While the format of the Black, White, and Green developer is novel, the idea and formula have been around for a long time. The end result is professional-looking negatives with enhanced details that are flexible for scanning and printing. The developer produces flat negatives with a slight speed boost in the shadows and fine grain because of the extended developing time required. Marshall noted the developer has an extremely long shelf life. Meaning not only is the developing agent less toxic, but there’s so little of the chemical present that it has next to no impact. But phenidone is pretty innocuous,” Marshall said.ĭeveloping a roll of film requires around 1/10th as much phenidone as it does metol according to The Film Developing Cookbook by Bill Troop and Steve Anchell. The other developers, metol and hydroquinone - the major guys - are not good for fish, and are not good for plants. It’s not toxic to plants, it’s not toxic to fish. “Phenidone is the most friendly of all the developers. Flic Film’s version is called Black, White, and Green, and produces results similar to Xtol, but comes packaged in a long-lasting solution similar in viscosity to the old HC-110 formula. Other than their own D-76, D-96, and Dektol developers, Flic Film makes a highly-concentrated environmentally-friendly developer based on a classic phenidone and ascorbic acid formula. When that blix becomes alkaline, photographers will notice a red tinge across their negatives, Marshall explained. Marshall explained that the reason blix kits have less capacity is because the blix slowly becomes more alkaline as the blix mixes with trace amounts of developer. “We have the same capacity out of a half a liter as a blix mixture will do with 1L.” The way I got started on that, is we were doing ECN-2 kits, and I was looking at the capacity we were getting out of these kits, it was enormous,” Marshall explained. It’s not rocket science, it’s what every photo lab does as well. “What we did differently is we started separating the bleach and the fix. The Flic Film color developers are some of the only ones on the market that separate the bleach and fix, offering film photographers a more reliable and higher-capacity film developing option. Their lineup includes clones of products like D-76, D-96, Dektol, a liquid developer similar to XTol, and even Kodak Flexicolor C41 and ECN-2 developers. Flic Film is making products using legacy formulas under new names. Throughout the pandemic, Marshall built his business on the promise of environmental stewardship, good packaging, and robust supply. It’s the kind of Canadian community where you might expect to see nothing more than a Tim Hortons’, a church, and maybe a Canada Post office.īut now David Marshall has made this unlikely village the home of Flic Film - one of the latest companies to join in on the film photography revival. Longview is a village of no more than 300 people in southern Alberta. “Of course, it got completely carried away, and now I’m building a new factory.” So it’s just a matter of frustration - I just thought I’d take a look at this and see how to do it.” “I had a guy supplying ECN-2 kits but it was very unreliable, and the main C41 supplier for North America has been notoriously running out of product over the last few years. I looked at that, and went, ‘okay, there’s a big problem here,’ said David Marshall, owner of The Film Experience camera store in Longview Alberta. And there’s nothing in the D-76 formula that should turn yellow or grey. “ brought back two packages of D-76 and I looked in the rest I had in stock - I just started opening bags - and I had one that had turned grey, and one that turned the color of cornmeal. And as if to add insult to injury, Kodak Alaris was delivering developing chemicals that were dead on arrival. All of the sudden, supply chains broke down and manufacturers struggled to get their supplies out on time. The pandemic forced a monumental shift that was already occurring in the film photography industry. A mockup of the Flic Film factory that’s currently under construction in Longview, Alberta.
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