Dev and scan for 7 rolls of film is US$150 where I live.
With my Bellini chemicals, and scanning setup at Photolaundry where I get a Fuji frontier scanner by the hour, it costs $4-5 per roll (excluding my time, but I actually do this to destress)
(Freestyle photo in SoCal now carries Bellini’s ECN-2 chemicals. So now I have a mini lab at home where I can process, well, almost everything. All of these, and black and white in different chemicals as well)
Hard to believe that a year ago I didn’t know how to do any of this and now I have strong opinions and brand and product preferences on all of it
Tomorrow I get to do something fun: I get to lick the science!
My last bottle of DD-X developer expired (quite spectacularly, I had to get a hacksaw to open it and add it to the disposal container), but I've got ONE roll of film left to process.
Instant coffee
Ascorbic acid powder (vitamin C)
Washing soda (sodium carbonate)
Two of those, are lickable. That's the delta recipe for #caffenol, although I'm using it for HP5+ not Delta, it's still effective. I could've gone with Caffenol-C-H instead but that needs potassium bromide which can't be delivered as quickly and I'm not a patient person (hah!)
You can finally get the ECN-2 kit from Bellini from Freestyle Photo.
I know I swore off doing motion picture film processing at home, but I really love the bulk color film I get: and have seen that done well, the results are outstanding.
I’ve ordered a kit and will review it. I was using random chemicals before, which may haha contributed to my bad time with it. Bellini always has top notch stuff
Flic Film’s ECN-2 kit seems to be the best one I’ve used so far. Previously, I bought random powders from strangers online and the results were varied :)
The prebath is really good and better than the washing soda / borax solution I previously used. I also don’t want to muck around with lye, which was the only ingredient I didn’t have from Kodak’s original recipe.
I have a huge bunch of vacation photos shot on film. It might be useful for me to do a post about cost of developing and scanning myself vs sending it to a lab (I already know it will cost around $300 to send the rolls I have to a lab)!
I have fresh color chemicals to mix up, so I’m looking forward to it.
My wife is a home hacker / Daiso-fiend. She set up my film drying area for me with tension rods, hangers, clothespins (pegs).
I don’t have a darkroom, I use a dark changing bag to load film, then develop film over the sink. When done, I turn the shower on to steam up the shower area, then turn off; hang my film strips like this.
She made little curtains to hide my tanks and reels, as she finds them ugly 😍
My favorite C41 kit is the Bellinifoto. It’s very good.
The Internet's Simplest Guide to Developing B&W Film at Home (www.learnfilm.photography)
The perfect guide for anyone getting into film photography. This short and simple guide goes over what you need in every step of the process.