Anyone ever make Lippmann plates?

[Struan Gray]

By the term volume medium I was referring to a recording medium that records the interference fringes within the depth of its layer (and be it only a 2um "thick" layer). That would be in contrast to a surface relief structure, say a photoresist. Maybe I'm wrong but I believe you could not record a Lippmann photograph as a surface relief structure.

It could be done. With a reference beam and/or some two-photon absorbtion trickery you could generate a lateral pattern from normally incident light, but hardly worth the effort.

By the way, regarding filtered incoherent light, it's possible to make reasonably good contact copies from holograms.

That I didn't know. I assume it is because holograms are actually quite good gratings.


I re-read Ive's thesis last night, which is a model of clarity and concision:

http://www.archive.org/details/anexperimentals00ivesgoog

I also had this in my bookmarks:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/11244006/EJwall-Practical-Color-Photography-Chapter-14-Lippmann


Both emphasise that the best and most colourful view is to be had by illuminating with collimated light and viewing in conditions which minimise diffusion, both of the illuminant, and of the light scattered by the picture. I had been led astray by modern references which assert that Lippmann plates can be, or even should be, viewed with diffuse light. Ives and Wall make much more sense for viewing colours formed by diffraction fringes.

It also explains why viewing from the front with a mirror in place won't work. The mirror does indeed enhance the diffraction of the fringes, but specularity is reduced by scattering from the unstructured silver deposits in the part of the emulsion away from the near-mirror layer containing the lamellae. A mirror surface for viewing will only help if you could somehow remove all the non-lamellae silver.

Wall emphasises that the mercury should be in contact with the film for as little time as possible. That mercury is a strong foggant I knew, but I wonder if it doesn't also form an amalgam with developed-out silver and destroy fringe structures.

Ives discusses using a filtered light with the Lippmann process, and I suspect, Holmburgers, that this would be one way to improve your results. With incoherent monochromatic light the fringes are few and weak, and overlaying fringes from a whole spectrum only makes the matter worse. In a perfect world there is no reason why a pattern of silver grains in gelatin could not cope with recording a whole spectrum diffractogram, but with conventional photochemistry and the small depth of the inteference structures, there is too much mixing of the colours and you lose too much saturation.

With a conventional scene you could expose through red, green and blue bandpass filters to get a trichome Lippmann plate. You would need filters with a narrower bandpass than the standard colour separation filters though - they essentially allow the whole spectrum through when considered together. In a studio setting you could use much narrower passband filters. Three separately-gelled flashes would give you a single exposure. If you can live with longer exposures, the easiest way of getting narrowband illumination (short of spraying laser light about) would be an LED light bank with R, G, B LEDs. Disco and DJ suppply stores have some nice bright programmable banks at very reasonable prices.

 

[holmburgers]

Struan, so you're suggesting taking 3 exposures with 3 filters successively? That is very interesting and completely new to me. I know that Ives did something similar, but this was with separation negatives and a screen w/ 1/3 of the surface transparent, which was shifted by thirds for the successive, filtered exposures.

The 3 filter idea makes sense though, and I thank you for mentioning it! I have a handful of Wratten filters, one of which is "deep blue monochromat". I suspect that this kind of narrowband filter would be ideal, though the exposures would of course we epicly long.

Very cool... :joyful:

 

[Struan Gray]

As I understand it, the point of the experiments with the shifting screen was to compare the brilliancy of colour when monochromatic light exposed a part of the plate all by itself, and when it was combined with other monochromatic wavelengths. Brilliancy and luminosity were OK with two colours, but dropped noticeably with three. The difference between a monochromatic source and a fairly wideband source with the same centre wavelength was dramatic.

I (well, Ives and common sense) would suggest using a three narrow passband filters and exposing the same plate with each filter in turn. If you have three light sources (small flashes, for example) you can use the same filters on them and make a single exposure with all three lights on at once.

You can think of the lamellae as being like a comb. If you have two combs of different spacings and hold them next to each other you can see a combined pattern of light and dark along the comb - in acoustics it would be a beat, but in visual sciences it is usually called a moiré pattern. As you add more frequencies it gets harder and harder to see the gaps, and you get more and more overlaid tines. With a continuous spectrum you end up with mostly mush. Ives has curves of the density vs. depth profile for continuous spectra, and sure enough, they are weakly modulated and not very fringe-like at all.

Fourier theory gives you an out: you can always separate out the individual components if you have long enough combs, but the point with Lippmann emulsions is that you don't have enough depth of the lamella structures to distinguish between a large number of close wavelengths. Worse, the coherence problem, and scattering within the emulsion, mean that you can never get the required depth.

So the answer is to use a single red, a single green and a single blue wavelength, rather than a continuous spectrum. You can do this with single wavelength sources (LEDs are cheapest and safest), or with narrow band filters on the lens and wideband illumination.

So what if your exposure times are measured in days. It worked for Ed Weston

 

[Hologram]

Both emphasise that the best and most colourful view is to be had by illuminating with collimated light and viewing in conditions which minimise diffusion, both of the illuminant, and of the light scattered by the picture. I had been led astray by modern references which assert that Lippmann plates can be, or even should be, viewed with diffuse light. Ives and Wall make much more sense for viewing colours formed by diffraction fringes.

No way, common wisdom (and experience) still holds: you do need diffuse light for viewing a Lippmann photo. I've never done any "photos of the spectrum" though. I assume they may be different, getting even closer to a hologram.
But a Lippmann photo of what they used to call, natural objects, absolutely requires diffuse light for reconstruction.

With incoherent monochromatic light the fringes are few and weak, and overlaying fringes from a whole spectrum only makes the matter worse. In a perfect world there is no reason why a pattern of silver grains in gelatin could not cope with recording a whole spectrum diffractogram, but with conventional photochemistry and the small depth of the inteference structures, there is too much mixing of the colours and you lose too much saturation.

Definitely no easy task. But obviously, it can be done. The finest Lippmann photographs by Lippmann, the Lumière brothers, Neuhauss, Cajal and maybe others clearly demonstrate that large bandwidth spectras can be recorded into a AgX emulsion. Some of these photos are of outstanding quality and pretty bright.
By the way, I suspect that Ives' emulsions may simply not have been good enough in respect to grain size/resolution.

 

[Photo Engineer]

At GEH we used normal (bright) room lights to view their Lippmann plates. They showed us a box full of them and we looked at the beautiful colors right in the open.

PE

 

[holmburgers]

The Proof is in the Puddin'

Ok, so I was able to take a better picture that really shows the color in my Lippmann plate.

The only color is in the gas tank, and as you can see it is definitely a good representation. And actually, the digi-snap looks much less life-like than the Lippmann.

I took this by angling a piece of glass at 45° over the plate and diffused the light from a tungsten bulb with tracing paper. In layman's terms, the key is to reflect a wide swatch of featureless light into your eyes from the plate. For instance, if you take it outside on a cloudless day, you see a reflection of a blue sky, but if you take it outside on an overcast day you will reflect back the featureless cloudy sky and this makes for the best viewing.

 

[holmburgers]

Today's Thought:

What guide number, or how many flashbulbs, would be necessary to take an instantaneous Lippmann photograph? And would that blind you or burn your skin?

 

[holmburgers]

Interesting alternative to mercury reflectors?

Dead Link Removed

"When properly poured on the appropriate substrate, these films show a reflectivity comparable to liquid mercury."

 

[gmikol]

Damn you, holmburgers!! Some of us have work we're supposed to be doing!

A more in-depth discussion of the reflective thin film:
Dead Link Removed

Similar, but not exactly the same:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galinstan
http://scitoys.com/scitoys/scitoys/thermo/liquid_metal/liquid_metal.html

EDIT: Attached a copy of the paper above. No telling how long it will be accessible from that address.

--Greg

 

[holmburgers]

But where would APUG be without computers at work?! :joyful:

Thanks very much for finding and posting the Liquid Mirror pdf discussing MELFF's (Metal Liquid Like Films). This seems like a really interesting procedure, to say the least. Was there a date on that, or am I missing it?

Now, I had looked at these liquid metal alloys and although they seem like great alternatives to mercury I think there are some discouraging caveats. (from wiki....)

1 - Galinstan tends to wet and adhere to many materials, including glass, which limits its use compared to mercury.

2 - It corrodes many other metals by dissolving them

But, if one were to carry out a serious investigation, these would be 1st on the list to try.

A few other ideas I had while, errr, working yesterday were (a) how about a suspension of titanium-dioxide (white powder) in glycerin? Glycerin won't wet gelatin and will stay on the surface, and although white isn't as good as a mirror like surface, it should reflect much better than simply the emulsion/air interface. The question is whether or not the titanium-dioxide or other suitable pigment would really make optical contact with the emulsion while suspended in glycerin.

Furthermore, (b) perhaps there are metal pigments that you could suspend, and that thought led me to this -> http://www.xymara.com/xymaradesignaward/XYMARA_Metasheen.html

These are vacuum-metallized aluminum pigments known by the trademark Metasheen (Ciba/BASF). I'm curious if the liquid slurry would be suitably reflective for Lippmann reflection.

Ok, back to work...

 

[holmburgers]

Lippmann Emulsion Comparisons & Sensitizers

This table is reproduced from Hans Bjelkhagen's Silver-Halide Recording Materials: For Holography and Their Processing. Available on Google Books.

It compares Lippmann emulsions from Lippmann, Vatenta and Ives and includes their sensitizers.

 

[BentleyR]

New life for Lippmann thread

I just joined this forum and have been fascinated by some of the discussions I've come across. I've been aware of the Lippmann Process for many years and have always wanted to try it. In the 1960's my father described the process based on the description he found in an old text he bought in some used book store in NYC - "The Book Of Photography; Practical Theoretic and Applied - edited by Paul N. Hasluck" - which I have. It dates from 1905. To try to excite some new interest in the Lippmann process I've scanned the entry from the book and enclosed it here.

BentleyR (aka Allan)

 

[holmburgers]

Hi Allan, nice to have you joining the discussion and thanks for sharing these pages. The emulsion formula and sensitizing dye recipe is of utmost interest!

A few weeks ago Hologram shared this with me; Lippmann photos on photopolymer using laser exposure.. http://holoforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=671&p=6131#p6131

 

[Klainmeister]

Just to update this thread. After a discussion last night with the team, Sullivan and our crew at BS are going to take a crack at creating Lippmann Plates this spring. I hope to update you all on the process as we begin our experimentation.

 

[BentleyR]

We eagerly await any news. Your team deserves great praise and encouragement. Development of a practical modern approach to creation of Lippmann images would be a significant advance.
I work in the field of adaptive optics where we measure (and alter) the phase of the light waves to correct for aberrations due to optics and atmosphere. We sometimes use volume diffraction gratings to create a sample of the optical wavefront we want to measure. These gratings are very similar in structure to a finished Lippmann plate being formed by three dimensional index variations in a transparent medium. They are typically made using materials like the photopolymer mentioned in holmburgers recent post or from photochromic glass. These aren't suitable for the Lippmann process because they require quite intense optical beams for creation (i.e. lasers). The real trick for a Lippmann plate is to record the standing waves set up by the interference of light with its reflection off the back interface of the plate in a reliable and reproducible way and to avoid all the problems with absorption and scattering that reduce the contrast of the image.
Good luck with your research!

 

[Hologram]

We sometimes use volume diffraction gratings to create a sample of the optical wavefront we want to measure. These gratings are very similar in structure to a finished Lippmann plate being formed by three dimensional index variations in a transparent medium. They are typically made using materials like the photopolymer mentioned in holmburgers recent post or from photochromic glass. These aren't suitable for the Lippmann process because they require quite intense optical beams for creation (i.e. lasers).

Actually, the speed of the photopolymers mentioned above by holmburgers comes much closer to that of an AgX Lippmann emulsion than photochromic glass. So yes, they can be used for Lippmann photography. Another question though is: would there be enough demand to (commercially) justify the production of such films.
Probably the highest index modulation, diffraction efficiency (= image brightness of a Lippmann photo) could be achieved if the recording materials were to be contacted with a mirror/reflector. Principally, this implies a sandwich structure: transparent film substrate-recording layer-mirror/reflector. The above mentioned photopolymers films (photopolymer on polyester film) were optically contacted with an aluminized Mylar film. After the light exposure that reflector film was peeled off.

 

[SemFyzik]

Hi everyone,

First what i want to say is sorry for my english. I don´t use it very often so sometimes I don´t express myself right.

I´m interesting in Lippmann photography so I tried to make some photos but without any results mean no colour or whatever even no profile . I´m using plates 4"x5" with PFG-03C emulsion from Slavich. Then simple lens f/4. Graphic holder and also body of this simple camera I made myself. I´m doing dark-air options. I exactly follow recommended proccesing for PFG-03C from Slavich websites but not sure if i can use the same procces for Lippmann photography this could be mine problem number one. There is one more question the record in this emulsion is phase or amplitude? I want do next try this week because I do it only in lab so may be also there is problem number two with light.

All ideas where could be my problem, notes, advices are welcome here or PM.

 

[Hologram]

I exactly follow recommended proccesing for PFG-03C from Slavich websites but not sure if i can use the same procces for Lippmann photography this could be mine problem number one. There is one more question the record in this emulsion is phase or amplitude?

Keep in mind that PFG-03 may not be a 100% reliable source for Lippmann photos. Perhaps there was/is too much fluctuation from one batch to another.
As for the processing, some rehalogenating bleaches may actually damage the integrity of the recorded “Lippmann fringes“. So using a colloidal developer like GP-2 or alike seems to be a better approach. Since that method doesn't involve any bleaching, the finished layer will show both amplitude and phase characteristics.

 

[R Paul]

When I shot the plates I made I used a speed graphic at F4 or what ever the widest aperture was. It usually was about a 4 min exposure, and I did use gp-2 to develop them, with no fixer, and two alcohol baths one at 70% and the other at 90+. the alcohol dips really bought up the colors . Those pfg-03 plates should work
here's a link that may help
http://holoforum.org/data/lippmann/Bjelkhagen-Lippmann_Photography.pdf
He's been making these for years and he uses those plates
Good luck-It took me 3 years to something that came close to anything acceptable

Rob

 

[SemFyzik]

Hi again,
I try follow your instruction from your posts here thanks but still no acceptable results :/. I split GP-2 to GP-A and GP-B.

GP-A
Phenidone 0,2g
Hydroquinone 5g
Sodium Sulfite (Andhydrous) 100g
Potassium Hydroxide 5g
to distilled water 1000ml

GP-B
Ammonium Thiocyanate 12g
to distilled water 200ml

Solution: 3x 15ml GP-A + 4 ml GP-B + 100ml H2O to fill my bath.

Proccesing (all around 20 degree):
1. bath 10% in chrome alum (5 min)
2. development (3min)
3. bath in water (8min) (just bath or use flowing water even should i use water?
4. bath in 2% glycerin (2min)
5. isopropyl alcohol 70% (2min)
6. isopropyl alcohol 90% (2min)

exposure was 4 min in Lab where i try make diffused light (next time ill do it outside) but dont think thats the main problem.
Still using PFG-03C but this looks fine because i was trying hologram and it was ok( Think that they are out of date).
One more question for PFG-03C is needed pre-development hardening by formaldehyd how many % it should be and how long should i bath it? After this i should start processing recommended from Slavich thats mean hardening again?

here are my results maybe u got same problem and someone and give me advice why it looks like now and what to improve or change on left is proccesing for PFG-03C on right GP-2 result.

 

[Hologram]

exposure was 4 min in Lab where i try make diffused light (next time ill do it outside) but dont think thats the main problem.
Still using PFG-03C but this looks fine because i was trying hologram and it was ok( Think that they are out of date).

What wavelength(s) did you expose at? Holographic may not necessarily equal Lippmann exposures.
Moreover, in the context of color holography, PFG-03c used to be somewhat notorious for its inconsistency (in respect to grain size, sensitivity to certain wavelengths etc.).

One more question for PFG-03C is needed pre-development hardening by formaldehyd how many % it should be and how long should i bath it? After this i should start processing recommended from Slavich thats mean hardening again?

No. According to Bjelkhagen (SPIE 3358) a hardening step based on formaldehyde is to be used prior to develpment.
It's made of:
Distilled water.................................750ml
Formaldehyde, 37%.........................10ml
Potassium bromide.............................2g
Sodium carbonate...............................5g
Add distilled water to make .................1l

Processing time is 6 minutes.

I guess, if you're doing alcohol drying, you may skip the glycerol bath. To a large extent the glycerol will be removed by the alcohol bath anyway.
Perhaps you ought to try natural drying as well – since holographic AgX emulsions sometimes produce different results with different drying methods...

 

[SemFyzik]

For hologram i used green laser and exposure was 30 sec. For Lippmann photography i used light in room and two lamp with white paper glued to lamp with exposure 4 min. Maybe this lights aren´t so powerfull as day light and I need longer exposure. Hope I understand your question right.

I´ll try natural drying too if u mean without glycerol and alcohol bath. But still suprised that there is really nothing even hint of something. Thanks for idea I try it and let you know.

 

[R Paul]

I tried it while ago and the results were a crapshoot, but I got close . the Darran Green method was the one I used, except I used the equivalent amount lithium bromide instead( it supposedly made a finer grain). Good luck

SemFyzik-- i tried to e-Mail an reply but it wouldn't go though- I have the original papers if you want me to PM them cause they are too big to send here, let me know
rob

 

[R Paul]

For hologram i used green laser and exposure was 30 sec. For Lippmann photography i used light in room and two lamp with white paper glued to lamp with exposure 4 min. Maybe this lights aren´t so powerfull as day light and I need longer exposure. Hope I understand your question right.

I´ll try natural drying too if u mean without glycerol and alcohol bath. But still suprised that there is really nothing even hint of something. Thanks for idea I try it and let you know.

For Lippmann plates you will need 4-5 min bright sunlight @ f4.5 to get something,and you will need to adjust that according to how the plates develop out
rob

 

[R Paul]

SymFykic

Figured out how to send files here they are. the true colors pdf was never published to my knowledge,and has the Darran Green method of making these plates and the subbing is important as your emulsion will wash off without it. and finally something on the dehydration technique. I still can't the article loaded, I'll have to ask my daughter tomorrow. The method of making plates is here The dyes other names are Quinoline red and blue. Pinacyanol chloride's common name is Quinoline Red and can be found online.

Rob