Collodion Dry Plate

[J 3]

Is the idea here that you use a pyro based staining developer and then bleach out the reduced silver leaving only the pyro stain behind?

I do believe traditional Wet plate sometimes used pyro developers as well (I've only used iron sulphate) but the silver is never bleached out in these.

I really like Joe V's channel. Thanks for the recommend.

 

[Donald Qualls]

the dry plate tintype developer sold by rockland colloid it is a monobath bleaching developer. it develops and stains and bleaches the image. fixer afterwards fully fixes the image. there were lots of companies that sold their own proprietary reversal (bleaching) developers, and if you dig on the internet hard enough you might find some.

Okay, staining and bleaching -- first I've heard of that. So when you see a dry plate tintype image, you're viewing a stain image only, no silver remaining? I presume this is done in order to get better image contrast or brightness, or make the viewing less dependent on lighting and viewing angles. Since I have many times viewed conventional negatives as reflection positives, I'm sure the other method could/would work, question is only how well compared to the proprietary process that goes back to the 1870s.

Yes, I'm aware of Joe van Cleave -- I've seen his videos about making and using the Afghan camera. Yes, those were most recently used with paper negatives, rephotographed to yield a positive -- but he also uses his with Harman Direct Positive (cuts a step, eliminates the negative you can copy again), and it could be used with dry gelatin tintype just as readily, or even with RA-4 reversal direct positives (though only the first developer step need be done inside the box).

 

[removed account4]

dan
the process is completely different than a reflective positive its an image that is developed to be what it is. it has nothing in common with a wet collodion tintype/ambrotype other than it LOOKS like one and shares a similar name.
i have never seen joe use harman dp paper in his afgan camera, seems like the charm of rephotographing the negative or making the in-camera contact print would be lost if using dp paper. LOL. no point in that !

 

[Donald Qualls]

i have never seen joe use harman dp paper in his afgan camera, seems like the charm of rephotographing the negative or making the in-camera contact print would be lost if using dp paper. LOL. no point in that !

He did make a video of using Harman Direct Positive in his Afghan box camera. I think he liked it, specifically because it eliminated the rephotographing step, along with refocusing (and danger of losing the focus setting for the 1:1 position), and because it produced a one-of-a-kind image like a Polaroid.

 

[J 3]

In the hopes of clearing this up, here is a copy of the MSDS safety sheet for Rockland tintype developer. I'm hoping this is the right one. If I grabbed the wrong sheet let me know:
https://www.freestylephoto.biz/static/pdf/msds/rocklandcolloid/1832016_Tintype_Kit.pdf
It lists the following ingredients:

1. SODIUM CARBONATE, MONOHYDRATE; INGREDIANT 1+INGREDIANT 2=50-55%
   
2. SODIUM CARBONATE, ANHYDROUS;INGREDIANT 1+INGREDIANT 2=50-55%.
   
3. SODIUM SULFITE
   
4. HYDROQUINONE (SARA III)
   
5. P-METHYLAMINOPHENOL SULFATE (METOL)
   
6. METAPHOSPHORIC ACID, HEXASODIUM SALT
   
7. POTASSIUM BROMIDE

My understanding of the role of each of these:

1. Anti Oxidation for the developer. Also tends to change the grain structure of the result because silver halides slowly dissolve during development
2. Anti Oxidation for the developer. Also tends to change the grain structure of the result because silver halides slowly dissolve during development
   
3. Agent that helps the hydroquinone recharge the Metol. Might also prevent gelatin hardening at certain concentrations.
4. Developing Agent. The Q of an MQ developer.
   
5. Developing Agent. The M of an MQ developer.
   
6. Unsure of this one. It seems to be used to prevent calcium precipitation but I'm unsure why this is here. It does not appear to be a bleach or a stain.
7. Anti-fogging agent. Allows the non-exposed areas to clear out

Now apparently low sulfite hydroquinone developers can be made to be staining. Not remotely so much as pyro can, and this is not a low sulfite mix ( https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/hydroquinone-staining-formulas.21752/ ).

So maybe more skilled people would know otherwise, but this seems like a fairly standard developer. I don't see any bleaching compound in this, and I don't see anything that would produce enough of a stain to be of much effect to my understanding (could be wrong of course). Wet plate uses different developers with different active agents but they don't seem to be relying on a different mechanism. That's not to say that there are not other specialized developers that do something different. That's not to say I've not misread things some how, and this developer works differently than I thought. But as it is, these seems like a pretty standard developer acting the same way as wetplate tintype developer, but being a more modern formulation.

Thoughts?

 

[Donald Qualls]

That developer could just about pass for Dektol, depending on the actual quantities of metol and hydrquinone. There is no bleaching agent present. It's a perfectly ordinary MQ-Carbonate print developer. There is the possibility of staining -- but there's no bleaching there.

BTW, the sodium metaphosphate is a calcium sequestration agent -- it mainly allows mixing the developer with tap water that might be of unknown hardness.

Items 1 and 2 are the accelerator and have nothing directly to do with the development, they just set the pH. Item 3 is the anti-oxidant -- it also has the property you give for it.

 

[removed account4]

In the hopes of clearing this up, here is a copy of the MSDS safety sheet for Rockland tintype developer. I'm hoping this is the right one. If I grabbed the wrong sheet let me know:
https://www.freestylephoto.biz/static/pdf/msds/rocklandcolloid/1832016_Tintype_Kit.pdf
It lists the following ingredients:

1. SODIUM CARBONATE, MONOHYDRATE; INGREDIANT 1+INGREDIANT 2=50-55%
   
2. SODIUM CARBONATE, ANHYDROUS;INGREDIANT 1+INGREDIANT 2=50-55%.
   
3. SODIUM SULFITE
   
4. HYDROQUINONE (SARA III)
   
5. P-METHYLAMINOPHENOL SULFATE (METOL)
   
6. METAPHOSPHORIC ACID, HEXASODIUM SALT
   
7. POTASSIUM BROMIDE

My understanding of the role of each of these:

1. Anti Oxidation for the developer. Also tends to change the grain structure of the result because silver halides slowly dissolve during development
2. Anti Oxidation for the developer. Also tends to change the grain structure of the result because silver halides slowly dissolve during development
   
3. Agent that helps the hydroquinone recharge the Metol. Might also prevent gelatin hardening at certain concentrations.
4. Developing Agent. The Q of an MQ developer.
   
5. Developing Agent. The M of an MQ developer.
   
6. Unsure of this one. It seems to be used to prevent calcium precipitation but I'm unsure why this is here. It does not appear to be a bleach or a stain.
7. Anti-fogging agent. Allows the non-exposed areas to clear out

Now apparently low sulfite hydroquinone developers can be made to be staining. Not remotely so much as pyro can, and this is not a low sulfite mix ( https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/hydroquinone-staining-formulas.21752/ ).

So maybe more skilled people would know otherwise, but this seems like a fairly standard developer. I don't see any bleaching compound in this, and I don't see anything that would produce enough of a stain to be of much effect to my understanding (could be wrong of course). Wet plate uses different developers with different active agents but they don't seem to be relying on a different mechanism. That's not to say that there are not other specialized developers that do something different. That's not to say I've not misread things some how, and this developer works differently than I thought. But as it is, these seems like a pretty standard developer acting the same way as wetplate tintype developer, but being a more modern formulation.

Thoughts?

if you go to the rockland colloid website and look at their msds
you will see ammonium thiocyanate.

 

[Donald Qualls]

if you go to the rockland colloid website and look at their msds
you will see ammonium thiocyanate.

Still not a bleaching agent, though it is a very fast fixer. It makes the stuff a monobath, nothing very special about it.

 

[removed account4]

Still not a bleaching agent, though it is a very fast fixer. It makes the stuff a monobath, nothing very special about it.

in the application it is being used with the reversal developer it bleaches the image. like any strong fixer will do if you leave a print in it. ( at least that is what I have been told by people with a chemistry background )

 

[J 3]

in the application it is being used with the reversal developer it bleaches the image. like any strong fixer will do if you leave a print in it. ( at least that is what I have been told by people with a chemistry background )

It sounds like at some point Rockland may have reformulated their developer from a fairly standard developer (though of the correct strength to give a tintype style image), to a fairly standard monobath and Freestyle never updated their MSDS sheets.

Fixers do have a very small bleaching effect but it is minimal in most cases and only effects the lightest parts of the image or negative where the silver is the thinnest and the silver particles are the smallest. I've only heard it really being a factor in two cases:

1. You've got a lot of shadow detail right on the edge of what you can get out of a film and you leave the film in the fixer too long. In this cases the fixer ends up removing that tiny bit of detail you had left there and your shadows end up blocked out.
2. Something like a salt print where the silver particles are almost all colloidal (close in size to the wavelengths of visible light). In that case loosing a tiny bit of silver from the already delicate image can be fatal. Salt printers often use pure hypo or rather gentle fixers. Sometimes they just change the ion balance with strong salt solutions which makes the image fade with light but at a hugely slowed rate, all to avoid this change in appearance.

For most other cases you can leave an image in the fixer for hours and still have an image. You may loose a small amount of details in the highlights but the image will still be there.
A couple points.

1. A wet plate tintype is very thin silver image by normal standards and even it isn't delicate enough that people really worry about the fixer too much. Just using standard rapid fix for about the right amount of time seems fine.
2. A wet plate tintype goes through this weird look as its being fixed where the image goes away and then comes back. I think this is an effect of an index of refraction issue. Regardless the image is never actually bleached out. It just looks that way. I assume gelatin tintypes might do this too (don't know).
3. The bleaching action of fixer, does not replace the silver with anything like some other bleaches do. Its more like it's chipping off the edges of the reduced silver grains.

Conventional monobaths all work as a kind of race. A conventional developer consumes the silver halides at the site of a development center (latent image) creating reduced silver grains. At the same time a fixer races to wash all of the unexposed silver halide out of the emulsion, thus fixing it. The trick is getting these two processes in check so that the result is a fixed image. My limited experience with monobaths is you loose substantially on the dynamic range you could get out of the film, but otherwise if you develop at the right temperature these developers do work. This might not even be a down side with a tintype style image as the effect only works over a very narrow dynamic range anyhow (If the silver gets too dense, it starts looking like a conventional negative and you get a mix of negative and positive image effects on the same image).

So could Rockland be relying on the minor bleaching effect of a strong fixer somehow? It doesn't seem very likely. The idea would be to leave the stain of the developer, but not the silver. For starters when Rockland wasn't a monobath this would have never worked without some secondary bleach (the bleaching effect is far too weak on an already formed image). If however they were doing something different in the monobath, any fixer formulated strong enough to remove the silver as it was being reduced would also be strong enough to remove the latent image silver too fast for an image to form, and remove the source material for creating said image. In a sense in order for there to be little to no silver in the final image you'd have to have biased the monobath so far towards the fix side that it destroys the image before it has a chance to form.

It might be the case that the images created with Rockland are composed of a mixture of stain and silver (true of wetplate too when using the pyro developers), and that the percentage of stain to silver varies a bit depending on highlights vs shadows (also true of conventional wetplate under pyro), but I cant see how the bleaching effect of the fixer can be the dominate factor in the image. I don't think you could leave the image in the fixer long enough on a practical level to get rid of the silver.

There was some mention of these images looking slightly green in transparency. I suspect that's the presence of a small number of colloidal particles. These particles being similar in size to red or yellow light tend to reflect this light a bit, and correspondingly look green or blue in transparency because of the excess red-yellow light reflected. Because of this, I don't doubt that the appearance of the image is somewhat effected by the strength of the fixer. I just can construct an understanding where this would be the dominate factor.

 

[Donald Qualls]

@J 3 That's a much better explanation of exactly what I was saying: you can't make a monobath that also bleaches and wind up with a silver (or silver-and-stain) image.

In fact, given that Rockland apparently still recommends a fixer step, I doubt they have enough thiocyanate in the developer to do the whole fixing job. The SDS for their developer looks very much like that for a reversal first developer, but this is not a reversal process, so including a fixing agent in the developer can't be doing what it would in, say, E-6 ("to clear highlights") or common B&W reversal (controlling final effective speed).

I searched for a video showing the Rockland Colloid tintypes developing (especially the moment of "reversal", which is well shown in some videos of collodion development -- and in that case happens in the fixer), but the only video I found with any detail about the process came near the end, with safelight on and chemicals out, and then said "if you want to see it you can find a video of pictures developing, it's just the same."

The green color you describe in transmission sounds a bit like dichroic fog, which I might expect in a developer with an extremely rapid fixer in the mix due to solution physical development. It may be that the thiocyanate is present mainly to promote this, to provide more density in exposed areas with the extremely fine silver you'd see in collodion tintypes offering the lighter highlights against the black substrate.

 

[removed account4]

dan

I told you how it works from doing the process now for 6 or 7 years. there is no magic reversal step like wet plate. PE told me the thiocyanate bleaches the image, sorry you are wrong about this, you can argue all you want, and make commentary about the msds all you want but your suggestions about how it works really doesn't hold much weight against PE.
as stated previously if you go to the rockland site you will see ammonium thiocyanate listed as part of the tintype kit
https://rockaloid.com/instructions-msds-links

 

[J 3]

I've done wet plate before but not gelatin though I've got a kit in the closet to try some time. This is the only video I found of the development of gelatin -
There are tons of videos on wet plate

Everything is quite blury but what I think I saw:

1. Development is much slower. With wet plate you aim for 15 seconds. Here it was 12-15min.
2. The silver is much more stable in gelatin. Developing a wetplate like that would wash away all the silver leading to a thin image (actually no image).
3. The image did not seem to leave the developer as a negative like it does with wet plate. Hard to tell for sure but the lady's hair in the working image seemed positive before the fixer.
4. Even though the image didn't seem to exit the developer a negative it did seem like early development had it looking like a negative as the edges of the plate were dark (opposite final image).
5. The ISO for both processes was about identical. Wetplate goes from about ISO .5 to ISO 2 (direct sunlight) with fresh collodion. This guy had results at ISO 1.

So what do I think is happening? I think the monobath is causing the change of appearance that occurs with wet plate in the fixer to instead occur in the developer with the gelatin because that developer partially fixes the image during development. Does the image with a Rockland plate change from a negative to a positive during development? The image not going from negative to positive wouldn't confirm things because it could be a result of the medium (gelatin vs collodion).

PE certainly knows a heck of a lot more than I ever will but Im still wondering if this wasn't an explanation for why both conventional wet plate and gelatin plates go through this shift in appearance (which is linked to the early action of the fixer). I do believe that the image in both types of tintype is primarily silver and that the silver is strongest in the highlights and weakest in the shadows in both. I've seen both these kind of plates and they do have visual differences but I think that's mostly gelatin vs collodion and not the image element.

I'd love to be wrong though. Being wrong means learning something new.

 

[J 3]

P.S. it should be perfectly possible to see how much of a Rockland image is silver vs stain. If an uncoated image is dipped in potassium fericcyanide and then re-fixed any residual silver if present should be removed. If the image does not change its primarily composed of a stain. If it goes black it's mostly silver. You could also figure out if silver is in the highlights or the shadows. I've got the Rockland Kit to do this experiment but it'll take me forever to get to it with the amount of time I have.

Anyhow I don't doubt for the slightest second PE's huge amount of knowledge and expertise. But I can't reconcile it with the chemistry and so suspect I'm misunderstanding something or am in the dark about some detail.

 

[Donald Qualls]

I looked at the instructions; it appears you can also make ambrotypes -- not directly on black glass, but on clear glass, viewed from the base side (so as to produce a right-reading image) backed with black cloth or velvet. It would be very instructive to see a closeup video of this emulsion and developer combination in action on a glass plate.

The fact that the plates first turn black, but then the light image comes up while there's still some of the "chalky" undeveloped halide present would seem to support my proposed mechanism with early partial fixing supporting solution physical development surrounding exposed/developed silver grains. The instructions claim a 3 minute development time -- not surprising, since the developer is cited as Dektol with sodium sulfate and ammonium thiocyanate added. Dektol at print strength (1:2 or 1:3) will generally develop most emulsions in under three minutes. It would also be instructional to develop a material like ortho lith film in the Rockland modified Dektol (in a black tray, to compared the action with that of the Rockland emulsion on a black plate).

 

[J 3]

...proposed mechanism with early partial fixing supporting solution physical development

I'm not quite understanding. I thought physical development was a term where the silver for the image comes primarily from the developer rather than the emulsion. I've seen electron microscope views and the physically developed sliver looks like little balls where as non-physically developed looks more like a pile of metal shavings. But I don't see how the term applies here as there is no silver nitrate in the developer (and no halide while it's fresh).

Am I wrong about the term or does it have a different meaning? Maybe the silver halide is leaving the emultion and then migrating back to the development centers mid development because of the fixer present?

 

[J 3]

Im obviously tired... That's exactly what I think your saying. The silver salts are migrating to the developer and changing the action of the development somewhat (which presumably benefits getting that thin silver as reflective as possible). That would explain why the video had such aggressive aggitation potentially too.

 

[ThePhotoChemist]

Ah, I think J3 beat me to the punch here. There used to be a really good passage from Hans Bjelkhagen's book, "Silver-Halide Recording Materials: For Holography and Their Processing" that described the differences between physical, solution-physical and chemical developers (it looks like it was removed from the free preview, unfortunately). Physical developers get the silver ion they require from silver nitrate, either added along with it, or in wet plate collodion's case, a few drops leftover on the plate. Solution-physical developers use a silver solvent (most popular being ammonium thiocyanate) to pull the silver ions from nearby dissolved silver halide crystals. Chemical developers... I forget exactly how those worked. But if I recall correctly, both physical and solution-physical developers produce "colloidal silver" grains, which look like little balls as J 3 described. Chemical development produces "filamentary silver". My guess would be that colloidal silver deposits just look brighter and reflect more light than filamentary silver.

I use GP-2 for Lippmann plates, which is a solution-physical developer. In the shadows of a properly exposed plate, the silver deposits are brown-green, and can be fairly bright when they catch the light. I recall Nick Brandreth at the George Eastman Museum remarking once that underexposed Lippmann plates might actually serve well as ambrotypes, and I would probably agree. I can confirm that there's no staining going on with these plates, unexposed areas remain quite clear. I tried to dig up a picture of it (the plate is long gone), but I used to have a Lippmann plate that was terribly underexposed that ended up making quite a nice ambrotype when viewed with a black backing, save for some solarization in the highlights that turned black. That one was made a with a developer using pyro and ammonia carbonate (ammonia being another common silver solvent).

This dude lays out his process in making dry-plate tintypes, using Rollei Black Magic emulsion on black aluminum, and developing with Ilford Multigrade with some ammonium thiocyanate added in. I happen to have some half-made emulsion and a bunch of ammonium thiocyanate in the darkroom currently, and if I have some time this week I'll play around a bit and report the results.

 

[J 3]

Ah, I think J3 beat me to the punch here. There used to be a really good passage from Hans Bjelkhagen's book, "Silver-Halide Recording Materials: For Holography and Their Processing" that described the differences between physical, solution-physical and chemical developers...

I have a copy of that book (I've got an interest in both Lippmann and Holography but don't see being able to scratch that itch til I don't live in an apartment) and will look it up. Your description is quite good though. I hadn't really known about solution-physical developers til this thread. Thanks so much.

So to summarize what I think is the case with the difference between dryplate gelatin and wetplate tintypes (subject to change as evidence arrives):
The two are more alike than they are different but Rockland tweaked the developer to more closely replicate the type of sliver produced in a wetplate tintype. The developer is not actually a monobath despite having similar constituents. The action of the included fixer is different and added in different proportions to allow it to perform a different role. Monobaths run with fast development (temperature or agent), slow fixing and little agitation so that action of the fixer really doesn't kick in til a normal chemical development has occurred. Instead the Rockland emulsion features slow development, quicker fixing action, and lots of agitation. The goal is to get the silver halide into the solution where it can supply a physical development, although as a bi-product a partial fixing occurs. This takes much longer than a wetplate development where there is residual silver nitrate is in solution to perform the physical development. The result is mostly compact spherical silver particles that presumably reflect light better than would occur otherwise. In either type to tintype the resulting image is a thin reflective layer of silver particles with no silver in the shadows, and the most silver in the highlights.

The phenomenon on wetplate where the image looks like it changes from a positive to a negative in the fixer occurs entirely within the developer in gelatin tintypes if it occurs at all. This is because of the partial fixing action of the developer. Regardless in either case this is an optical effect and does not reflect any major change to the reduced silver image. It's probably a byproduct of the chalky un-exposed silver halide being washed out,and the point at which the image disappears briefly corresponds to when the refractive index of the collodion / silver-halide mix happens to hit exactly that of the un-reduced sliver particles (which since the particles are similar in size to light wavelengths, act in ways governed by quantum mechanics, and so have defined refractive indexes) as the silver halide dissolves out.

Possible implication of this:
Where as a wetplate tintype could be ruined by washing away the silver nitrate with too much developer, trying to use too much developer or not agitate enough should cause Rockland development to slow down possibly to the point of failure. This effect could potentially however, be used to create a useful edge effect on tintype, allowing for texture detail to be captured beyond the normal dynamic range at the expense of accurate tone rendition. The idea would be to starve development for the silver component but to do that you'd have to get rid of a good chunk of the silver halide without washing away the development centers. Does anyone know - How far can you fix a latent image, before you wash away the development centers as well? It would be cool if you could fix it entirely, and then add some silver nitrate to the developer and get the image back but I don't think you can go that far. Maybe if you partially develop the image and then fix, the latent image would be stable enough to not get washed away.

 

[Donald Qualls]

So, it sounds like this "special developer" came about more or less by accident. Product naming suggests that the tintype emulsion has higher silver content than, say, Liquid Light. I wonder what you'd get if you develop Liquid Light or a common film emulsion in the tintype developer? A "weak" tintype/ambrotype? Or could you get a tintype-like result by developing an old-technology film (say, Fomapan or some leftover Forte stock) in Rockland tintype developer?

 

[removed account4]

So, it sounds like this "special developer" came about more or less by accident. Product naming suggests that the tintype emulsion has higher silver content than, say, Liquid Light. I wonder what you'd get if you develop Liquid Light or a common film emulsion in the tintype developer? A "weak" tintype/ambrotype? Or could you get a tintype-like result by developing an old-technology film (say, Fomapan or some leftover Forte stock) in Rockland tintype developer?

it was no accident ( the rockland product ). they took historic developers and worked with them to get their product. there were many people back in the day who were tinkerers and "gentleman chemists" maybe they invented the reversal developers because they didn't want to deal with ether fumes, worry of fire or cyanide poisoning. sounds like a good reason to invent or hack a developer to me. if you look at old manuals you will see that 120+ years ago there were developers to do exactly the same thing the rockland developer does. some have nasty chemicals in them,( ammonia and strong acids ) some do not. and if you read some of PE's posts about formulas, whether they are for emulsions or photochemistry, he states that often times they are not truthful because the owner gave wrong information on purpose to protect their IP. When I first started to attempt to make a tintype developer using caffenol, I made contact with the person who worked with rockland colloid to formulate their developer. he I the person who told me they worked with historic formulas. I made all my SG tintypes with non AG+ emulsion. even though they include the AG+ emulsion with the kit but you don't need to use that at all ( that is what bob the founder told me). I used a lot of their variable contrast emulsion that was extremely expired. and I've used emulsion that I made myself ( chloro-bromide and chloro-bromide speed emulsions ).

 

[Donald Qualls]

I didn't mean to imply that Rockland stumbled on the developer formula and effect, but rather that that might well be how it was created by those "gentleman chemists" back in the 1870s. And I am well aware that full disclosure isn't compatible with trade secrets.

So it seems like you're saying the developer is the key. SDS says it starts with Dektol, plus some amount of sodium sulfate and some amount of ammonium thiocyanate. Reverse engineering -- worthwhile, for those who don't like being dependent on commercial products?

 

[removed account4]

https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/rockland-colloid-should-i-bother.112558/page-4
Dryplate Tintype Developer
Dryplate Tintype Developer

a few people are fiddling around with this formula and trying to make it a little less finicky...
have fun, and maybe post your formula in the thread ? would be a great resource for everyone trying this process !

 

[J 3]

I don't think anyone is implying otherwise (quite the contrary) but of note is that many of the experimenters and entrepreneurs of old often saw things differently than we do. Sometimes very differently.

It was known quite early that you could use hypo or later rapid fix on wetplate. Cyanide was still very popular because it gave slight but notacible improvement to the look (color temperature, brightness of highlights...). It also kept longer and didn't make the booth smell of sulphur. Today Cyanide is seem as too much of a risk by most but that wasn't always the case even while there were alternatives.

Likewise today a lot of wet plate photographers don't bother too much about comets (little flakes of dried collodion that streak) and other defects because part of the charm is imperfect images in the era of digital perfection. Back then making perfect plates was a huge deal.

Back then the idea of making a living off of this stuff was forefront in a lot of people's mind. You still see lots of secretive behavior today of course but just as often you run into really generous folks who share what they know for the social aspect, and to help keep the art alive.

Today as a general trend makers tend to value labor over materials. Back then it was often the opposite. Fewer people hand tinted images for instant. Labor is often harder to sell too. Most people today will never realize the effort that goes into a good carbon transfer print for instance. But marketing a platinum print on the romance of an image made of permanent platinum is easier.

 

[J 3]

a few people are fiddling around with this formula and trying to make it a little less finicky...
have fun, and maybe post your formula in the thread ? would be a great resource for everyone trying this process !

I certainly will do so if I stumble across anything. The easiest way I can see to make it less finicky has consequences. Changing it from a solvent-physical developer to a standard physical developer would make things more predictable and less reliant on things like agitation.

The idea would be start with thinned out Dektol, but add silver nitrate rather than ammonium thiocyanate (though you might need some ATC anyhow).

This would:

1. Make the developer more expensive
2. Make the developer less safe (not by a huge amount). Silver nitrate stains, corrodes most metals, and will blind you if you get a drop in your eye. Dektol by itself is safer. Both are bad for your liver if you ingest some but SN is worse.
3. Cause the developer to change somewhat as SN is consumed. On old developer you might have to refresh the SN. You might have to extend development times.
4. I'm not sure if anything in Dektol interferes with Silver Nitrate. That would have to be checked.