I enjoy shooting on film. After my friend Tom sent me an email linking a diy pinhole camera, with a small ‘challenge’ added, I thought it couldn’t be that hard. After a couple of hours in the shed, I had made a box. A couple more hours later, I had made a film holder/winder mechanism out of Lego to shoot 6×7 120 film, specifically some Pan F I had lying about in the fridge. Pinhole was constructed from card and tinfoil.

Next step was to work out how to develop film on the cheap. I didn’t want to send it off and wait three days to get a blank roll back, or buy some developer just for one roll of film, so I decided to make my own developer from Coffee, using some recipes off the Caffenol blogspot.

The developer was coffee, washing soda and salt. I had these ingredients lying about the house, as well as some white vinegar for the stop. I had some old fixer and paper from when I was doing lots of developing at home, so I just used that to keep the costs down. The only think I had to buy was ascorbic acid, (vitamin C) that I got in a health food shop for the princely sum of £2.

OK, it’s not the best image, the pinhole needs to be smaller, I think it worked out about f/109, and I need to refine my coffee developing technique, but based mostly on luck and guesswork I do at least have an image, and you can see what it is… Sharpness is overrated anyway. The Coffee adds a nice ‘vintage’ photo look too. Instagram? pfft.

Mmmm. Fuzzy.