I like coffee... do you?

[Maxx640]

Hi,
I like to have a cup of coffee with my croissants in the morning, best time of the day. But now I have found another use for caféine!

I just discovered this technique a few days ago... yes, you have understood: you can develop your film in your coffee, it's called folgernol or cafeinol!

Mix coffee, sodium and vitamin C to get a magic solution for an enviromental friendly, cheap developper. I am going down to the drugstore to get the ingredients and try this out!

Meanwhile can anybody tell me more about this technique, how it works, the kind of times you need...? I heard it has to be quite hot (24°C) to work.

Cheers,

Maxim

 

[DRodgers]

I'm interested in this as well ..

 

[mysteryscribe]

Me too.. you might ask these questions over at http://f295.org those guys are into all kinds of alternate things.

The recipe i just read said 30 minutes. I think I'm going to try it with left over coffee rather than instant. I hate instant coffee.... Probably need to boil it down to reduce it by half first.

 

[PNA]

What can you do with tea????

 

[mysteryscribe]

Same thing I think. I have an experiment cooking (pardon the pun) at the moment. I took the mornings left over coffee and boiled it down to about half the normal coffee to water ratio. (we always throw out several cups.) I put in as much baking soda as would desolve. then I strained it to get the soda particles out of the mix. Now I have a few shots of black and white asa film soaking in it. Ill let you know what happens.

 

[mysteryscribe]

bummer nothing much happened. The leader just barely stained the rest was blank. I expect to get the coffee strong enough you would have to do it as the recipe calls for which would cost about ten times as much as commercial photo developer. It will work though of that I am positive others have done it and the stain on the film show that it works. I'm just not that impressed that I would do it again.

 

[Maxx640]

Ok I had a shot at it this afternoon. I used a cheap film called Foma.

I diluted 2,5 coffee spoons of sodium cristals in 200 ml water.
Added 4 coffee spoons of instant coffee.
Once dissolved I added one tablet of 1000 mg of vitamin C and added water to get to 290 ml (= my tank size).

Apparantly you must use this in the next half hour. I used it 12 min @ 24 °C and didn't use stop bath but water. I got quite good results actually!

(Found this recipe on a French forum)

For times try these links:

http://silent1.home.netcom.com/Photography/Dilutions and Times.html
http://http://www.digitaltruth.com/techdata/caffenol.php

 

[Tangerini]

This is the best news I've heard since they reported chocolate is good for you!

 

[Jeff Canes]

i've done this, read about it shuetterbug about 3 years ago, been think about trying it again

 

[mysteryscribe]

I'm glad it worked for you. I used the recipe for the one with just coffee and sodium.

 

[nealjpage]

Sodium crystals? Like salt?

 

[Maxx640]

Sodium crystals? Like salt?

No, sorry I must have badly translated. The sodium I mean is Na, and the product is what you can find in drug-stores as Sodium carbonate Na2CO3.
It comes as white cristals and is used for cleaning. DO NOT MISTAKE IT FOR NaOH which is very dangerous.

 

[mysteryscribe]

They call it wasing soda in my recipe

 

[JC1220]

WalMart has it in their laundry section or go to a pool chemical supply store. Also, the formula with ascorbic acid is a much better reducing agent than just the coffee and carbonate and a bit more predictable. Many of these versions will produce stain on your negatives, if you are not use to printing stained negatives you will have a small learning curve.

If you want to make a low cost, low toxicity developer, many of the Vitamin C and phenidone ones are quite good with much better results than coffee.

BTW, you can make a developer out of cat wee as well, doesn't mean you should.

 

[mysteryscribe]

Don't have a cat but my wife sure goes a lot. Nahhhh not likely she would cooperate anyway.