And washing soda is not baking soda, although some people heat baking soda in an oven to create washing soda.

Most swimming pool supply stores sell actual washing soda, and it is available in some other retail locations. Pool supply appears to be most likely.

Read the blogs carefully. Folgers is a central theme of the process,,, at any Folgers price. Some have used other coffees.

I'm working on a process I call PB&J... Thinned out Peanut Butter and grape Jelly. Strawberry Jam creates too much grain look.

I'll restrict myself to photo processing and the CD. I'm pretty sure walgreens has a policy of not returning negatives and you will want them.

Basically the way prints are produced is via scanning so the cd is kind of a byproduct as they have to scan to print.

The problem is that they only scan at a low resolution since they aim at 6 by 4 or 7 by 5 prints.

You want a big enlargement, the disk will have such low resolution you will not be able to get a decent enlargement the negatives will be needed. in theory the fuji frontier developing system can scan at high resolution (it is set low in order to maximise throughput, i read the manual :) ). You will be lucky to find an operator who knows how to change the resolution of the scan.

The resolution of film is comparable to a full frame DSLR I'm not going to venture an opinion which is better. Slower iso film has less grain than the faster 400 iso film.

It may be worth shooting slide film which results in a positive image, if you can buy it and get it processed. Reason being is that color negative film has an orange filter which varies from brand to brand. This makes scanning a major pain as you try to get the balance right. You may find somewhere who will scan at a high resolution which will save you a lot of work.

Don't get 1 hour service ideally you want the developed negatives hard before getting prints. if the negative is soft its more likely you will get scratched negatives back from the processor. The negative should be properly dry before handling.

If you have slides you can use a slide digitizer, (can do negatives but black&white negatives are a lot easier to get right than color) but be careful these attach to a camera but if you have a crop sensor you will only get the center of the frame. Alternatively you could project your slides and photograph the projection. Most non pro scanners are very slow and dust is your enemy.

You can do your own developing i did as a kid, as well as conventional dark room chemicals ,there is a coffee based process available called cathenol this works for black & white and color as a brown monochrome. Color processing is a lot more precise and tricky but Darkroom equipment goes for peanuts these days...

Have fun

Reading all this information, makes me want to do it. I've got some of the stuff, OM-1, B & W film, filters, CanoScan powered negative scanner, 44 inch printer, pearl metallic media, also some questions, while we're on the subject...

All the videos show using Folgers coffee, does dollar store coffee work?

The vitamin C powder, is that the same as plain citric acid? Have citric acid.

Fixer powder, have a shelf life once opened, or just get liquid?

RCan you use the red light while loading the developer?

Thanks

Interesting Nightski!

You opened up a can-o-worms there didn't you?

Just have fun...try and use the sunny 16 rules for even more fun and confidence.

Just a thought; how about shooting black and white and developing your own?

It's not as difficult as it sounds and you can even make it simpler with a "monobath" (only one chemical used and not a lot of fussing around with it.)

Here is a video about how to do it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxfTknfQuv8

With film the fundamental limit of resolution is the grain size of the film. All the light that can physically pass through a grain originates over a range of object distances that straddle the object plane of focus. Most optics textbooks derive the formulas to calculate those distances. I used to have a document that listed the film grain sizes. If you scan at a lines per inch that exceeds the film grain size, then by definition you will lose image resolution. The developed film should be in your possession. I am leery of Walgreen, Walmart clerks being particularily cognizant of acanning detail. Do our digital sensors have a feature that acts like a film grain? I have toyed with the idea that dividing the number of pixels into the area of the sensor would be the equivalent of grain size, but that is too simple I fear. A pixel is a cluster of bits which are solid state electronic sites for the storage of an electron and the spacing of those charge 'wells' are limited by the quantum mechanical uncertainy principle. So the actual 'structure' of the sensor would define the equivalent grain size.