Processing Black & White Film 

Can you reuse the chemicals - developer & stop bath - that you poured out of the developing tank into the cylinder?

@@archiesacay1901 The Ilfotec DD-X devleoper should be used as a one shot developer for the highest image quality,. It can be used more than once if timings are adjusted. If you have a look at the technical data sheet on ilfordphoto.com then all of the information is there www.ilfordphoto.com/amfile/file/download/file/581/product/545/

I have been using this video to develop my 35mm HP5+, my question is I am getting an old 120 folder camera ... is DD-X still a good developer for B/W 120? How will the process be different for 120 film.

What are the advantages of DD-X over ID-11?

@@Only_Fools_and_Audits The main advantage is convenience.Some people prefer a liquid to mixing powders.

That's fantastic to hear Niall. Hopefully you've done it a few times since too. Please share some of your images with us on our social channels, we'd love to see them. (We're @ilfordphoto on Twitter and Instagram)

@@Ilfordphoto profesional, admirable, fancy, exquisite vídeo, thank you

@@bryanotero123 Thanks Brian. Not sure about fancy though!

@@Ilfordphoto if the person wore a pair of white gloves and put the stuff more delicately and did all the process on a dinner table with a fireplace in the background then yeah xD.

Niall McCauley; Thanks mate. You jolted me to recall my first roll of film, bloody magic moment of truth when i examined the wet film dripping into the bath. Did you make a contact sheet?

It's also a nod to the processing demons, Order and Chaos, who inhabits every creative space. The repeated tap keeps the spirits at bay. True fact!

I didn't notice this until you pointed it out Mark!

I wanna be a cool kid too!

We love hearing this - enjoy getting back into black and white film developing, and please, if you are on social media, share some images with us. We are @ilfordphoto on IG/Twitter and Facebook

Muscle memory definitely helps, it becomes second nature after a while:)

@@Ilfordphoto thank you and your team for the video, whole process doesn't seem that scary as it was before. and thanks that we still have these beautiful rolls of film from Ilford.

That's fantastic to hear! Please share you results with us on IG @ilfordphoto

You should have another go at it! There's lots of information on www.ilfordphoto.com and it's easy to ghet hold of film. I bet you even have a film camera lurking somewhere :)

Don't forget, if you run out of STOP you can use regular white vinegar. Of course it needs to be diluted with water to the proper strength.

Yess, we did it back in school days. Decades ago. Omg. Now I am going to start my own developement, at least in Germany I get the feeling, it gets harder to find someone, that does a good job in it. Esp.: as I like to do bw-slides, Ilford, do you have vids on this theme, or should I look for Adox? Andreas

Brilliant. We're hearing more and more often how people are enjoying coming back to shooting film or are now shooting it alongside digital. It's fantastic to hear how many are also trying their hand at developing it themselves too. Please let us know how you get on.

Great to hear that we're helping you meditate Dylan!

Well done on your first roll!

Thanks Alex - Glad you enjoyed it

and this is just half of it. making the prints is just as much work

@@jawaring4367 Or scanning

@@jawaring4367 I find that printing in the darkroom is more enjoyable than film developing.

That's amazing to hear - well done. Hopefully it's the first of many:)

Great to hear. Thanks for watching. Hopefully you'll carry on developing your own black and white film now:)

Glad you found it helpful Christine. Good luck with developing your first black and white films in 10 years!

Glad to hear it Thomas. The Simplicity kit is a great way to get started / learn.

Thanks you. Have you processed your fist black and white film yet?

Really? You're the first person to say that. Glad you enjoyed it though!

That's fantastic to hear Bret. This is what we were hoping when we made these videos. Have you tried any of our other black and white films yet or are you sticking with HP5 for now?

@@Ilfordphoto So far I have been sticking with HP5. I actually bought 52 rolls of HP5 with the goal of shooting one roll per week. HP5 seems like it will meet my needs really well. It seems like a really flexible film. I shot my first roll at ISO 400 and my second at ISO 1600. Both came out great. I think I might also want to pick up a couple rolls of Panf ISO 50. It looks like it might be good for landscapes when I'm on a tripod and also portraits with studio strobes.

@@BretMiller Cool. Yes, HP5 pushes and pulls really well. I've shot it at 200 and 1600. PANF is beautiful for bright sunny work in the studio or outside and the FP4 is pretty nice too if you want little more speed

Thanks Prem. What else other videos would you like to see?

a "what happened here" video series would be great. All of us happen to encouter some things we can't say where the error could have come from. e.g sprocket hole blacking out after aggressive agitation or unfixed negative spots.

Great idea - I'll pass it on

That works if you can control the rewind:)

That's amazing. Well done for taking the plunge. Next stop darkroom printing:)

ILFORD Photo an enlarger setup is very expensive.

@@jeg569 You can find some cheaper or even free enlargers around. Or there may be a community darkroom near you? Keep checking here as we are starting to populate it with community darkrooms www.ilfordphoto.com/storelocator

@@Ilfordphoto I enjoyed dark room printing way more than developing. The hardest part in the whole process for me was extracting the film from the 35mm cassette and properly loading it into the spiral in the dark!

@@parthasur6018 There is definitely a knack in loading the spiral! I love darkroom printing too. Hours can go past without me realising it. We've been enjoying seeing lots of new darkrooms pop up over the last couple of years, maybe there's one near you?

Let us know how you go on and if it's our film, we'd love to see some shots on our IG or Twitter stream @ilfordphoto

What was the results 10 months later?

Thanks Bill. Do you shoot much film yourself?

I try to as much as I can for my personal work. The darkroom is the best place to get away from it all...

ain't it though lol!

It’s great fits the vibe of a darkroom perfectly.

It makes film look hi-tech. :)

Sound like Mirror Edge soundtrack !

That's why keyboards have a mute button.

You should do it!

Digital has made a lot of sloppy photographers.

That’s exactly why I’ve just bought an old Pentax MX and some film ...

@@ikonographics Great choice of a camera. I still have mine from 40 years ago. I use it with Ilford HP5 Plus.

Thank you. Let us know if you have a go yourself

Thanks hopefully you enjoyed the video too;)

ILFORD Photo Like always :)

It depends where you live. We always advise contacting your local council as different areas have different rules.

Thanks Andrew - Do you process your own film?

ILFORD Photo I just take my film to a local camera shop. But I’ve been wanting to start to develop my own B&W

Did you not see that in the video??

@@Jay-jb2vr YES, but it moved too quick.

@@Jay-jb2vr yes, But I also have Autism, and hence the white writing on a white background is harder for me to see (contrast and glare{from the video lighting}), also watching the writing AND the live action simultaneously is difficult, as this takes a lot of attention and a lot of information at once can overwhelm our brains, too much choice at what to look at, let alone concentrate ones limited attention on and it is even harder, the more complex the task we are learning, or the more detailed the information, steps, body Language of the demonstrator,etc. (we do things line by line, looking, understanding, then looking again- as if we think too much we have a meltdown , like a computer, it can't do too much, if it tries, it 're-boots'), also in my childhood I had seizures (due to heat, and sometimes flashing lights),so the oscilating timer in the left corner is distracting in this regard too.

Are you going to have a go? There is plenty of additional helpful information on our website too. www.ilfordphoto.com/beginners-guide-processing-film/

Thanks for your feedback. Changing bags are always an option, although not as simple to use for an absolute beginner. It is fairly easy to black out a small room with card and tape, (there is a video on out stream showing how to do this), but we understand that not everybody has this space available. Using a film retriever instead of removing the cap is another way of doing it, which works perfectly well. We do have another video coming shortly on making your first print which shows the next steps.

Fantastic thanks - that all sounds great. I think mentioning the change bag along with the blacking out a room would be ideal as most people I would say would go for a simple bag rather than having to black out an entire room with card and tape. I'm guessing it depends alot on where you live too and styles of houses (in the north of Australia where I live rooms are big and lots of light) - a changing works everywhere....although a bit of a pain to use. Anyway it's fantastic to see these tutorials online from Ilford and hopefully get more and more people to try the process - thanks! Can't wait to see the prints too.

Most people have a bathroom they can easily convert to a darkroom by blacking out any windows (usually small) and making a simple light trap for any vents. It's much easier to work in a larger space than one of those changing bags.

I do have a totally light sealed room, which I use for darkroom printing. However, I much prefer loading my film in a bag, whether it’s muscle memory or something else I find the bad much easier. But I take the spool out of the canister to load it as I find it much easier to guide the film that way. Many of these things are personal preference, the important point is that it should be loaded in total darkness and the film is not touched.

bebox7 light tight rooms are easy nearly 12 hrs a day! (night)

TCP...........Great but we don't all live in your house.....

Harry Stevens i said " temperature in your house" this might work or not

it's always good to hear other ways of doing this. thanks for the tips.

Explain "do it by feel"

Yep I agree 100% and have been it exactly this way for a long time now. It makes the whole process easier and automatic. Though I do use stop

You volunteering??

We dod publish times for processing at higher temperatures and these as well as info on how long the chemistry lasts can all be found on the relevant technical data sheets on www.ilfordphoto.com/technical-downloads/technical-data-sheets/

@@Ilfordphoto or add some ice

@@Ilfordphoto does your website keep crashing , constantly having problems with it .

Do you not shoot film now? We've seen a huge resurgence in it over the last several years

Hi Gareth. It's so good to hear that you are going to go back to processing your own black and white film. The process is exactly the same for 120, with a couple of small changes (obvioulsy you don't ned to remove the flm form the cassette and you would need a larger developing tank and a higher voilume of chemistry). Good luck and please let us know how you go on.

ILFORD Photo brilliant. Thanks guys will do 😊❤️

We plan to :)

ILFORD Photo 👌🏽👌🏽👌🏽

Great to hear that you're having another go at flim photography after a break. There is a differnce between the Washaid and wetting agent. Wetting agent is used for film to reduce drying marks, where as Washaid is a hypo eliminator so speeds up the washing process of primarily Fibre based papers but can also be used with film to reduce wash times.

@@Ilfordphoto this video did seem to offer a very minimal wash time. over time, I wonder what condition the negatives will remain in... (in terms of deterioration)

@@Garacha222 We developed this wash method to use the minimal amount of water whilst ensuring that all residual chemicals were removed to ensure the longevity of the images. www.ilfordphoto.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Reducing-Wash-Water.pdf

The film squeegee has definitely proved to be controversial! We knew that this one was brand new and so there wasn't a risk of scratching, but have heard a lot of people say that they prefer to use their fingers.

Use distilled water with the final rinse with the wetting agent. No spots.

I'm definitely in the 'no squeegee' or 'fingers' camp when it comes to film processing. I learnt to process film in high school and the method I was taught was to leave the film to dry naturally with the final drying aid chemical, that being Kodaks' Photo Flo on the film whilst it dries. Once the film had dried, we used the Anti-static cloth on the film before we slipped it into negative preservers.

so you remove the film from the spiral before introducing whetting agent?

Thanks Luna. It's interesting that you find it easier to develop 120 film. I'm definitely the other way, but I think it's more to do with familiarity than anything else..

@@Ilfordphoto I think it might be just the thicker width or that it doesn't have the holes along the edges. I also like that it's much shorter so that definitely makes loading the reels easier.

I find 35mm easier to handle in a changing bag while using my imagination to keep track of where everything is :D I find that the 120 film can slip off the reel a little and its hard to figure out that has happened. Then again I have loaded more 35mm than 120 so I know how it feels when the film needs "persuasion".

I agree on 120 being easier, but I think that may be down to my having mainly developed 120 recently, and having not touched much 35mm in the past 6 months or so