dektol and lemon juice

[hrst]

If you have fun and like what you are doing --- just keep going! There's absolutely nothing wrong to experiment, add foodstuff to developers etc. There is no single "correct way" to do things. And if you get results you like, even better!

The only way to really learn is to experiment, then to ask questions and think, and then to experiment more. It looks you are doing just fine, not just randomly, because you think and ask.

Three years ago when I was starting my film/darkroom hobby, I tried same kind of things, developing BW paper with Coca-Cola etc. Now I'm doing more advanced things like color processes and own BW emulsions, but we all have to start from the very basics. But the attitude matters; if you stick with the "correct ways to do things", denying the experimentation from the very beginning, you will probably get nowhere.

It's not a bad start at all to understand the meaning of alkalinity in developer and to understand it can be controlled with acid. This is a 100% correct interpretation of the underlying chemical principle.

 

[rx7speed]

I gotta say this forum so far has surprised me on quite a few fronts. you all have been so helpfull from my own post to just reading other peoples post here. a lot of information and I have yet to see someone trolling or really causing problems here. Also have to say I'm very shocked at the lack of elitism I have seen here. sure might be there don't know but I haven't seen it yet like I have on a certain un-named canon specific site. with how often they war between crop and full fram cameras I figured I would be in trouble since there seemed to be a lot of medium/large format guys here. anyway I'm glad I've come here though.

hrst that's kind of my logic at the moment, might not be right but so far I'm hoping it works at least on some things. still though if I want to get a good print I forget the experimenting and go to what more or less works for me, but the experimenting is part of the fun right now.


also just curious since this thread has come about has anyone tried some lemon juice prints yet?

 

[dancqu]

To Completion?

You always develop paper to completion -
that's 2 minutes for RC and 3 minutes
for FB with fresh developer. These times
double with old (dark yellow) developer.

So, in your mind "... to completion ..." is some specific time for
all papers; with fresh developer and FB 3 minutes. I suppose
that is for Dektol with out the lemon juice.

Not so in my mind. Completion is reached when density will no
further increase. To be practical we'll say no perceivable
increase. Any time less is Pull Processing.

 

[BetterSense]

The thing is, I have noticed that my highlights continue to fog for a long time. I don't think the print goes to completion in 2-3 minutes and I don't think it's productive to leave the print in the developer forever. I develop my RC for 1.5 minutes. Maybe it's not to "completion" but it's long enough that it should be close.

 

[Ian Grant]

Originally Posted by Nicholas Lindan (there was a url link here which no longer exists)
You always develop paper to completion -
that's 2 minutes for RC and 3 minutes
for FB with fresh developer. These times
double with old (dark yellow) developer.


So, in your mind "... to completion ..." is some specific time for
all papers; with fresh developer and FB 3 minutes. I suppose
that is for Dektol with out the lemon juice.

Not so in my mind. Completion is reached when density will no
further increase. To be practical we'll say no perceivable
increase. Any time less is Pull Processing.

Dan, I missed that post, thanks.

It's totally untrue. Warm-tone papers are quite frequently developed to far less than completion deliberately, it's been the way to control image colour/tone right from the early days of Gelatin based Chloro-bromide papers, and Albumen prints etc before that.

Ian