By Ash Zhang
These days, the obscure use of film is seeing its revival, featuring the ‘retro’ look and grain that seem nostalgic to many. I shoot and develop a lot of black and white film and to me, those are memories well cherished. The process itself has become somewhat of a ritual, the methodical time shaking to constant trial and error to achieve the perfect exposure. It is often my favourite time of the week, a personal oasis of calm in which, for a little more than an hour a week, I can afford a bit of a break. Without the right equipment, film photography is an inaccessible hobby to step into for personal development. The only available avenue is to shoot, and then send in the film to be developed. Both the cost of film and the cost of developing have skyrocketed due to increased interest, becoming arguably more costly than purchasing your own chemicals.
The learning curve for photography is honestly quite steep. You need both your camera, digital or film, and a willingness to dedicate time to learn. To shoot manually requires certain practice before it becomes nearly instinctual, knowing your preferred settings, and the wider photography community is not that welcoming. School is genuinely one of the best gateways and if you are interested, some people are willing to teach you (come to Photography Soc). Despite the albeit subpar equipment of the old Canon EOS cameras ( for which I have a personal hatred of the interface) and colour enlargers, there is enough equipment to give you an elusive peek into the paywalled recreation without fully dedicating yourself to the price. If you find that you enjoy your time here enough, perhaps eventually you’ll also start to recognise brand names and lens types, stop someone on the street to ask what camera they’re carrying (or probably don’t do that actually).
It’s easy to fall in love with photography, with the click of a shutter you suddenly have a perfect collection of a snapshot of your past. This is now captured in your pixels on a screen, or a negative kept in a folder to be looked at and bring back this feeling of bittersweet nostalgia. Composition rules can be learnt and so can editing skills, but the honest essence that brings me back to the shutter of a camera is having my personal memory bank as someone who does not have any visual memories to speak of. Photography is my journey to acquire a visual diary of sorts to remind myself of the places I’ve been and the people I’ve seen. After all, are you not who you have met? You may approach photography for an entirely different set of reasons, personal or interest-based, but if you have a genuine passion for learning new things, a camera may make a photographer out of you.
To delve into the more technical aspects of photography, there are 2 main schools involved: digital and analogue. Film belongs in the analogue sector, and is the predecessor of digital and phone cameras through which photography has become a widely available commodity. There are many different chemical makeups for rolls of film, including different types of black & white and also colour. The more affordable option is black and white, for both processing and the price of the rolls themselves. Colour tends to have much more volatile chemical makeups, requiring toxic chemistry, precise temperatures and incredibly expensive specialised equipment to produce and develop. Whereas the chemicals used for B&W are relatively accessible and only an irritant. The most commonly used formula for black and white film is a silver gelatine emulsion. This is done through a suspension of filter salts in gelatine kept stable under conditions until processed and coated onto supports such as glass, film and certain coated papers. Within the film, the different sizes of popular commercially available rolls tend to either be 35mm or 120mm (medium format). These require different cameras to shoot and 35mm is what I will be focusing on today, though the developing process for 120mm is almost identical, it simply creates larger, higher detail images (at a much heftier price).
Honestly, a visual explanation is usually far easier for something like this, but I will explain it here as well. When you have a film camera, to load the film you need to pull up the rewind lever until the latch for the back pops open. Then put the film in the compartment, pull out the tongue and feed it into the take-up reel on the other side. Make sure the film is secured by taking a couple of photos with the back open to make sure it is being winded. Then close the back, and continue to wind photos until the exposure has reached 0 on the exposure counter. To take a photo, adjust all of the necessary settings, aperture, ISO, shutter speed and focus to achieve the right exposure, then press the shutter and pull the film advanced lever. After shooting the entire roll of film, make sure to continually press the rewind release button while winding the rewind level in the direction as indicated until the pressure is released, then pull up until the back is opened and you have a finished roll of film. Many of these processes take a good couple of times to truly hammer into your brain, so just do it until it becomes easier. If you start learning how exposure works on a digital camera (trust me there are many many sources on the internet teaching you how) it's so much easier. Congratulations, now comes the hard part.
Next, you need to take this roll of film and enter a darkroom. Now, this isn’t an actual darkroom to develop photos in, but literally a pitch-black room. Have your equipment placed in a format you can navigate and then start the process of winding your roll of film onto the reel. First, pop off the lid of the flat end with a bottle opener and shake until it falls, hopefully neatly, into your hand. Cut off the tongue until you are left with a flat top and start feeding into the 2 teeth of the reel and carefully begin to wind on the roll of film. Do this until none is left (something will likely go wrong your first couple of times in doing this) and cut off the plastic bit at the end. Place the reel onto the middle column in the developing canister, screw on the lid and place the other lid on top.
Now you’re ready to develop the film, each brand will have its timings to follow, so make sure to research before you start this. Dilute the developer to the specified amount and temperature so that it’s the most effective and pour it into the canister. Give or take, shake the canister every 30 seconds for 4 times or so and slam onto a surface several times after each shake to get rid of air bubbles to achieve an even development. Do this for 8 minutes and then pour down a sink with running water. Then pour in stop (or running water) and shake for a minute. Then comes fix, shaking around 3 times every minute for 5 minutes. Pour back into the chemical canister after you are finished. Run in water for around 10-20 minutes until fully washed and pour a couple of drops of Photoflo. Pick up the roll of now-developed film, release it from the canister and swipe down between your index and middle finger to wring off excess water. Clip both ends and hang until dry. After drying, cut into strips of around 5-6 negatives and place them into your folder.
Now you’re finally ready to step into the darkroom and develop a contact sheet, which allows you to see your own 24/36 exposures. At this time for the individual photo/contact sheet, you choose what type of paper to use. There are usually 3 main types, glossy, pearl and matte. Pearl is my personal favourite, having a slight sheen to the surface without being too much. Both glossy and pearl are far easier to work with for beginners to be able to tell which side of the paper is photosensitive in question. Glossy tends to be best for any image that is not going to be under any bright exhibition light as it simply reflects too much and ends up incredibly distracting. Pearl generally works best for portraiture without any unintended bright spots as well. Matte is not something I have personally experimented with (mostly because school doesn’t stock it), but I’m sure once you are more experienced it may be something to look into.
Usually, I tend to keep the aperture 3 clicks up from the smallest (around f/8 or f/5.6) and focus doesn’t matter for contact sheets. Place your entire folder of negatives on top of the correct side of photosensitive paper (glossy up, whether it's pearl or glossy, you can tell) and expose by 5-second increments, covering more with a black piece of paper/card. Place into the fix for 3 minutes and agitate every 30 seconds by lifting the edge of the tray to make sure none of the images stick. Place in stop for a minute, then into a fix for 10 minutes (make sure it is FULLY SUBMERGED, otherwise there will be problems with your print). After that, place into slowly running water for 20 minutes to fully wash off the fix. Place onto drying racks separately or into a dryer, if you are afforded the facilities. If they’re still stuck together by this point, they’re either being ripped apart or stuck for life, your choice.
Repeat until the correct number of seconds of exposure/contrast has been reached. Then repeat all over again for an individual negative. Take out the strip of negatives and place the specific image you want into the film carrier (if it is horizontal, place it upside down) shiny side up. Then focus the image, ideally using a little microscope thing (I forgot the name) to make sure there is visible grain in the image and is therefore sufficiently sharp. Repeat the entire testing process until correct exposure and contrast are reached and feel free to be as pedantic as possible within this process. I've had shade thrown at me for testing in individual seconds when I have the time.
The far easier way to go about this is to have someone show you in person, guide you through step by step and hold your hands along the way, but this is as close to a crash course on darkroom photography as I can write. But if you find it worth the effort and if this has struck your interest in some way or another, give it a try. Whether it be digital or analogue photography, on your phone or a camera, the only thing you need to be qualified as a photographer is a passion for taking photos. The darkroom remains one of the only places I go to that is entirely peaceful and kept to myself these days, a forced divorce from technology and a labour of love to myself. Maybe you will also find yourself falling for the retro look and archival, physical pieces of your past to hold in folders to flip through after times have gone past. At least now you have an albeit very quick rundown on the technicality of the matters. Why not give it a try when you have the chance?