Developing my first roll at home

There is a strip of film hanging from the shower rail as I write this, with a clothes peg on the bottom end so it does not curl. I developed it myself this morning. Since I started with the Bessa the lab has always done this part, and I never thought much about what happened between handing over a cassette and getting the scans by email.

The tank came from Tori, the Finnish classifieds site, for twelve euros. It is a Paterson with two reels and a strip of masking tape on the lid that says D76 9 min in someone else's handwriting. I have not taken it off. The chemistry came in one parcel: Ilford Rapid Fixer, a bottle of Ilfotol and a small bottle of Adox Adonal, which is the old Rodinal formula under another name. The measuring jug and the thermometer came from the kitchen.

In the last post I said my windowless bathroom might finally be useful. It is not, quite. With the light off and the door shut, after a minute I could see a thin line of light all round the door frame. So the loading happened at the kitchen table, in a changing bag.

I had practised twice in daylight with an old roll I gave up for the purpose. In the bag it did not go well. I rewind all the way into the cassette, so first the cassette had to be opened with a bottle opener, by feel, without losing the end cap in the bag. Then the end of the film had to be cut square with scissors, also by feel. The film went past the two ball bearings at the entrance of the reel, I twisted the halves back and forth, and about two thirds of the way in it stopped. By then my hands were sweating inside the bag and the film had started to stick to my fingers. I unwound it and tried again, which I now know is a good way to put kinks in film. The third time it went all the way in. I closed the tank and sat for a minute before I took my hands out of the bag.

After that it was mostly waiting. I mixed the developer at 1+50, brought it to 20 degrees with hot and cold water, and stood the jug, and later the tank between inversions, in a bowl of water in the sink. The chart I printed says eleven minutes at 20 degrees for HP5 Plus at box speed. Someone on a forum swears by fourteen. I did eleven: thirty seconds of inversions at the start, then ten seconds at the top of every minute. The lid leaked a few drops every time. Rodinal smells like the chemistry classroom at my school in Tampere.

Then plain water as a stop bath, three changes of it, and fixer at 1+4 for five minutes. Once the fixer is out you can open the lid, and I did, much too quickly. The film was wet and faintly pink and there were pictures on it. I said something out loud to the empty kitchen. Then the Ilford wash: fresh water and five inversions, again with ten, again with twenty, and a last rinse with Ilfotol.

I have been looking at it against the bathroom light through a magnifying glass, my nose almost touching it. It is usable. Most frames look like what I remember shooting in August, streets in Kallio and a few at Hakaniemi market. The grain is bigger than in the lab scans, which I had read about and half wanted. Two frames near the end have a pale, cloudy patch where the film must have touched the next turn on the reel. A few others have small crescent-shaped marks, probably from the second loading attempt. Whether there are drying marks I will see tonight, once it is dry.

I have not worked out how to scan them yet. The lab will scan negatives you bring in, so this roll may go back to them in a sleeve, which feels a little like cheating. The tank is drying on the dish rack.