Ok, so this is a bit of a bumper blog post, but it’s because I’m really quite excited that I processed some colour film at home for the first time. I’ve been processing black and white film at home for quite a while, and had planned to try colour at some point. I had read a lot about it, and how it was quite apparently quite difficult and not really do-able at home, but the more I read, and spoke to various people it seemed like in a lot of ways it’s actually easier than black and white. It turns out that it was a bit easier than black and white, 3 or 4 steps, the same time regardless of film speed, where with black and white there are different processing times depending on speed. The most difficult bit was trying to keep the chemicals at the correct temperature (between 37.2 and 38.2 degrees), especially when my thermometer gave up after the first 2 rolls. Anyway, I processed a few rolls, and was pretty delighted with the results. I must have done ok with the temperature because the colours seemed pretty good. My main problem is trying to keep the negatives clean. I don’t know if the spots and lines on the negatives are from using old junk cameras, or from my handling of the film.
Anyway, enough writing, the photos below are a mixture of Portra 160, Portra 400, and Portra 800, shot on an Olympus Trip 35, Lubitel 166B, and Nikon F80 respectively.
