Reversal processing Super 8 in Caffenol. FULL instructions included! 

This is what I've needed, I filmed my Christmas on super 8 with reversal film and i wanted to find a way to develop it without regular chemicals and without sending it out. Thank you

I admire your resilience. It's great to see the scientific method of reversal process step by step. All said, the dynamic exposure range is much wider in negative process. My negatives consistently give better RAW digital copies with better flexibility for density corrections

Fantastic! I still havn't managed to get round to doing any processing due to being busy but I shot a load of old agfa stuff on holiday and hope to get time to do something with it before the end of the year. Thanks for the inspiration I may still pull my finger out!

I was doing reversal processing of 35mm still camera black and white film using 250 mililiters of regular 3% medical hydrogen peroxide mixed with 15 mililiters of imitation lemon juice. Mix in a Pyrex measuring cup and microwave in a 1,100 watt microwave oven for 1 minute and 10 seconds. That would be the bleach solution. The caffenol I used was 6 teaspoons of instant coffee (cannot be decaf), 4 teaspoons of washing soda, 1 teaspoon of crushed vitamin C pills and 1-3/4 teaspoons of iodized salt. Load the developing reel and tank under several bedsheets, put a rubber band on to keep it closed. Fill the developing tank with room temperature water through the light tight filling hole while you go and put 3/4 of a cup of 68 deg F water in a measuring cup and start stirring it and keep stirring as you dump in the washing soda first. Dissolve it until it is almost clear then dump in the salt and crushed vitamin C pills. Once it's dissolved, put it in a separate cup then rinse the measuring cup and put in 3/4 of a cup of 68 deg F water. Dump the instant coffee into the water and dissolve. Then put the solution with the crushed vitamin C pills, salt, and washing soda into the measuring cup with the dissolved coffee. Mix it up real good. Rinse the cup that you used to hold half of the caffenol solution, you are going to use it again later. Dump out the water from the developing tank (DON'T OPEN IT!!) and pour in the caffenol solution you just brewed. Once all the liquid is in the tank set a timer for 28 minutes and agitate the tank by gently shaking it side to side continuously for the first minute, then every 10 seconds agitate it for 3 seconds until you get to 28 minutes. Then dump the developer into the cup you used for half of the caffenol solution and fill and dump 3 complete changes of water through the developing tank. You can now open the tank and you should see very dark dense reflective images on the film. Heat the bleach solution you made earlier (no rush, you can make the bleach solution now if you forgot), and dump it into the wide open developing tank with the film back on the spool. You will hear some fizzing sound in about 4 minutes or less--when the fizzing stops, wait one additional minute and then take out the film and look at it. It should be orangish pink in color and should have a faint milky positive image signal on it. Go in front of a bright light bulb and make sure this film gets plenty of light on it, should take about 60 seconds. Pour the bleach solution into a bottle as you can use it for one additional use after this. Rinse the film pretty well, put it back on the spool, and take the cup that has the developer put into it, and put it in the developing tank with the film int. Now go forget about this and go do an absurdly important recreational task for about 7 hours. When you come back the film should look almost completely black but if held up to a bright light you should see very dark yellow where the light came into the camera and struck the film. Then dump out the caffenol down the drain and fill a separate deep lunch tray (with a separate developing spool you bought extra for this step) with water and use about 1 teaspoon of Sodium Thiosulfate powder for every 8 ounce cup that you needed to get it to fill. If you do not have Sodium Thiosulfate available you can use AquaSafe the stuff that makes tap water safe for pet aquarium fish. Use that straight from the bottle and don't mix anything. Let it sit in this (the fixer) for 8 hours and dump it out and replace it it fresh fixer. Do this until you get to 24 hours after you first put fixer in and rinse the last of the fixer out of the film emulsion and Voila! you have positive images to gawk under a compact fluorescent flashlight. This also works for Arista Ortho Litho Film 3.0, but halve the recipe for the caffenol keeping the strength constant and leave out the salt, then develop for 5 minutes with continuous agitation for the first minute, then for 3 seconds every 30 seconds. Stop it with tap water (you can do all of this under a red LED bulb provided it's not the phosphor/filter type). I have not been able to get the bleach solution to work without causing bubbles to leave pinholes in the image, but it DOES bleach. However the second development finishes in a blisteringly brief 4 minutes. And after that you only need to soak it in the sodium thiosulfate for 8 hours instead of 24.

This is amazing

I like that camera less film animation, very artistic

Rodinal or RO9is a very economical black and white one shot developer. I'd recommend a dilution of 1:25 or 1:50.

nice vid, love the out takes

Great video! If you dont want to use the permangenate bleach, you can also use 3% hydrogen peroxide with a bit of vinegar, either at 38°C for a bit or as a semi stand development for about an hour. Greetings from germany

I've just finished developing my reversal fomapan r100 film on caffenol-c and it came out quite well. Instead of using Potassium Permangenate and sodium bisulphate I've used citric acid and hydrogen peroxide. Don't quit trying, you can do it!!!

A household chemical containing sodium hydrosulfite in an acid solution such as "Iron Out" powder works as a fogging agent, developer and fixer in one step. It works well, only issue I've seen is less dense shadows which can be mitigated by longer first dev times

I'm totally digging your videos! Quick question: Does the Fomapan have remjet on it? I can get rolls of Double-8 Fomapan pretty cheap and I have a bunch of old wind-up 8mm cameras I would love to try out.

I remember when I developed 40-year old Kodachrome film, to remove (most of) the remjet, I rinsed the film with dish washing soap. After washing the soap off, I would start the development. It work​ed.

Can this be done with tri-x or c41?

Great video! I was wondering whether i could use the same method for photographic film (4x5 foma 100) do you happen to know if the emulsion is the same as 8mm? do you think it would work?

Hi! Thanks for this video, quick question: You mentionned at 4:10 that sodium bisulphate can be replaced by concentrated sulfuric acid. As I already bough acid I would like to know at what proportion I should mix it with water to get the equivalent? Thanks in advance; looking forward to develop my film

What temperature is this done at? also i didnt think fomapan could be developed as a negative!

Hello! We just finished building a homemade 35mm motion picture camera and discovered caffenol for developing thanks to you! We plan to test our camera this weekend. We just picked up a Morse G-3 Developing Tank that holds 100' rolls for developing. It has a view port for reversal chemistry exposure. I was wondering if you could help us out by clarifying how much light we are supposed to expose the film to for 2nd exposure?? We plan to follow your instructions to process b/w reversal. We are using 50 ISO 100 feet of 35mm bulk stock in our homemade hand cranked 16fps motion picture camera.

9:24 Nah, that's definitely a face. You're not dreaming. Great vid btw.

Ive heard you arent supposed to use stop bath should I? or can i just rinse it with water

What software do you use to convert your Caffenol developed negative 8mm film into positive video?

hello, what temperature should all solutions have?

thanks for posting all this. i'm building up to having a go and have the shopping done! i'm going to initially try out 10 foot sections of a 50foot roll of tri-x super 8 , individually. i'm just going to pull out 10 feet by hand if i can. then, because i have one, am going to use my patterson 2 reel tank without the spools inside(?). any tips before i go for it? presumably i can just change the quantities to suit the tank (570cc). thanks in advance

To process as negative, is it bleach-developer-stop bath-fixer?

The fomapan can be processed as a negative? Is that the same for the regular 8mm?

What models of Super 8 camera do you have/use right now? The one at 9:49 is some kind of Eumig, correct?

there are 142 comments and instead of sifting through to see if someone else already asked my question I will ask: can you use the normal caffenol process on the B&W reversal super 8 film to create a negative image or does it not work that way?

this it's great! I just used your videos to develop super 8 triX, I used D-76 though

Would you recommend this Paterson tank for developing 16mm? Those lomo tanks are bit pricey haha

All super 8 film has remjet on it haha. It doesn’t inhabit processing it just protects the non emulsion side during exposure.

Also where did you get your fomapan? I want to find some

hello, this is negative or positive film?

Is developting normal double 8 and super 8 the same?

Hi this is appliy to svema 16mm очт -180 films

It might not have worked initially, but it doesn't half look very arty! Dye a few colours on it and make a loop. Instant art house! Show it at a jazz cafe and charge people to get in....

We just got all the chemicals you described and we finished our homemade motion picture camera! Were going to shoot some test film tomorrow! We have 400asa color negative on hand to play around with (10 free 35mm roles). Will this work in the reversal process or should we stick to black and white? Thanks!

Why don't you just use brand new kodak film stock for super 8?

Hello, can the bleach and clearing bath be used several times ?

Ive 4 agfachrome & agfa moviechrome 40 I wanna develop, but got 0 material or skills, Do u accept the challenge for a few bucks? I shot them during the past 2 years.

I shy away from the reversal process due to the dangerous chemicals. I'll stay with negative/computer flip process. I'm too chicken to play with that nasty stuff. Going with the negative process at least gives one a little feeling of the old days (I'm 70 this year). The cost of professional positive film processing is totally prohibitive for my hobby needs. The last guy I checked out wants like $70 to do one double 8 roll! Yikes!

Ilford stop bath is just an expensive citric acid solution. Better buy a kilogram of citric acid powder for less than £10

Your videos are very nice, but I would love to see one of your complete process donnelly clean and crisp. Remjet seems to be a pain in the ass for you but it does not have to be. It is quiet easy to remove. cheers!