Sans-Reel
It seems that in the developing world everyone is always interested in something new. Just like there are countless plug-ins for Photoshop, there are countless things you can do to Analog (Film) Photography to adjust the outcome of the image. Different films, developers, developing techniques to name a few..
There are even some people who damage the delicate emulsion on film on purpose. Why? Because scratched, burned, boiled, cracked and decomposed film can really give some amazingly artistic effects.
So, being adventurous I wanted to give damaging film on purpose a try. My method? I wanted to see how film placed in a developing tank without a reel would handle the development process. You can see how I loaded the film with the image to the right. I doubled the film back on itself in the dark until I had everything cinched between two fingers. I slipped the film with my fingers into my stainless steel tank and let it loose. You could also try crumpling the film and just shoving it in there, but I figure that this method had the least possibility of film touching film. You certainly don’t want it to spool against itself because then your developer won’t get to where it needs to go, we’re looking for a roll of ‘artistic film’ not ‘complete fail film’.
Developing is a little different as well. You certainly want to fill the tank with chemicals to guard against any part of the film sticking up out of the mix. Traditionally I invert the tank for 30 seconds when I pour in the chemicals and then three full inversions every 60 seconds until my time is up. For this process though I did one full inversion and then one half inversion every 20 seconds. That means that after every inversion the tank goes from upside down to right-side up. This also guards against any film sticking up out of the chemicals. And why an inversion cycle every 20 seconds instead of every 60? My hope was to basically give the film more of a chance to get hit by the developer. As for your other chemical steps, stop bath and fixer, I stayed with my same schedule for the developer. 30 seconds initial and one and a half inversions every 20 seconds.
Results?
Note that the sections of blue are where the emulsion sides were touching each other. With the ‘ribbon’ pattern used to place the film in the can every loop has a section of the emulsion that touches the opposite side. Not a bad effect if you ask me. There were also other areas of the film that didn’t quite touch and instead developing was thin to those sections. I suspect perhaps a pre-wash would help keep these from sticking, but I quite like the way these came out.
Hmm, not sure why you’d want develop without a reel. You can get tanks that use a plastic apron that you wrap around the film instead of rolling/loading the film on a reel. The plastic apron has a ruffled edges to keep the film from, doing what it did in your demo, sticking together.
Keith, I have a stock pile of developing tanks and reels but the whole ‘Film Damaging’ movement is the reason I wanted to develop without one.
Will I do this again? Maybe.. But I quite prefer negatives as perfect as I can get.