The adventure of processing film at home!

This is my first semester at Randolph Community College and I'm majoring in photographic technology with an intended major of portrait studio management. One of the things I love about this program is that we start out learning how to shoot on medium format film cameras and we learned how to process our own film. Since I live 2.5 hours away from school I decided it would be better to buy the supplies to process at home and so far it's working great. I've processed 3 rolls of film so far. I went to Peace Camera in Raleigh and purchased a Paterson Universal Tank with reel, a photographic thermometer, a changing bag, and some hypoclear and wetting agent. The school provided me with the developer D76, stop bath, and fixer. I was nervous at first because it is so time and temperature specific. But that's what I like about doing it at home. I don't feel rushed, I can take my time and do it right the first time without ruining film.

The first thing I did was place my tank, reel, and unprocessed film in the changing bag and zipped the bag close. Inside the bag I unrolled the film and placed it on the reel. Then I placed it in the tank and opened the bag. I poured some presoak in a container and placed the thermometer to get it to 68 degrees and poured it in the tank to sit for 15 minutes. While the film was soaking I poured the developer into its container and temped to 68 degrees. After the pre-soak I poured out the purple kool-aid and set the kitchen timer to 6.5 minutes. I poured in the developer at an angle and tapped the bottom of the tank twice. Then I inverted the container 4 times, tapped the bottom again and let it sit until 30 seconds passed and repeated, then poured the developer out to drain the remaining 15 seconds.

Next, I poured in the stop bath agitating for 15 seconds and then draining for 15 for a total of 30 seconds. I set the timer for 5 minutes and poured the fixer, inverting 4 times and letting it sit for the remaining 30 seconds then repeating. I drained the last 15 seconds.

Once I poured out the fixer I filled the tank with water, inverted the tank 5 times and then drained. I poured in my hypoclear after setting the timer for 2 minutes, agitating for 10 seconds and letting it sit for the remaining 30 seconds. I drained the final 15 seconds.

For my final rinse I poured in the water, inverted 5 times and drained it. Then I refilled it with water and inverted the tank 10 times and drained. Poured in water and inverted 20 times then drained. I poured in some wetting agent and let it sit for 15 seconds and then drained.

Finally, I removed the film from the reel and removed excess water and hung it up to dry in my bathroom. I can't wait to make some prints from my photo safaris at the fair, acid park, and my school assignments!