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:
