Developing Film In One Step - Intant Processing

The Art of Photography

Ted Forbes

Diy, Art, Arts, Visual Arts, Image, Technology, Photography, Tv & Film, Culture, Tutorials, Gadgets, Photographers

4.5 • 942 Ratings

🗓️ 3 May 2015

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

New55 has just released a chemical called R3 Monobath. It is just that, a 1 chemical process for developing film. I wanted to see for myself how well this worked so I ordered a few bottles and developed some film. Monobath developers have been around for a long time. The first evidence I could find was a 1967 thesis by William Quan for RIT in Rochester. In his paper he described a 1 bath process for use with Panotomic X film (no longer made). Instant films all use monobath for their chemicals which makes sense why New55 would be experimenting with this. Monobath is not the perfect developer, but its very good in the right situation. The pros: 1 bath process, easy to use, beautiful contrast, nice grain The cons: contains ammonia (fumes are strong), is designed for a specific film type, no control for pushing, pulling or manipulating the look of the process. My Monobath Sample Images: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tedforbes/sets/72157650008473213/ Buy R3 Monobath from New55: http://shop.new55.net/collections/frontpage/products/r3-monobath-developer Make your own R3 Monobath: http://new55project.blogspot.com/2010/01/donal-qualls-successful-monobath.html William Quan's thesis: http://scholarworks.rit.edu/theses/5194/

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everybody Ted Forbes welcome back to the art of photography if you are a film nerd this video is for you
0:05.3	We're gonna get back into doing some darkroom stuff in the next couple weeks and I want to start today with a review of a developer that I bought a couple weeks ago online from a company called New 55 and the
0:14.8	developer is called R3 Monobath and I want to talk about what a monobath developer is
0:19.7	I want to show you some images I want to show you how to develop with it what it is and what
0:23.4	it isn't. I went ahead and ran a test roll, a couple test rolls of Triax
0:27.2	through my Hasselblod to try this out with and was very pleased with the
0:30.6	results. It's a beautiful developer. It's a very high contrast
0:33.8	developer so you have nice crushed blacks. You do lose highlights so your
0:37.8	exposure needs to be pretty on because there's not a lot of latitude once you use
0:41.2	this developer. The grain is gorgeous. It's
0:44.5	triex so it's pretty much what you'd expect from a grainy process of triax and
0:49.0	it was really nice and we're going to talk through the process and talk more about these images in a second,
0:54.0	but I want to talk about what a monobath developer is first,
0:57.0	because it's kind of an unusual concept from the norm.
1:00.0	And if you've ever developed black and white film before, you know that there are three chemicals
1:03.6	traditionally that are used, a developer, a stop bath, and a fixer, and there's some other optional
1:07.6	chemicals that you can use as well.
1:09.2	But anyway, my point is that there are several processes and several baths that the film must go through to become developed.
1:14.6	And with Monobath, you do all of this with one chemical solution and it's pretty interesting.
1:19.3	If you've ever shot instant film before, you've probably used a monobath and not realized it.
1:24.3	That's kind of how Polaroid and Fuji and all these these brands work is that particularly
1:29.1	with Polaroids there was that little strip at the bottom of the image that contained chemicals and when you made the exposure it ran that through a set of rollers which broke the chemical compound
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