the changing bag

For the first two years of shooting film I posted every roll off in a padded envelope and waited. It worked, but the wait took the fun out of it, and by the time the scans arrived I had forgotten what half the frames were supposed to be. Last autumn I bought a second-hand Paterson tank with two reels from a car boot sale for eight pounds and decided that was my excuse.

What I actually use

The kit list is short and mostly borrowed from the kitchen: the tank, a changing bag, a measuring jug, a thermometer that lives in a drawer with the cake tins, three old squash bottles for chemistry, and a timer on my phone. For developer I settled on Ilfosol 3 at 1+9 because it is forgiving and the bottle lasts. Stop bath is plain water. Fixer is whatever rapid fixer the shop has in stock.

Loading the reel in the bag was the part I dreaded. The first roll took me twenty minutes and I creased the leader so badly that the first three frames have a half-moon on them. What helped was practising with a sacrificial roll in daylight, eyes shut, maybe ten times in a row. After that it became a thing my hands do while I listen to the radio.

Times and temperatures

HP5 at box speed in Ilfosol 3 is around six and a half minutes at 20°C. My kitchen in March is nowhere near 20°C, so I stand the jug of developer in a bowl of warm water until it comes up. I agitate for the first ten seconds and then four inversions every minute. When I push it to 800 I add about two minutes and accept that the shadows will be a bit thin.

The biggest improvement did not come from chemistry at all. It came from a wetting agent in the final rinse and hanging the film in the bathroom after a hot shower, when there is less dust in the air. Drying marks were my most common fault for months.

Was it worth it?

Financially, yes, after about the sixth roll. More importantly, I see the negatives the same evening, and that short loop between taking a picture and looking at it has done more for my photography than any book. I still send colour film away; C-41 at home is a project for another year.

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