Caffenol is a black and white film developer whose active ingredient is caffeine. You will mix a film developer from easy to obtain household chemicals, including instant coffee, and use it to develop a film. There are a number of household items that can be used to develop black and white films, caffeine in instant coffee is the most reliable and quickest. Wine, beer and tea can also be used, for example, though with much longer development times.
In this workshop you will make a film developer using coffee and some other readily available items, and use it to develop an exposed film that you bring along to the workshop. The whole film developing process will be taught from scratch, no previous experience is necessary for the dark room. You will finish the workshop with a set of negatives that you can print or scan (we are unable to make contact prints on-site at the moment).
This workshop is in the darkroom, it is very much a standing workshop and in a small space.
You will need to bring a black and white film that you have exposed prior to the workshop. Ilford HP5 400 is strongly recommended as it gives good results, but other 400 speed films such as Kodak Tri-X, T-Max or Ilford Delta 400 have similar development times and will also be fine.
Chromogenic films such as Ilford XP2 are not suitable.
It is best to overexpose the film by 1 f-stop if you can.
Please note: All 10, and 12 week courses have a half term break in the middle. For term dates please visit our Contact us page. We are not open on bank holiday Mondays and any class that falls on these days will be made up at the end of term.
Fees
Refunds
Please see full terms and conditions for more information.
Latecomer
If a course has already started, please call the office as it may be possible to join after the start date. This may only be possible if the course is not already full, if it is not disruptive for the other students and you are aware that you have missed a percentage of the course and the tutor will not have time to catch you up. This will be at discretion of the Folk House. We run our courses termly, so it might be best to start at the beginning of the course.
Levels
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