe my ascorbic acid is just of wrong kind.


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## 480sparky (Jan 10, 2016)

timor said:


> Very nice looking picture. As Leonore said.
> My own experiments with ascorbic acid came to not much. I was using it as an additive to HC110. Despite later test shown, that mine ascorbic acid has zero developing power there was some influence on development. Pan 400 is showing almost no difference in frames exposed at nominal value of ISO 400 and frames exposed at 800 and 1600. But the grain and lose of acutance is horrible in all of them. Maybe my ascorbic acid is just of wrong kind.



From what I've been able to glean off the innernets, whether you get power or crystal form might make a difference.  I got crystals.

I'm seeing grain in this process, but you gotta remember this is Kodachrome and it's being developed in caffenol.  Foldger's decaf wasn't exactly what Kodak used in K-14 systems.  I've scanned some of my old K25 slides at 7200 dpi and still can't see any grain.  I may wander into souping some of my stock in commercially-available developers, but for now I'll stick with caffenol.

Not that my results are anything earth-shattering.  But it's kinda fun going through the learning curve.  And the memories that flow through my noodle when I crack open a box of film...........


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## timor (Jan 10, 2016)

Well, I've got powder.  I guess I can use it in place of boric acid . Life.
If cafenol works for colour film for you, that swell. In regular slides should be no grain, there is no silver I the emulsion. Just dyes.


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## limr (Jan 10, 2016)

timor said:


> Well, I've got powder.  I guess I can use it in place of boric acid . Life.
> If cafenol works for colour film for you, that swell. In regular slides should be no grain, there is no silver I the emulsion. Just dyes.



Remember that the point of doing Kodachrome in Caffenol is because it gets rid of the remjet, not because it's so great for developing color film in general. I've only developed C-41 film in Caffenol once, and it's serviceable, but it's not something I'd make a habit of. I only did it because the film broke a couple of times and the lab would have a hard time with it, so I just did it myself. Incidentally, it was the roll through the pinhole camera with the 7-hour exposure of the Christmas tree 

Here's a thread from Filmwasters that might be of interest for how the Vit C affects the -OL developers.
Beerol


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## timor (Jan 10, 2016)

limr said:


> timor said:
> 
> 
> > Well, I've got powder.  I guess I can use it in place of boric acid . Life.
> ...


Did you use caffenol ? Or caffenol C, to deal with the remjet ?
Well, ascorbic acid is used in Xtol and Fomadon Excel as an developing agent. It is supposed to give better tonal range and apparently it works like that in Xtol. People like it. On the other hand ascorbic acid doesn't have any wider use in photography, so maybe it is just a bias.
In any case there are other methods for home based remjet removal from APUG:
Removing Rem-Jet for ECN-II films and Kodachrome
Maybe useful, some seem simple.


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