Acros 100 saves time when doing night photography. Why? Because it has practically no reciprocity at all. For shots up to several minutes in length you can shoot as metered. See examples below.
Secondly, I´ve tried re-using Caffenol-C-M. I processed one 120 Acros 100 roll, and once out of the tank I developed yet another roll in the same soup. Caffenol is reputed to be one shot, however the active agents would seem not to be spent after just one film after all. Its not as if I couldn´t be bothered to mix another batch, I just wanted to try it out. Reinhold at the Caffenol.blogspot has met with success re-using Caffenol, and he´s the master of all things Caffenol, so why not? I added a teaspoon (5ml) of instant coffee to the mix, just in case and added a minute to the development, and adjusted nothing else. And hey presto, the negatives came out just as good as the first roll through the same mix. Same contrast levels, any differences could be attributed to variations in exposure as much as anything else.
I might continue doing this in future. Saves both time and effort.
The first three night shots. The last midday fog.
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| Flexaret Va, Acros 100, EI 200, 2 min metered and exposed, 13 min in Caffenol-C-M reused |
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| Flexaret Va, Acros 100, 20 min exposure, pure guess metering, 13 min in Caffenol-C-M reused |
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| Flexaret Va, Acros 100, EI 200, 2 min metered and exposed, 13 min in Caffenol-C-M reused |
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| Flexaret Va, Acros 100, EI 200, 13 min in Caffenol-C-M reused |
Thanks for posting this helpful information! Lovely photos, too, especially the bottom one.
ReplyDeleteThank you. As long as I feel I have something of value to share with other Caffenol users and would be doers I'll keep at it.
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Eirik
Hi Eirik,
ReplyDeleteawesome work, I especially like the first one. It shows all advantages of the Acros/Caffenol combo.
For re-using Caffenol-C-M I estimate it behaves similar to taditional developers, simply add 5-10 % developing time for each next film and be fine. How far can we go? 3 films, 4 films? Don't know. And 120 film should be easier, because the amount of developer is doubled compared to 35 mm film.
"Modern" films like TMX are often told to need much more exact exposure than traditional cubic emulsions. I also can't second this for Caffenol-development, the exposure latitude is huge, and Acros100 beats them all imo. I intentionally shot the Acros from EI 25 to 1600 with the always same exposure setting (1/50, f/11) from bright daylight to dawn on one roll of 120 film with an old folding cam and it worked charmingly.
It's really amazing what you do with Caffenol, your additional research is so precious. And I love your beautiful photography.
Thanks a lot, best regards - Reinhold
Thank you Reinhold. Your blog and your own experiments have been and still are a huge incentive to me and others to not only try out Caffenol, but to treat it as a serious developer, not just some backyard stuff that will get you by when you are out of cash.
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