Film developing

I recently purchased a Spotmatic SP and am shooting my first roll of film. As such I find myself on a new learning curve.Can anyone direct me to a suitable sight .
Also I have considered(probably too soon). Developing my own film. And am looking for information guide on such a practise, I have seen some videos on you tube.

Lastly is it possible to develop colour film into a b&w image and would i use B & W chemicals. Regards

Film development is a bit of a skill in its own right. It would be easiest for someone to show you how to do it, but there are plenty of good books available second hand at low prices.

Yes, you can develop any film as black and white, but for the best results the proper black and white films will be best. Not least because the correct development times will be published.

Check the Ilford website for some very useful guides on how to develop B&W film.

If you're shooting colour film then I suggest you take it to be developed as colour and for B&W, shoot B&W film.

It is perfectly possible to home process colour negs and slides, but it is much more critical than monochrome processing. I wouldn't recommend attempting colour until you've got b&w right first.
With colour wrong timings, wrong temperatures, and getting the correct gelatin colour balance filters right will give uncertain results, b&w is much more forgiving. Once you've mastered mono then colour is so much (time consuming) fun!
For detailed advice there'll be many books in a local second hand bookshop that cover the subject.

hi

bit late to the party.. i started developing my B&W films a year or so ago. it's pretty easy, if daunting. As mentioned above, check out the Ilford site, they have lots of info and step-by-step guides.

you can't develop colour with B&W chemicals, you will destroy the film. there are some B&W films that use C41 processing (colour processing)... which may be handy as to get a lab to develop B&W costs more than colour.

i have yet to try developing colour, mainly as the temperatures and timings need to be spot on... if the temperatures are too high in B&W you reduce the developing timing (handy in summer), you can't do that with colour. plus, you need more kit really.

good luck and welcome to the world of film.

I understand that C41 colour films can be developed with B&W chemicals into B&W negatives, though I've never done it myself.

Any film can be developed into a black and white negative, even Kodachrome.

True John, but then you don't get to play with Pan-F 50, Delta ranges (100 - 3200), push/pull films, high/low contrast etc. and that is only the Ilford films.

I began with Ilford XP2 (pseudo monochrome) which can be developed at any colour lab, I only used 1 film then went proper deep end and glad I did.

Today I took Delta 400 out of the fridge as I was using up to 300mm without a tripod... 1/1000 sec to photograph the Isle of Man from Slieve Loughshannagh mountain peak in the Mourne Mountains, Ireland. I'll use Rodinal developer to bring out the contrast/accutance and help cut through the haze ( Y2 filter used also).

I wouldn't say anything is easy about this, easy if you know like anything else is. It requires good numeracy for starters and not everyone has this ability, I should know as I teach adult numeracy. 😉

Ansel didn't say it was easy in his 3 books either.

It takes a very long time to explore film and find what the possibilities are.

My final conclusion was that I liked Kodak Tri-X developed in Paterson FX-39. Crisp, sharp grain structure. The after that I moved to digital, eventually some four years later decommissioning my darkroom.

John,

I think it is similiar to digital processing which takes me ages and maybe even more to learn and for various disciplines, for example, astrophotography.

I am still no out and out jedi master of Adobe Lightroom despite knowing a lot more than the average DSLR photographer.

Odourless fixer was a good invention though