This little blog now celebrates its first full year.
I started out this a year ago in frustration, moderators over on other places - "high-priests" with a full blown court of supporters, made it difficult to present facts and interesting tidbits without a constant stream of negativism..... So I went for this blog. Hopefully this has been of some help to someone.
Along the road I have been lucky enough to meet a couple of individuals that I share values with, Michael and Tore, who are both valuable co-authors and contributors on this blog. We don't necessary agree on everything, but share the interest of presenting the facts, not fiction, and not something that is out of line or downright not true.....
When I started out, I was surprised after the first couple of moths when I noted that the audience had reached a staggering 1000 people! So I started to take this more seriously and set myself a target, 12 000 readers by New Years eve 2012.
Now the numbers are in, we did just pass 15 256, so the goal has been reached and surpassed by a good margin.
I wish you all a Happy and Proseperous New Year, and hope you continue to visit these pages and find something of value.
If you have comments- praise or criticism, please don't hold back, each and every opinion is valuable, and will be treated seriously.
ErikP
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Quick and dirty Reducer
Reducer (simple and probably not the most effective in this world...)
A simple reducer bath might come handy if one has troble with fogging, this happens sometimes with unfortunate combinations of film types and ascorbate-type developers.
The idea is to bleach away the image, and then re-develop the film in bright light, so that all of the silver is available for re-development, and in bright light, very controllable so one can stop the process after the image is back, but before the fogging is redeveloped......
The trouble with traditional recipes always was toxicity, chemicals was used that posed a definite threat if misused, and in ou4r search for a simple alternative, these two recipes cropped up.
I haven't tessted and compared these with the old industry standard, Farmer's reducer, so these simple recipes most likely ain't too effective, but, they should work and make do if needed.
I have no idea of how these will keep in solution, but they are both cheap and simple, and can be discarded after use, and one should also be able to just dump this in the drain since no deadly poisons are used.
Eder suggest :
Water 750 ml
Copper sulphate 50 g
Sodium chloride 50 g
Water to 1000 ml
Agfa suggest :
Water 750 ml
Copper sulphate 100 g
Sodium chloride 100 g
Sulpuric acid conc. 25ml
Water to 1000 ml
Negatives to be treated in subdued light, preferably a darkroom with darkroom lightning, until one has a white-color "image", then be watered for 2 .. 3 min (3 changes of water, agitated like the Ilford method).
Then the image must be RE-development in daylight, in a normal or a finegrain developer, until satisfaction, but before one get fog, and then a normal acid stop, fixation and a thorough washing, like normal development.
Make a careful note bleaching and reduction will save some of the picture qualities only, one will ALWAYS loose picture quaklity with this procedure! Loss of detail sharpness and large grain are traditionally connected with this, but the use of a fine gran RE-developer sometimes negates the large grain, this usually comes with a cost of low contrast.
All taken together this technique should be carefully considered before one risks destroying valuable negatives!
The ingredients :
Concentrated sulphuric acid is impossible to get over here, after 09.11.01 and 22.07.11, since it is a effectice raw material for explosives production.
Instead we use battery acid (33%) multiply with 3 and simply fill with water to 1000ml ,
Copper sulphate should be available at Radio Shack, it was used in making amatuer printed circuits back in the 1970's AFAIR.
Sodium chloride is ordinary table salt! Can't be simpler than that!
And finally a viable USE for table salt in photography!
A simple reducer bath might come handy if one has troble with fogging, this happens sometimes with unfortunate combinations of film types and ascorbate-type developers.
The idea is to bleach away the image, and then re-develop the film in bright light, so that all of the silver is available for re-development, and in bright light, very controllable so one can stop the process after the image is back, but before the fogging is redeveloped......
The trouble with traditional recipes always was toxicity, chemicals was used that posed a definite threat if misused, and in ou4r search for a simple alternative, these two recipes cropped up.
I haven't tessted and compared these with the old industry standard, Farmer's reducer, so these simple recipes most likely ain't too effective, but, they should work and make do if needed.
I have no idea of how these will keep in solution, but they are both cheap and simple, and can be discarded after use, and one should also be able to just dump this in the drain since no deadly poisons are used.
Eder suggest :
Water 750 ml
Copper sulphate 50 g
Sodium chloride 50 g
Water to 1000 ml
Agfa suggest :
Water 750 ml
Copper sulphate 100 g
Sodium chloride 100 g
Sulpuric acid conc. 25ml
Water to 1000 ml
Negatives to be treated in subdued light, preferably a darkroom with darkroom lightning, until one has a white-color "image", then be watered for 2 .. 3 min (3 changes of water, agitated like the Ilford method).
Then the image must be RE-development in daylight, in a normal or a finegrain developer, until satisfaction, but before one get fog, and then a normal acid stop, fixation and a thorough washing, like normal development.
Make a careful note bleaching and reduction will save some of the picture qualities only, one will ALWAYS loose picture quaklity with this procedure! Loss of detail sharpness and large grain are traditionally connected with this, but the use of a fine gran RE-developer sometimes negates the large grain, this usually comes with a cost of low contrast.
All taken together this technique should be carefully considered before one risks destroying valuable negatives!
The ingredients :
Concentrated sulphuric acid is impossible to get over here, after 09.11.01 and 22.07.11, since it is a effectice raw material for explosives production.
Instead we use battery acid (33%) multiply with 3 and simply fill with water to 1000ml ,
Copper sulphate should be available at Radio Shack, it was used in making amatuer printed circuits back in the 1970's AFAIR.
Sodium chloride is ordinary table salt! Can't be simpler than that!
And finally a viable USE for table salt in photography!
Thursday, December 1, 2011
A TCB developer with long life.
While working with the testing of several developers I came to the conclusion that TCB and PCB developers have good shelf-life, but when used and re-used as D76, they became less active rather quickly. This because the ascorbic acid is destroyed by arial oxidation during use.
To overcome this problem I added some sodium sulfite to the TCB developer.
The tests shows that this fortified TCB developer doesn't loose it's breath so quickly. In fact it closely follows other reuseable developers. For a 1000ml stock bottle, add 6% of the developing time for each film developed.
Use the same table as shown in the article about the Fenomenal developer.
Mixing instructions.
You will need Parodinal to make this. The mixing instructons are outlined here.
Making p-aminophenol from Tylenol/Paracetamol with ascorbic acid as anitoxydant doesn't work as good as doing it the proper way.
500 ml water.
8 g Soduim carbonate. (Soda)
10 g Ascorbic acid. pH at this moment is 9.6
80 g Sodium sulfite
10 ml Parodinal
20 g borax.
Water to 1000 ml. pH at this moment is 9.15
Starting time: 10 min @ 20C for Fomapan 100
This triplet is exposed +-0EV, -1EV and +1EV.
This is the image exposed according to the meter. Contrast increased a bit.
Sharpness is good. Grains are fairly small.
These images was extracted from the 4.th film through a 500ml batch of the developer.
Development time was 14 minutes @20C. This complies with the table for increasing time for each film. Since this is a 500ml batch, the starting time is multiplied with 1.42, giving me 14.2 minutes. The correct time is 14 minutes and 12 seconds, but the 12 seconds isn't going to make any visible difference at 14 minutes, so let us forget about them.
I am going to put this stock bottle on the shelf for now. Sometime i February or March 2012 I am going to develop a film or two in it to make sure it can survive some weeks on the shelf.
I am quite sure it still will be active by then.
To overcome this problem I added some sodium sulfite to the TCB developer.
The tests shows that this fortified TCB developer doesn't loose it's breath so quickly. In fact it closely follows other reuseable developers. For a 1000ml stock bottle, add 6% of the developing time for each film developed.
Use the same table as shown in the article about the Fenomenal developer.
Mixing instructions.
You will need Parodinal to make this. The mixing instructons are outlined here.
Making p-aminophenol from Tylenol/Paracetamol with ascorbic acid as anitoxydant doesn't work as good as doing it the proper way.
500 ml water.
8 g Soduim carbonate. (Soda)
10 g Ascorbic acid. pH at this moment is 9.6
80 g Sodium sulfite
10 ml Parodinal
20 g borax.
Water to 1000 ml. pH at this moment is 9.15
Starting time: 10 min @ 20C for Fomapan 100
This triplet is exposed +-0EV, -1EV and +1EV.
This is the image exposed according to the meter. Contrast increased a bit.Sharpness is good. Grains are fairly small.
These images was extracted from the 4.th film through a 500ml batch of the developer.
Development time was 14 minutes @20C. This complies with the table for increasing time for each film. Since this is a 500ml batch, the starting time is multiplied with 1.42, giving me 14.2 minutes. The correct time is 14 minutes and 12 seconds, but the 12 seconds isn't going to make any visible difference at 14 minutes, so let us forget about them.
I am going to put this stock bottle on the shelf for now. Sometime i February or March 2012 I am going to develop a film or two in it to make sure it can survive some weeks on the shelf.
I am quite sure it still will be active by then.
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