Development using coffee...

 I recently came across an organisation called Nature CIC in Ayr.  They are a community interest organisation that runs a bread shop in Ayr, but they also run MAKE, a community arts hub that has started running Street Photography and other courses.

At the end of April I signed up for their Street Photography and development course, it was fantastic and run by two very experienced former pro photographers.  I learnt a fair bit attending the one day workshop, while on it they mentioned their next course was "Eco Development" specifically coffee development.  It seems like a bit of fun so I signed up there and then.

Long story short, this wasn't just a bit of fun, it turns out that Coffee development is a very good development agent for 35mm film.  The detail that came out of the Fomapan 200 was on par with Ordinal stand development, it produced some very sharp, dense negatives.

The two course leads facilitated a group of five of us from loading film, to shooting, to developing and ended with some basic phone scans. The developer itself isn't just Coffee, it also includes soda crystals and Vitamin C, all combined in a pretty potent potion.  Development time was 18mins, using Ilford agitation method.

If you like the look of these results, and fancy a go, then I can fully recommend getting in touch with Narture CIC and jumping on their next course. https://www.narture.co.uk/events