Developing Minox film

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I think the light meter on the camera got this about right. There is some detail in the dark parts of the shot.

My empty 35mm cassettes arrived today. I needed them to transfer the film out of a cassette into cut strips. To do this I had to tape the end of the spool of film to the empty cassette spool and then load the cassette into the splitter. First lesson – the receiving cassette must be “upside down” or it won’t work. After that it all worked quite well.

The yellow block contains the blades that will cut the film

The film splitter is from camerahack. It’s beautifully made and works a treat. The receiving cassette is on the left. You crank the handle to pull film out of the cassette on the right, over the cutting block which has blades fitted in it. When I’d finished I had two lengths of 9mm film in the receiving cassette.

Anyone need any spare sprocket holes?

Then I just had to load one sliced film into a Minox cassette in a dark bag. Slightly complicated by the doorbell ringing as I was doing this. But it passed off OK. I had to answer the door with a huge black bag on the end of my arms. I then hand wound the film into a little roll and then popped it into the Minox cassette with the tongue protruding and put the cover onto that side of the Minox cassette. Then I could tape the tongue to the takeup spool and pop that spool in the other side of the Minox cassette in normal lighting. Ended up with a Minox cassette with a length of film in it.

I went outside and took some pictures, but this was slightly complicated by the way I’d not advanced the film counter on the camera to zero before I loaded the film so I had no idea when the film ended. I really didn’t want to run all the film off and back into the cassette so I gave up early. Then I got the cassette out of the camera, punched a hole in the end of the film and loaded the film into the Minnox daylight tank. This worked mostly OK. I used a 25ml measure to work out 53ml of liquid. Did the 1+50 develop which was rather hard to measure. I think I need a syringe.

Developing was OK but I didn’t let the developer fill up the tank as well as I might. Same for the wash and the fix. I did get some pictures though, but the film has opaque deposits which I think are silver from where the fixer didn’t reach. Scanner had real problems with some of the film too. Some of the pictures came out quite well though. A bit grainy but no evidence of problems with the splitting and the cassette transfer. Things to remember for next time:

  • Zero the counter on the camera before you put the film in. Also set the film speed – although the exposure was generally pretty good.

  • Fill the tank properly and give the liquid time to go into the tank. Especially important during fixing.

  • Hopefully the old cassette will dry out (it gets immersed in developer during processing) and I can reuse it.

  • The Minox thermometer that came with the tank is badly broken, but the tank itself is properly watertight and works a treat – although I need to get better and agitation and making sure that all the film is covered. I think for the fixing process I didn’t cover the top part of the film properly.

  • There were some issues with frame spacing but these might be to do with me not opening and closing the camera firmly enough.

  • Use “Film (with film holder)” as the Document Type for scanning. Don’t click “thumbnail”. Scanning works best if you select the entire length of film and then chop these up afterwards – I think. Use 3200 dpi for maximum detail.