Over the last couple of days, I've been using my Pentax MZ-M with a Fomapan 200 black & white film to get some sample pictures to test the camera. Today I developed those pictures using Caffenol C-M - the pictures are shown below.
Pictures developed in Caffenol C-M.
Since I last developed film in caffenol, I've bought a filmstrip mount for my slide duplicator, so I was able to be a much better copy of the negatives this time, however, I'm a bit disappointed with the results. I shot a 24 exposure film and got 9 pictures above which I'm reasonably happy, but another 17 or so were pretty poor. They were either blurred, or pretty flat and low contrast with lots of grain.
I think perhaps I need to try to eliminate some of the variables when I'm using caffenol and try to sort out a recipe which I know will work.
At the moment I'm not sure of the quality of Fomapan film, I've used a variety of different cameras, and I've always used the same recipe (caffenol c-m) when it comes to development. I think I might develop a few films in one of the developers I used to use many years ago (like Microphen) and make sure everything is right before I try again. I really like the idea of using caffenol because it's so easy to mix some up when you need it, which is so convenient for someone who doesn't shoot much film.
For the record, these pictures were duplicated using a Kood slide duplicator with a filmstrip carrier using a Pentax 18-55 f/3.5 standard zoom set to 55 mm on my Pentax K5. The images were imported into Lightroom and had the exposure and clarity adjusted to get the best images.
