I wasn’t quite sure how to make shooting large format film more hipster-ish until I found out I could develop film with coffee instead of regular photo developer! I sort of stumbled upon Caffenol by accident when I was researching alternative developers because I wasted a few sheets of film learning that my developer had expired.
I did a test shot of some rustic sheet metal, but unfortunately overexposed it slightly miscalculating bellows extension factor. Overall, it was still useable and took very minor edits to get this photo. I scanned it to about 200 megapixels and the detail/grain is incredible.
Here is the recipe I used for the Caffenol developer:
500ml of water at 20 degrees Celsius
6 teaspoons of washing soda
1.5 teaspoons of vitamin c power
9 teaspoons of instant coffee
Vigorously mix until all is dissolved. Develop for 9 minutes in the mixture above using fairly constant slow agitation (rocking) in the tray, put in stop bath for 30 seconds, put in fixer for 5 minutes and then wash with running water for 10 minutes.