Home Processing/Printing of B&W Film

[BTilson]

This is apparently relatively easy to do, and very satisfying, but I've been unable to find any info on this that is geared toward someone who has absolutely no idea where to begin. Everything I've found has been instructions on setting up a full darkroom, etc etc, with a comment at the end to the effect of, "Of course, you could go simple and just process your B&W film. It's super easy and satisfying!" but then they don't really go into any details.

I'd love to give this a try, so does anyone have any links or info on how to "easily" do this at home, geared toward a COMPLETE beginner? I'd love to get into shooting some MF/LF B&W film, but the lack of any reasonably local labs, and my paranoia about mail order leaves me with the only option of doing it myself.

I'd really appreciate any help or info!

Thanks!

 

[compur]

You don't need a darkroom to process film but you will need some things.

Once processed, the negatives/positives can be either scanned with a
film scanner and printed digitally or printed in the traditional manner
via optical projection with an enlarger, etc. in a darkroom.

There's lots of tutorial info on developing your own film available on the
web for beginners.

Such as:
Develop b/w film at home 1 (Photography Tutorials) · street photography New York in black and white : urban views · New York photographs by Markus Hartel

 

[ann]

try this site as well

ILFORD PHOTO - Developing Black & White Film

 

[Torus34]

You can find a series of articles right here on TPF.

 

[bhop]

see my post here regarding startup supplies
http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/1218934-post7.html

I paid about 75-80 bucks for the stuff I needed to start processing b&w (already had a film scanner)

Once you do it and discover how easy it actually is, you'll wonder why you never tried it before. In fact, it's so easy, It gave me the confidence to try color c41 processing myself with successful results.

 

[christopher walrath]

In the Darkroom section there is a 'Process your own film' sticky type thread with about 40 responses from TPFers (myself included) to get you pointed in the right direction.