Caffenol is a photographic

alternative process {{unsourced, date= March 2021 The term alternative process refers to any non-traditional or non-commercial photographic printing process. Currently the standard analog photographic printing process is the gelatin silver process, and standard digi ...

whereby

phenols In organic chemistry, phenols, sometimes called phenolics, are a class of chemical compounds consisting of one or more hydroxyl groups (— O H) bonded directly to an aromatic hydrocarbon group. The simplest is phenol, . Phenolic compounds are c ...

sodium carbonate Sodium carbonate, , (also known as washing soda, soda ash and soda crystals) is the inorganic compound with the formula Na2CO3 and its various hydrates. All forms are white, odourless, water-soluble salts that yield moderately alkaline solutions ...

and optionally

vitamin C Vitamin C (also known as ascorbic acid and ascorbate) is a water-soluble vitamin found in citrus and other fruits and vegetables, also sold as a dietary supplement and as a topical 'serum' ingredient to treat melasma (dark pigment spots) an ...

are used in

aqueous solution An aqueous solution is a solution in which the solvent is water. It is mostly shown in chemical equations by appending (aq) to the relevant chemical formula. For example, a solution of table salt, or sodium chloride (NaCl), in water would be re ...

as a film and print

photographic developer In the processing of photographic films, plates or papers, the photographic developer (or just developer) is one or more chemicals that convert the latent image to a visible image. Developing agents achieve this conversion by reducing the silve ...

.Film Photography Project: Coffee Break – Develop Film at Home with Caffenol
Film Photography Project. Other

basic BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...

(as opposed to

acidic In computer science, ACID ( atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability) is a set of properties of database transactions intended to guarantee data validity despite errors, power failures, and other mishaps. In the context of databases, a sequ ...

) chemicals can be used in place of sodium carbonate; however, sodium carbonate is the most common. There are many formulas for caffenol, all based on preparations that contain

caffeic acid Caffeic acid is an organic compound that is classified as a hydroxycinnamic acid. This yellow solid consists of both phenolic and acrylic functional groups. It is found in all plants because it is an intermediate in the biosynthesis of lignin, one ...

(i.e.,

coffee Coffee is a drink prepared from roasted coffee beans. Darkly colored, bitter, and slightly acidic, coffee has a stimulant, stimulating effect on humans, primarily due to its caffeine content. It is the most popular hot drink in the world. S ...

tea Tea is an aromatic beverage prepared by pouring hot or boiling water over cured or fresh leaves of '' Camellia sinensis'', an evergreen shrub native to East Asia which probably originated in the borderlands of southwestern China and northe ...

) and a pH modifier, most often sodium carbonate. The chemistry of caffenol developers is based on the action of the

reducing agent In chemistry, a reducing agent (also known as a reductant, reducer, or electron donor) is a chemical species that "donates" an electron to an (called the , , , or ). Examples of substances that are commonly reducing agents include the Earth meta ...

caffeic acid, which is chemically unrelated to caffeine.

History

The 1995 technical photographic chemistry class at

Rochester Institute of Technology Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) is a private university, private research university in the town of Henrietta, New York, Henrietta in the Rochester, New York, metropolitan area. The university offers undergraduate and graduate degree ...

, led by Scott Williams, developed a method of developing

photographic film Photographic film is a strip or sheet of transparent film base coated on one side with a gelatin photographic emulsion, emulsion containing microscopically small light-sensitive silver halide crystals. The sizes and other characteristics of th ...

using standard household items. They tested mixtures of tea and coffee combined with agents to balance the pH and successfully made printable images for exposed film. Since then, the process has successfully been adapted for beer, red wine, and infusions with

polyphenol Polyphenols () are a large family of naturally occurring organic compounds characterized by multiples of phenol units. They are abundant in plants and structurally diverse. Polyphenols include flavonoids, tannic acid, and ellagitannin, some of ...

-rich foods, such as

cloves Cloves are the aromatic flower buds of a tree in the family Myrtaceae, ''Syzygium aromaticum'' (). They are native to the Maluku Islands (or Moluccas) in Indonesia, and are commonly used as a spice, flavoring or fragrance in consumer products, s ...

rosemary ''Salvia rosmarinus'' (), commonly known as rosemary, is a shrub with fragrant, evergreen, needle-like leaves and white, pink, purple, or blue flowers, native plant, native to the Mediterranean Region, Mediterranean region. Until 2017, it was kn ...

, and

mesquite Mesquite is a common name for several plants in the genus ''Prosopis'', which contains over 40 species of small leguminous trees. They are native to dry areas in the Americas. They have extremely long roots to seek water from very far under grou ...

seed pods.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Chart: Developing times for Caffenol developersDeveloping Film in Coffee, Caffenol C and Agfa APX 100
(video)
A website that collects blogs and information to help with successful Caffenol film development.
Photographic chemicals