Photographic processing

As a film photography lover, learning how to process films is one of my goals. So I’d like to share some related information to you.

The picture below is the steps of film processing. The process can be divided to three parts, which are exposure process, chemical process and refinement process. There are several steps in each of them. During the first and second process, the film must be prevented from being exposed to the light.

(Ref: wiki)

1.      Exposure

When we are taking a shot, the film in the camera will be exposed to light. It’s important to control the right amount of light, or the pictures may be too bright or too dark.

2.      Developer bath

Photographic developer, a mixture of chemical compounds, transforms the latent image to the visible image. When photographic films are soaked in the developer, the silver ions exposed to light before will be turned into silver. If the bathing time is longer, the image will be darker. Therefore, time needs to be controlled in this step.

        Ag⁺   (light) → Ag

3.      Stop bath

The usage of this step is to stop the developer from working. Instead of using acid in the step, water-washing is allowed.

4.      Fixer bath

Fixer bath is to dissolve the rest of the silver halide on the film. With this step, the image will be stable and won’t be affected by light anymore. We usually use Sodium thiosulfate (硫代硫酸鈉，俗稱海波) for fixer bath.  

5.      Washing

To remove the rest of fixer on the film, the film has to be washed by a large amount of water, usually taking more than five minutes.

6.      Drying

After all the steps above, the film must be dried in dust-free environment. Then you will see the photos taking by yourself!

As always, I will put my picture to this blog every week. The photo was taken at Tamsui MRT station, and the woman in the black cloth was an unexpected character. What was she looking at, and what was she thinking about? With the appearance and the following questions about this woman, the photo gets more interesting!

Here is a video about film processing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu0Ul_wsYO8