Developers in tablet form.........?

[Harry Stevens]

Has nobody in history ever thought about making developers,fixers ect in tablet form ? Just press them out from the silver foil wrapper and then add to the right amount of water.......Imagine D76 or IDII in a one shot tablet form no more making 5 litres up. I know there is Rodinal and HC 110 with a long shelf life but they come with a lot of weight and postage cost plus certain travel restrictions in some areas.

Well seems a good idea to me and no more dangerous than a lot of other tablet form medicines.

 

[John51]

Forgotten the name but I remember a one shot developer that came in a small glass vial, stink bomb size. Don't know if it's still available.

 

[Alan9940]

Technidol developer for Kodak Technical Pan film came in small, individual foil packets; just enough to make a stock solution for one roll of 35mm or IIRC two packets for 120 roll. Back in the day, I used quite a bit of it because it always seemed like a good idea to me; fresh every time.

 

[AgX]

Tetenal since long time offer a whole range of tablets to prepare baths for Minilabs.

They also offer chemical-mixtures as granules.

 

[Igor Savchenko]

Yes, developers in tablet form were produced in Soviet Union, from late 70s until late 80s:
VK (ВК) - fine grain film developer, for 500 ml of working solution, up to 5 rolls
UPK (УПК) - universal: diluted to 1000 ml - fine grain for film, up to 10 rolls; diluted to 250 ml - for paper, up to 25 prints, 9x12 cm
both based on phenidone and HQ, not demanding to the quality of water, suitable for field condition,
tablets can be stored for decades and work perfectly.

 

[Gerald C Koch]

Many years ago (sometime in the 20's if I remember correctly) the drug company Burroughs-Wellcome sold a film developer in tablet form. You can sometimes see ads in old photography magazines. The problem with doing this is preventing the various chemicals from reacting before the developer can be used. Then too a tablet for even a single roll of film would be rather large.

 

[Born2Late]

I have several bottle of developer tablets. I believe the name of the company was Perfection. They had a number of different film developers.

 

[Alan Johnson]

See here under "Tabloid":
http://www.earlyphotography.co.uk/site/entry_F57.html
It seems two tablets were used, presumably developing agent and alkali.

 

[Harry Stevens]

Interesting reading. I am really surprised that this was not more popular in the 50s to the 90s, and when you look at what's available today in tablet form from medicines to cleaning products it's obvious not a manufacturing problem. All I can come up with is it would have hit the manufactures sales and profits (no more expired film developer down the drain). Imagine the postage savings.

For a low B&W roll shooter it would have been a godsend and for C41 colour work no more saving 10 exposed films before opening the packet.

Love the "Tabloid"

 

[AgX]

Not all chemicals can be offered as solids, let alone mixtures of chemicals. The offers of such tablets are already astonishing.

And the advantage of tablets the same time is their disadvantage: being fixed to a certain bath volume.

 

[guangong]

Tetanal sold developers packaged in small glass vials. Still have several...bought in the 1970s...wonder if still usable since air tight. Minox sold small developing kits for processing while on the road. The pill and tablet developers mentioned above are all new to me. A interesting topic.

 

[Alan Johnson]

The Tabloid developer was Pyro-Soda. Here is Kodak D1 Pyro-Soda:
http://www.digitaltruth.com/data/formula.php?FormulaID=112
For tank development the working solution is:

Sodium Bisulfite .........................0.89g
Pyro..........................................5.45g
Potassium Bromide......................0.1g..........Total =6.44g

Sodium Sulfite............... .............9.5g
Sodium Carbonate monohydrate....6.8g..........Total = 16.3g

To make up 1L the tablets would need to be quite big.
D-76 contains 100g/L sodium sulfite so it would be impractical to make as tablets.

 

[Gerald C Koch]

Making a stable tablet, one that will not break or crumble, involves not just pressing a number of chemicals together. Additional chemicals called binders are often needed. These of course would have to photochemically neutral and not effect the developer in any way. Often the absence of a product from the market tells us when an idea is not practical.

Then there is the cost of tablet making equipment which is not cheap. I have a friend that worked for a small drug manufacturer. The machinery was the major startup cost for the company.

 

[MattKing]

I expect the Kodak Tri-Chem Packs did well in the applicaple segment of the market.

This included Dektol: http://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/...ing/96130-blast-past-kodak-tri-chem-pack.html, so at least usable for film.

The older versions included "universal M-Q developer.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

Developer tablets in a Pez dispenser! Cool! Just don't mix them up with candy!

 

[Photo Engineer]

HC110 does not contain any water. So there is no water weight penalty. It is all active developer. Rodinal does contain water.

PE

 

[Luckless]

Another issue against 'tablets' that I don't think anyone mentioned was the whole mixing side of things for the end user. Getting loose powdered mixes to dissolve evenly and completely can be annoying enough at times, getting a solidly compressed tablet, with binder material, to fully dissolve sounds 'less ideal'.

After handling stuff like ID-11 packaging, I do think that it could reasonably be redone to allow more effective shipping and storage, but doing so would mean expensive equipment overhauls. And I would expect they went with that style packaging due to on-going production cost factors. Those pouches are cheap and reliable to deal with. They open wide enough during filling that they're not overly fiddly for the machines to deal with, easily handle high volume throughput, and quickly form on site with fairly simple equipment.

One of those "Things are working 'good enough', so why change" factors of business.

 

[removed account4]

i'm thinking a pinch of sulfite, a teaspoon of metol and bromo seltzer should do it ..