A few grabshots and informations about the stuff needed to develop film at home. Please excuse the sloppy photography and my English.
That's what I use most of the time:
I usually develop two rolls of 135/36 together in a stainless-steel-tank. My copy is from Kindermann. Similar tanks are available new and used.
The pictured example will hold 2 reels filled with 35mm-film or a single reel for 120-type medium-format film in 16 fl oz (450ml) of developer.
I use 2 graduated jugs and 2 cheap funnel, each labeled for use of either developer or stop-bath/fixer. For larger tanks I have larger measuring-jugs, also 2 examples labeled/dedicated with a permanent-marker.
Many folks are using digital thermometers; I'm still happy with an old-style one ("Paterson Colour Thermometer", shown in the protective plastic tube at the bottom of the picture).
A cheap kitchen-timer is used to time the individual steps.
I prefer dedicated film-clips over clothespins.
The "Ilford"-thingy attached to the film-canister is a film-picker to get the leader out of a film-canister. Some people prefer to open the canister with a "bottle-opener-like" device. But this has to be done in the dark.
It's also possible to be careful when rewinding the exposed film into the canister to make the leader stay out.
My F5 can be set up to do this and at least one of my F90x (N90s) was programmed by the Nikon-Service to stop the rewinding-process after the "important part of the film" is back in the can.
I prefer plastic-bottles to store the stop-bath and the fixer, but glass-bottles for the developer.
To the chemicals needed do develop film at home:
The selection of different developers available today is fairly confusing. In most cases I use Kodak Xtol (most of the time diluted for one-shot-use) and Rodinal (the same receipt is available under different names).
But thats just a matter of personal preference. I stay away from expensive developers or stuff with a rather short shelf-life.
The stop-bath (to stop the development-process and to keep the following fixer longer alive) can be stuff from Ilford, Kodak, Adox or simple diluted citric-acid.
For low-strength-developers like highly diluted Rodinal a stop-bath is not really required - a couple of seconds in water are enough.
Today I prefer to use fairly high concentrated fixer and short fixing-times over the classic fixer mixed from powder. I use a two-stage fixing-process, more on this on request ;-)
After carefully rinsing the fixed film (still on the reels), including tanks, caps and my hands too I "wash" the films by filling the tank with tap-water, put the cap on again and inverse the tank like I did during the development.
5 inversions and a short rest-period, empty the tank, fill it with water again, this time 10 inversions and a couple of minutes rest.
And so on. Ilford recommends 3 cycles (if my memory serves) and I use 5-8 cycles with fresh tap-water, inversions and a resting time.
Exact timing is not needed here, you can do this while watching TV and change water/do some inversions during the commercial breaks ;-)
The final step is to give the film (still on the reels/spools) about 30 seconds or a minute (it doesn't matter at all) in distilled water.
After this final bath the film can be unwound from the reel and hung-up for drying.
An alternative to the classic stainless-steel-tanks are the plastic tanks and reels made by Jobo. The 1510 (bottom left) will hold one roll of 135/36 or two short rolls of 135/12.
The red clips is a simple stopping-device to protect the short films from overlapping.
The 1520 (bottom right) is for two reels of 35mm-film or one reel filled with 120-type-medium-format film. The reel/spool can hold a 220-type film or 2 120-type film (the red clip is really useful here too).
The 1540-tank is just a 1510 with extension-tube - for 4 reels of 35mm-fim.
And the fat tank is for 5 reels of 135/36, for sheet-film, for medium-format-film or a mixture of the different formats.
It's made to be used on a Jobo-processor or on a roller-base (I've used the big one a lot in the pre-digital-era).
The color-coded measuring graduates are from my Jobo-processor - I use the small 1510-tank with the dedicated graduates when I have to develop just a single roll of 135/36.
The Jobo-tanks can be filled and emptied much faster than my stainless-steel-tanks and loading the film onto the reels is faster for me too, but somehow I prefer the "haptic" of the stainless-steel-stuff.
I've used other brands of plastic-tanks too, but for me the Jobo-system is the "best in plastic".
To measure up Rodinal or other liquid developer-concentrate I use either a syringe or small measuring-graduates.
I've bought a set of "Kolbenhubpipetten" (sorry, couldn't resist to confuse the brave MFNG-folks
- that's a graduated piston pipette, not pictured here), but those things are to beautiful to be used in the lab ;-)
Please let me know if there are any questions. And I'm happy to edit the text above.
