Monday, June 13, 2011

TCB, discussion and more pictures.

Update : see towards the end, update on the 4th film developed in this mix, with picture examples, developed 1.5 months after the mix was first mixed and used, stored in a half-empty bottle, in a worm, well lit place..... this developer shows promise!

As promised I an pressing on with what is left of my Part A, using that as the only part.

I have now developed a Fuji Nexia A200  200ISO C41 color APS film in the brew to B&W.

I will show pictures here, and will also highlight comments received from Michael that deserves to be seen and commented. Michael is my inspiration in this, and hopefully we will find a better way of doing this than my feeble effort so far.

Burnt home........
Fuji Nexia A200 C41 APS film
developed 20 min @ 20C in TCB Part A

Traditional log home, at the site of a 200 year old former mine.
Fuji Nexia A200 C41 APS film

One more, my other hobby....
This guys will hit a pinhead - and very, very quickly...
Data as above. 

I have had difficulty developing Fuji C41 film at all before with caffenol, weak images, and no images at all, seemingly a hopeless proposition. I am pleased to get this at all, so far, but will need to test with one more film, my staple test vehicle Kodak Gold 200, to be able to put this in perspective.

These images where among the best on the APS film, some where hopelessly under-exposed & -developed, also uneven across the images, but that might have to do with the scanner that does not support APS film properly.

Comments :

Michael :
Looking closer at my notes I found an interesting trend that may help explain what is going on here. I found that initial tests as a one-shot developer with relatively little p-aminophenol did not work well and results were similar to what was posted here. What I found worked was to make a re-usable version with lots of p-aminophenol and it worked to process many rolls of film. To make the re-usable version I suggest the following:

TCB Part A:
Acetaminophen - 15g (30 x 500mg tablets)
Ascorbic Acid - 6g
Sodium Hydroxide - 20g
Water to make 250mL

Let stand for 72 hours, add 5g borax and water to make 1L
.

(Make a note here, Michael has corrected this recipe - it's given below in full, I just want to leave this as it was, so others can follow the discussion)

TCB Part B:
Boarax - 19g
Ascorbic Acid - 6g
Water to make 1L

Use A:B 1:9 for a normal speed (8 min) developer and 1:19 for a stand or semi-stand developer. The working strength solution can be re-used many times but I didn't determine the limit
.

Erik :
Question : In part A do you mix the ingredients in the order given?  When I was dabbling with my SALS13, I mixed Acetamiophen by itself with Lye (sodium hydroxide) to kickstart the chemical transformation, adding other ingredients later. Since I did not put any ascorbic acid in there until 72 hours after, most likely all of the Acetamiophen was oxidized, leaving me with a neasrly non-active developer.

I was thinking more like letting the Acetamiophen and lye brew for a while, then adding Ascorbic acid.....

Michael:
Also, based on your Flickr post I assume this is the film that turned the developer green. I see that often when using Kodak Gold 200 and my home-brew developers.

Erik :
Definitely true, and intriguing and interesting, after developing Fuji in that same, once light green brew, it has now turned slightlu orange-brown!!  :-)

Michael :
Sorry, correction to the first comment, TCB part A should be 500mL total volume and not 1L so it should be as follows:

TCB Part A:
Acetaminophen - 15g (30 x 500mg tablets)
Ascorbic Acid - 6g
Sodium Hydroxide - 20g
Water to make 250mL

Let stand for 72 hours, add 5g borax and water to make 500mL.


Erik :
I have made worse mistakes in my life, I leave it here as written, so people can follow this themselves, we update only correct recipes in the Recipes section!

Michael :
I learned the hard way that p-aminophenol will oxidize rapidly without any preservative. The tell-tale sign is the colour of the mix. If it turns a deep red then you most likely have too much oxidized p-aminophenol. When making parodinal the sulfite preserves so in this case you need ascorbate. 2 hours semi-stand with the above recipe gives a +1 push with regular B&W film so you should get box speed with C-41. I will try with Kodak Gold 200 when I get a chance.

Erik :
The deep red table-wine appearance was a tell tale sign when I tested this, and got as a result nearly no activity.  That was my SALS13 test.  My conclusion on that was that I need to mix in a different way, and add a preservative that stops or slows down the oxidation to a level when I get a result that I want.  Your suggestion to use ascorbic acid for that is genous IMHO.  Only thing keeping me from having at that again is that I now have Phenidone here....  :-).

************************************************

I have just finished another test film, C41 Kodak Advantix 200 ISO, very close to the 135 Kodak Gold 200 I have used all along as a test vehicle (because I have plenty!). The film, exposed in my Canon IX APS SLR is fortunate, this camera can be programmed just like my Canon EOS 50e, to take 3 exposures, 1X, +1X and -1X, making a 25 exposure roll into a 6 picture test.  I will develop this in the remaining part A from my test run, and because of the exposure triplets, will be able to determine correct ISO speed and development time much better, preparing for a new mix and test run, as soon as I have finished other things that will see the day of light in this blog.

I will publish pictures from this last film (from this mix) and wrap up things here, moving on to other iteresting things, Phenidone, for instance.

(film now developed, hung to dry. Looks strong and musty, the Kodak C41 films have always behaved better than Fuji when it comes to ascorbates. All images in triplets, one over and one under-exposed. It will be interesting to see how they scan. Pictures tomorrow)

Pictures :
 Canon IX APS, Kodak advantix 200
left ISO 200, middle ISO 400, right ISO 100

 Canon IX APS, Kodak advantix 200
Exposed at 200 ISO, developed at 22 min @ 20C 

 Canon IX APS, Kodak advantix 200
Exposed at 400 ISO, developed at 22 min @ 20C

Canon IX APS, Kodak advantix 200
Exposed at 100 ISO, developed at 22 min @ 20C


Canon IX APS, Kodak advantix 200
left ISO 200, middle ISO 400, right ISO 100
Canon IX APS, Kodak advantix 200
Exposed at 200 ISO, developed at 22 min @ 20C 

Canon IX APS, Kodak advantix 200
Exposed at 400 ISO, developed at 22 min @ 20C 

Canon IX APS, Kodak advantix 200
Exposed at 100 ISO, developed at 22 min @ 20C


 Canon IX APS, Kodak advantix 200
Exposed at 100 ISO, developed at 22 min @ 20C

Canon IX APS, Kodak advantix 200
Exposed at 200 ISO, developed at 22 min @ 20C

Canon IX APS, Kodak advantix 200
Exposed at 400 ISO, developed at 22 min @ 20C


To me this experiment highlights two things, the TCB-developer, even at this mix gives good ISO, it will allow box speed and it gives finer grain than Cafenol C.

This experiment has been goood, even after a false start. I will adjust the mix procedure and adjust the formula, and will listen carefully to the suggestion from Michael.

Also this experiment underlines that this developer will certainly develop several films with little or no adjustment of developing times, that might indicate that ascorbic acid has been mixed in to saturation, so that this protects and restores the tylenol. The initial troubles was most likely because the tylenol componenet did not react as designed.

At the moment I think this developer survives well in a closed bottle, and that it can be used as a standby developer. It might be needed to adjust times to specific films, most likely ordinaru B&W will require less development time, while the troublesome Fuju's will need more time.  Only time will show.  I now close this chapter and looks to other things.

*********************************

I just decided to one more roll of APS film, Kodak Advatix (C41) Ultra 400 ISO.

This was the final drops of developer left from this mix, it was just enough to cover the film in the spiral, and I discarded the mix after development, after securing final pH in the mix, at pH 9.5
Since this was a 400 ISO film and it has been my experience that 400 ISO films need a little more time in the brew than 100 - 200 ISO C41 films, I devided to up the time by 25%, adding one extra minute for the developer being spent.

So I ended up with a development time of 28.5 minutes. All in all this looks to be a bit too long, another contribution to that was a slightly higher temperature, up to 21.5 C from the previous 20 C. This also would have added a minute - or rather I should have deducted a minute, perhaps a minute and a half on account of the temperature.

As usual I used 3 changes of tempered water as a stop, and fixed and washed as normally.  The negatives came out quite good, perhaps a little too dense, with good contrast.  This being a 400 ISO film, and a color C41 film to boot, sharpness wasn't perfect and we can see a lot of grain, also perhaps due to over-development, contrast was a bit steep, and exposure a bit trick for the auto-exposure used in counter-the-light situations.  I will not recommend 400 ISO film for general use in APS cameras, too little negative area.

The negative strips of my usual test runs with one exposure box-speed, one under and one over was scanned and left asd is, and can bee seen under here, together with a few single scans that are doctured a bit for contrast and density, as I would normally do.

Canon IX APS, Kodak Advantix 400
Exposed as shown, developed at 28.5 min @ 21.5C, TCB mix
left to right, ISO 400, ISO 800, ISO 200

Canon IX APS, Kodak Advantix 400
Exposed at ISO 800, developed at 28.5 min @ 21.5C, TCB mix

Canon IX APS, Kodak Advantix 400
Exposed as shown, developed at 28.5 min @ 21.5C, TCB mix
left to right, ISO 400, ISO 800, ISO 200
Canon IX APS, Kodak Advantix 400
Exposed at ISO 800, developed at 28.5 min @ 21.5C, TCB mix

Canon IX APS, Kodak Advantix 400
Exposed as shown, developed at 28.5 min @ 21.5C, TCB mix
left to right, ISO 400, ISO 800, ISO 200

Canon IX APS, Kodak Advantix 400
Exposed at ISO 200, developed at 28.5 min @ 21.5C, TCB mix
Canon IX APS, Kodak Advantix 400
Exposed as shown, developed at 28.5 min @ 21.5C, TCB mix
left to right, ISO 400, ISO 800, ISO 200

Canon IX APS, Kodak Advantix 400
Exposed at ISO 200, developed at 28.5 min @ 21.5C, TCB mix



This cocluded my test run so far with the TCB-developer, it started with a small disaster, since I strongly feel the mixing procedure was incorrect, too little of the Tylenol was initially converted into a super-additive pair of developing agents with the ascorbic acid, this left me with half as much of the mix as I intially did expect.

However the results shown here, after the initial disaster came from part A of the mix only, i.e. half the volume. I have plans for further tests, but with a different mixing procedure, to start the transformation of the tylenol, and the protect the result with ascorbic acid, as suggested by Michael.

So far this developer yelds excellent results, but cannot create magic, as 400 ISO C-41 APS films definitely WILL be grainy like hell, no matter what developer is used.  What is promising is that it now seems that normally exposed films will reach 400 ISO from 200 ISO films, and 800 ISO from 400 ISO films, even from this rather weak brew, and do so easily.

I definitely suggest further tests here.

Another positive side is : it took more than 1.5 months between my initial mix and use of this brew and until the last film developed. Even when kept on an half-empty bottle, in a well lit, warm kitchen, in a blank, see-through bottle, little effect and activity was lost, if kept in a cool  place, in a stoppered and full bottle and in the dark, this developer should keep used for months easily.

More tests on that is sure to follow, as soon as i have the proper mix down pat.


***********************************************************



Thank you for your valuable input here Michael, without your knowledge and insights and practical experience, I'd be completely lost!

3 comments:

  1. I learned the hard way that p-aminophenol will oxidize rapidly without any preservative. The tell-tale sign is the colour of the mix. If it turns a deep red then you most likely have too much oxidized p-aminophenol. When making parodinal the sulfite preserves so in this case you need ascorbate. 2 hours semi-stand with the above recipe gives a +1 push with regular B&W film so you should get box speed with C-41. I will try with Kodak Gold 200 when I get a chance.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good overview. If I was limited to home-brew developers using readily available ingredients this would be my first choice, a better option than Caffenol as there are no questionable ingredients (e.g. coffee). Now the real fun begins ... time to break out the Phenidone and see what it can do. Looking at the Phenidone recipes, particularly PCM, I am still amazed at how little ingredients are needed to process film. With Caffenol, just the amounts of carbonate and vitamin-c required make me think twice about using it, then adding instant coffee makes it even less economical. I realize economy isn't the only factor but if you can get better results with less cost, why not?

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  3. A quick comment about longevity with vit-c developers. I noticed an interesting trend ... my data shows that the shelf life of the developer is affected more by exposure to oxygen than time alone (I see this with PCB and TCB). While TCB and PCB work I now favour one-shot developers, specifically PCM. It is slightly more expensive than PCB but it's at the lower threshold of ingredients while being one-shot to ensure consistency. Now that you have Phenidone, I'm curious to see your results with PCM ... I've tested it on a variety of films with very good results.

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