Beer + Film

Have you ever wondered what happens when you take film and process it in beer? I had never thought about it until I stumbled across an article describing the process a little over a month ago. So what better way to find out what happens then to do it!

Photo Credit: Marianna Pojman

On March 15 Juliana Muniz, and myself ran a workshop with 5 other photographers to see the results for ourselves. Everyone shot a roll or two of Black & White 400 iso film including Kodak Tri-X, T-Max, and Ilford HP5.

Click here for the recipe.

Photo Credit: Marianna Pojman

We decided to process together as a group using cans of Guinness, the same 15 minute developing time and 85 degrees fahrenheit chemistry for all our rolls of film. We had pretty decent results, everyone had images! Everyones negatives were dense, but printable, with the Tri-X coming out the best.

Below is an example of a contact sheet from a roll of Tri-X and a print made from the boozy negative.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the workshop! Can’t wait to try this again with some different beers, or maybe a cider. If you would like to see more prints made from our Beer + Film experiment come check out a Darkroom Club meeting, the next one is April 27.

Photo Credit: Sean Butler
Photo Credit: Sean Butler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PS: For anyone planning to try out this recipe, make sure the beer is 85 degrees fahrenheit before adding in the washing soda, or you’ll have solid clumps in your beer.

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