Black and White film for beginner

dabsond · Joined: 22 Jan 2015 Posts: 37

Shooting manual lenses on my DSLR has inspired me to shoot some film. I would really like to try shooting black and white for developing at home. I have read up on it and I am wondering if this film would be a good choice to start with, Arista EDU Ultra 100. The price is right for experimentation. Anyone use or process this film? Thoughts?

mmelvis · Expire: 2015-05-09

Easy film to work with and produces good results. A great learning film that will not break the bank.

PWhite214 · Joined: 19 Apr 2014 Posts: 230 Location: Houston, Texas

I like Arista, not just because it is inexpensive. I usually have a stock of ISO 100, 200 and 400 in 35mm and 120.

Developed in HC-110 or Legacy's L110 gives good negatives for scanning or print. I usually 'stand' develop, L110 one part developer to 100 parts water. one hour, no agitation. This article started my interest, http://jbhildebrand.com/2011/tutorials/workflow-tutorial-1-film-developing-basics/. After more research, and because I had HC-110 at the time, I used it. Just type "Stand develop" into a search engine, plenty of data.

Digital Truth The Massive Dev Chart, http://www.digitaltruth.com/devchart.php has data on just about every film developer combination.

Phil

philslizzy · Joined: 07 Aug 2012 Posts: 4748 Location: Cheshire, England

I use 'Lucky' usually from China via ebay. It has the development times in the pack for ID11 and D76.

kiss-o-matic · Joined: 26 Sep 2012 Posts: 39 Location: Town of Chi

Definitely stick with cheap for a while. Your biggest decision is going to be whether or not to use metal or plastic reals. I prefer metal but I've gotten the film snagged a few times and ruined a shot or two. It's frustrating, but pays off in the end. Welcome. Smile

dabsond · Joined: 22 Jan 2015 Posts: 37

Thanks to everyone for the input. I will place the order for the film and give it a try.

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9097 Location: Houston, Texas

A few things you should consider besides the film -- more in the order of having a good daylight darkroom setup. You might want to get a changing bag. This is a light tight bag you slip your arms into that lets you remove the film from the roll and feed it onto the reel, then place it into the tank without the film being exposed. It can be quite handy. Ingredients to put in the bag besides the film, the reel and the tank are: scissors so you can cut the film at the end of the roll, and some sort of device for getting the film out of the canister. I've used a bottle opener to pop the top off a canister, which doesn't work all that well but it will work, but there's also a film leader extractor that works better, that you can buy from Freestyle when you buy the film.

I've never tried stand developing. Maybe I should one of these days. I always do full strength with agitation. I realize it's a matter of personal preference, but I prefer the plastic reels over the metal ones. The back and forth winding action works very well and can suck a roll up on a reel quickly. I'lll admit, though, that some work better than others. The Jobo and Paterson reels are the best that I've found.