Originally posted by bikehead90 Thank you all for the assistance. This is the only thing keeping me from enjoying my K1000 or ME Super more. Are there any “old guy” tips and tricks? I mean that not pejoratively, but rather “you might want to try X” or “I’ve found X to work better than Y because of Z.” While I was born during the film era, I didn’t start shooting until digital was just past its infancy. Even my mom (who introduced me to Pentax) never developed her own film, so I don’t really have anyone to glean knowledge from.
I guess since I'm almost 62 and been developing since I was 11 years old or so that I'd qualify as an "old guy." I already posted above some tutorials and advice that you don't need a lot of stuff to get started. Also, I agree with another's advice above that it is best to stick with only one film and developer combination for a while until you learn the basics. I suggest using a well-known 400 speed b&w film to start, like Ilford HP5 or Kodak Tri-X, since they offer good, consistent results, are fast enough for all-round use, and you can always find lots of experience and advice from others if you have questions. Then for a developer, D-76 is the universal standard, but for convenience sake you might also consider a liquid concentrate like Ilford DD-X, Ilford Ilfotec HC, or Kodak HC-110 as you can mix from liquid for one-shot use and not worry about capacity or shelf life of your working solution. Certainly for fixer I'd recommend Ilford Rapid Fixer liquid concentrate. That's it! You can use water for everything else.
When I first set up a darkroom 50 years ago I mostly used Tri-X and Plus-X and D-76, later branching out to some other developers, Panatomic-X film, then bulk loading some inexpensive left-over 35mm film stocks. I even tried some color slide film (Anscochrome and Ektachrome in an E-3 process), and later in college I learned color printing. When I returned to developing a few years ago, I went back to the basics (Tri-X and D-76), but quickly moved into bulk loaded HP5+ and Kodak HC-110, then explored several film types with HC-110, and then C-41 color negative processing (which is really quite easy). I'm getting ready now to try E-6 slide processing, got a new bulk roll of TMAX400 for b&w, and will be formulating my own developer soon.
If you look at the last 5 shots in this Flickr album you'll see my simple "kitchen darkroom" setup for b&w developing.
Developing B&W film | Flickr
Good luck, hope you have fun, and let us know how you make out. If you have any specific questions, I'm sure folks here (including myself) can give you good advice. I've also found that the "Film Developing" group on Facebook is pretty good as well.
Richard.