WINEOL DEVELOPMENT
Here is the recipe for another boozy alternative developer.
Ingredients:
500ml of Red Wine
50g of Washing Soda
10g Vitamin-C Powder (from 1000mg Chewable Tablets)
Essential Items/Utilities:
Patterson hand tank or Equivalent (including spools).
Changing bag or light tight room (darkroom).
Ilford Rapid Fixer or Equivalent.
To make Washing Soda can be made by simply baking conventional Barcabonate of Soda in a oven at 200c for 35-40 mins. This process removes the hydrogen component eliminating it's reactivity to water, in effect making the baking soda into a water thinner, so for this experiment it is an essential part of the process.
Add the washing soda to the wine and mix. It doesn't Lastly we need to add the vitamin C (from crushed tablets) to the mix. We noticed that when we added the washing soda that it clumped up, so make sure to stir well and they will dissolve eventually. Once your mixture in complete you'll be able to develop rolls of film and your paper negatives.
Ilford Paper Development
For our photo paper tests, we made prints instead of shooting paper negatives. For some reason, the prints came out very faint but also an interesting pinky/brown tone. We used the same developer after we had developed our roll of film so this probably caused the developer to work slower and be less effective. The time for developing a print was about 15-20 minutes.
Black and White Film Development
For our experiment we developed a roll of 35mm Ilford FP4 for 35 minutes at 25 degrees celcius - it was over developed. We would recommend roughly 15-20 minutes at 25 degrees for Ilford FP4.
When developing the film, it is essential to load the film in complete darkness. This avoids destroying your negatives as the film is highly reactive to light. Once you have loaded your film into the hand tank you can start developing. Start by adding the Wineol solution you have made and develop for the required amount of time. Once you finish the development cycle, you can use tap water as a stop bath or Ilfostop equivalents to neutralize the developer. We usually run a stop bath for 1-2 minutes with tap water or 1 minute with Ilfostop. Lastly, it's essential to use a fixer as it stabilises the film and stops any potential of futher development or deterioration over time, we recommend using a fixer for 5 minutes. We always recommend to rinse your film in the hand tank for 5 minutes at least twice before hanging to dry, this removes excess fixer and helps to clean the film.
Note for all processes after development we have used Ilford's own Rapid Fixer and Ilfostop (stop bath) products for both film and paper.
Disclaimer: it is extremely unwise to drink or ingest the by products of this developer!
