[stevebrot]

Overall, Caffenol has the advantage that the ingredients keep essentially forever and are dirt cheap (the vitamin C powder bottle was not, but the amount used per roll is very small), and can be made up on a per-use basis without staleness concerns.

Whatever film you choose, my personal preference would be to use a "standard" developer initially until you know how the film reacts in processing. For example, I use the Arista EDU 100 Ultra in sheet film and yes, it is Fomapan. It has a few quirks in that it will build density very quickly making contrast difficult to control with short development times/agitation and standard dilutions. If I were using Caffeinol, I would wonder if it were a quirk of the developer rather than the film.



Steve

[pathdoc]

Whatever film you choose, my personal preference would be to use a "standard" developer initially until you know how the film reacts in processing.

Yes, I agree. This is what I do already. First film of any kind gets a commercial developer (whatever I've got, whether or not it be optimal) per published times, next one gets 15 minutes in Caffenol with a thirty second inversion to begin and then ten at the start of each minute (it worked for Foma 200), and then adjust from there.

Once I can take a whole bunch of short strips and don't have to wait a week or more to finish a roll, I'll be free to start playing around a lot more with inversion protocols and fixation times.