Can't Find Reliable Recipe for Caffenol on Foma 200

Fomapan 200 @ ISO 100 Nikon N80 Processed R09 9 mins.

I processed a roll of Foma 200 recently, really love the stuff.  I was unable to find a reliable recipe for Caffenol to be used with Foma 200 shot at 100.  So I had to fall back to the old reliable R09 1+50.  This Tricked up image that my daughter shot at Eldorado State Park, was part of that film.  You can see that this would be awesome film to put through Caffenol!

Post Script to The Most Recent CMS Twenty Shoot

It is hard for me to go back and look through my volumes of records for past shoots.  Why?  I think it relates to not being able to read or at least make sense of my field notation scribble.  WTF does that mean.  I usually take short cuts writing as I am all about making the most of light and time while behind  the camera.  Time and Light are even more important with film.  I only have 12 - 15 exposures for each shoot, and I really don't want to bracket that often as I think what drudgery it is to process 15 exposures of film expecting that only five or six of them to be usable.

That out of the way, I did look up my last CMS shoot at the Coors site, and have discovered that I exposed the CMS 20 at ASA 12.  The shoot this week was conducted at between 16 and 20 ASA.  (That is the best accuracy I can expect from my Luna Pro Light meter.)  Thinking back sunny 16 would have been perfect, as it was very sunny.

This isn't Film  But   a Kickass Image No?

Shooting Adox CMS 20 120

Caffenol LC+C  

I shot a roll of Adox 20 yesterday.  Conditions were perfect, bright sun, some clouds to occupy the sky, and a monstrous piece of architecture with all manner of detail.  Weird lines angles circles, ellipse, everything a micro film could want.  I have processed the negatives using the LC+C recipe with an addition of Sodium Sulphate.  As soon as I scan them today or tonight, I will post some un-edited images here.  My first impression is that they look beautiful.  There is a medium to heavy coffee stain as one would expect after 18 minutes in the soup.

Good detail but pretty grainy.

So this is the result of 18 min in Caffenol LC+C. The negatives looked super dense and contrast also looked perfect.  However once scanned they seemed to be quite grainy, more so than when developed in Adotech II, and to get to this image I had to do several rounds of up resizing and sharpening.  So My next test will be to try to shoot in the same conditions again then develop in Adotech II.  I like the look of this image it is just quite noisy in the sky highlight areas.  

Better

This is more like it there seems to be less noise and I did not have to work at sharpening excessively. No Polarizer was used on this shot!  Hmmmm!  I did do some sharpening and the usual dust removal.  Oh and by the way I am just doing a straight up scan at 1451% 360dpi.

Better Yet?

I am not so sure.  Still required a lot of sharpening via Perfect FX and Aperture.  Then as always highlight grain became evermore apparent.  

Adox CMS 20 Processed with Adotech II

This image is knife sharp and is representative of what I would want to achieve from Caffenol of some iteration.  Can it be done?

This is a color rendition of what I will be reviewing in Silver via Adox CMS 20

Meh!

I ran a roll of Arista 400 Premium through Caffenol STD for nine minutes.  I shot this film at box speed(400ASA).  The negatives look pretty under developed, thin.  I will make an attempt at scanning a couple of the more dense frames later today.  Just so everyone understands the Standard recipe that I used is from caffenol.org and is the recommended soup for Tri X, or Delta 400.  I should try another roll and see if 12 - 15 minutes brings back some density?


As it turns out my initial assessment was incorrect.  The negative density was quite good.  The most stunning thing about this experiment was the detail and sharpness of the images post scanning.  See below:

Not so Meh!

Caffenol LC+C (Metric) and Adox CMS 20

I am working myself up to processing some of my precious CMS 20 in Caffenol.  From what research I have been able to do I have found the following starting point.  It is this recipe that came from richard314159 at flickr.  
Recipe:
      In 300ml water at 20 degrees C dissolve
18g washing soda (sodium carbonate decahydate)
0.4g sodium sulphite (optional)
shake and leave to settle. Then dissolve in this
5.5g instant coffee granules
0.4g ascorbic acid powder

My adaptation is to achieve proper solution at 650ml working volume for my Patterson tank and 120 roll film.,this is my table:

richard314159 processed a roll of ATP in the 300ml version of this formula for 20 minutes.  Though he did mention that 18 minutes may have been a better time.

I need to look at the records for last roll of CMS that I shot to see what ISO i chose to use.  I seem to remember 12, but i will certainly check.  I don't want to think about processing time until I have the exposure details worked out.

The issue that I am having about this is I am slightly anxious about blowing a roll of rare film for an experiment.  Considering this I am going to be very careful about subject, shot setup, exposure, and processing.

This came from my last shoot with the Bronica and CMS 20:

Golden Landmark In Silver.jpg

I will add more later.