Developing your first black-and-white roll

You can develop black and white film in a bathroom with the light on, because the only part that needs darkness happens inside a bag. Everything else is temperature, time and a little rhythm. This guide uses Ilford HP5 Plus, with Kodak Tri-X 400 as the alternative, and the numbers come from the makers' own technical sheets, not from a video. Each film gets its own maker's recipe, agitation included, because the time tables assume it.

What you need

A daylight developing tank with a reel (Paterson and AP are the common plastic ones; steel reels take practice). A changing bag or a genuinely dark room. A thermometer that reads tenths of a degree. A timer. Measuring jugs, a funnel, and a storage bottle for each solution you keep. Scissors, a bottle opener for 35 mm cassettes, and film clips or clothes pegs. Then the chemistry: a developer, a stop bath, a fixer and a wetting agent. For the developer, Ilford's ID-11 and Kodak's D-76 are the standard powders; Ilford's own table gives HP5 Plus the same 7½ minutes in either, used at full strength at 20 °C ¹.

Loading in the dark

Practise with a sacrificed roll in daylight until you can do it with your eyes shut, because that is the condition. In the bag: open the cassette, cut the leader square, feed the film onto the reel, cut the end off the spool, put the reel on the centre column, close the tank. Once the lid is on, the lights can go on. If the film jams half way, stop, back it off and start again; forcing it leaves crescent-shaped kinks that show in every print.

Mix and temper

Mix the developer per the packet, well before you need it, and bring everything to 20 °C in a basin of water. The notation matters: 1+4 means one part concentrate to four parts water, 1:1 means equal parts, and a powder developer is first made up into a stock solution per the packet before any dilution. Fill the tank to the volume marked on it for your reel arrangement; an underfilled tank leaves the top of the film undeveloped. Ilford says all solutions should be kept at the same temperature or at least within 5 °C of the developer ². Temperature matters more than people expect: Ilford's chart shows that a 6-minute time at 20 °C becomes 4½ minutes at 23 °C and 9 minutes at 16 °C ¹. If your tap water is warm, chill the basin; if it is cold, a kettle and patience.

The run

Do not pre-soak. It is a popular tip and Ilford's sheet says a pre-rinse is not recommended because it can lead to uneven processing ¹. Pour the developer in quickly, start the timer, and tap the tank firmly on the bench to knock air bubbles off the film. Then agitate the way the maker of your time table says. For HP5 Plus in Ilford's table: four inversions in the first ten seconds, then four inversions in the first ten seconds of each following minute ¹. For Tri-X in Kodak's table: 5 to 7 inversion cycles in 5 seconds at the start, repeated every 30 seconds ⁴. Each table assumes its own rhythm, so do not mix them.

For HP5 Plus at EI 400 in ID-11 or D-76 at full strength, that is 7½ minutes ¹. For Tri-X 400 in D-76 at 20 °C in a small tank, Kodak gives 6¾ minutes at full strength or 9¾ minutes at 1:1 ⁴. Ten seconds before the end, start pouring out. Pour in the stop bath: Ilford's film sheet gives Ilfostop at 1+19 for 10 seconds at 20 °C ¹, and Kodak's sequence gives its Indicator Stop Bath 30 seconds ⁴. Pour out, then the fixer: Ilford Rapid Fixer diluted 1+4 for 2 to 5 minutes, agitated like the developer ². Ilford's fixer sheet gives the test: time how long a scrap of unprocessed film takes to clear in the fixer, fix for double that, and retire the fixer once its clearing time has doubled from fresh ²; the 2 to 5 minute range is the sheet's figure for fresh fixer, and the clearing test overrides it.

Wash. Ilford's tank method is faster than running water and is what they recommend for spiral tanks: fill with water at the same temperature, invert five times, drain; refill, ten inversions, drain; refill, twenty inversions, drain ¹. Finish with a rinse containing wetting agent, 5 ml of Ilfotol per litre ¹, hang the film by one end with a weighted clip on the other, and leave it in the least dusty room you have. Do not wipe it.

Reading the result

Hold the dry strip against a window. Frame numbers crisp and black, pictures with clear shadows and highlights that you can still read through: good. Shadows with no detail on a negative whose edge markings are strong point to underexposure; a flat negative with weak edge markings points to underdevelopment, because development sets contrast and highlight density more than it sets shadow detail. Dense and hard to see through means too much of one or both. Kodak's advice is to adjust the development time by 10 to 15 per cent next time if the contrast is consistently wrong ³, and to avoid tank times under 5 minutes, which can give poor uniformity ³. Keep a notebook: film, EI, developer, dilution, time, temperature, agitation. Every good darkroom runs on that notebook.

One bottle instead

If the four bottles put you off, CineStill's Df96 monobath develops and fixes in one solution: 3 minutes at 27 °C with constant agitation, 4 minutes at 24 °C with intermittent agitation, or 6 minutes at 21 °C with minimal agitation, each a minimum time with about a degree of tolerance ⁶. It is a real way to get a first roll done, and the sheet is honest that time does not increase development, so there is less to control, which is both the point and the limit.

Safety

Nitrile gloves, eye protection and an open window or extractor. Mix powders without breathing the dust and pour below eye level. Keep used fixer in a labelled bottle rather than pouring it away: it carries silver, and local rules often require it to be collected rather than drained, so check yours. Label everything, and keep darkroom bottles well away from the kitchen ones.

Next: what the developer actually does, and why the dilution matters as much as the brand.