does developed film have relief.

Greg Dickson · Nov 27, 2021

I'm trying to get my head around something and I am sure someone here will know.
Not to be too long winded with the why I will keep my question simple.
When one develops film in the standard way and the negative is fixed also in the normal way.
Does the rinse remove the gelatin with the unexposed silver, or does the silver leach out leaving the gelatin the same thickness just without silver.

or looking at it another way does the development harden the gelatin like in carbon transfer or does it simply bond the silver to the gelatin.

I am just chasing a faster way to harden gelatin than the potassium di-chromate path. If that makes sense. I would like to harden the gelatin in camera.

Andrew O'Neill · Nov 27, 2021

When I develop HP5 sheet film, I can see ever so slight relief that is gone when dry. I don't see it with TMY. I have some HIE sheet film from the 60's. It's the old thick emulsion. You should see that stuff when it's wet! The relief is stunning! But to answer your question, film emulsion is not removed.

Greg Dickson · Nov 27, 2021

Thanks Andrew

Andrew O'Neill said:
When I develop HP5 sheet film, I can see ever so slight relief that is gone when dry. I don't see it with TMY. I have some HIE sheet film from the 60's. It's the old thick emulsion. You should see that stuff when it's wet! The relief is stunning! But to answer your question, film emulsion is not removed.

Ok that makes sense.

I guess the relief you see is because the silver bulk is removed so the emulsion is less dense but the gelatin remains.
I plan to make my own negatives so that would possibly give similar results to the HIE.

I wonder what a gentle rinse in a higher temp water would do.
More experiments cool.
But really thanks again.

mshchem · Nov 28, 2021

Kodachrome has very visible relief.

MattKing · Nov 28, 2021

mshchem said:
Kodachrome has very visible relief.

That relief is due to a very different type of process from standard black and white processing, including the addition of the colour at time of processing.

Greg Dickson · Nov 28, 2021

Wow thanks heaps Micheal (@michael_r ) That is the sort of thing I wanted to hear.

So am I correct in presuming that
using hand made negatives not hardened.
and

michael_r said:
low sulfite pyrogallol and catechol developer

Then fix and warmish water rinse
Followed by a hydrogen peroxide bleach.
I could end up with a relatively fast in camera positive with relief.
Similar to the reverse process on paper without the fogging step.
leaving a white image on the support.
One with both relief and greater tonality than is possible with paper alone.

If done on yupo as medium this could then be mated onto a black permanent backing as is done in carbon transfer.

Or would that be just going too far.

koraks · Nov 28, 2021

Greg Dickson said:
Does the rinse remove the gelatin with the unexposed silver, or does the silver leach out leaving the gelatin the same thickness just without silver.

Neither leaching/removal of chemistry is the result of relief. Relief is created by selective hardening of the gelatin; i.e. it crosslinks more tightly, making it contract. This is a byproduct of development and as such dependent on the developer used.

Greg Dickson said:
or looking at it another way does the development harden the gelatin like in carbon transfer or does it simply bond the silver to the gelatin.

With carbon transfer the hardening of the gelatin is what makes it possible for the unhardened gelatin to be washed away. Hence the relatively pronounced relief. The hardening itself is not the same as the removal of unhardened gelatin; they're distinct/different processes.
Neither in carbon transfer nor in regular film or paper any silver is 'bonded' to gelatin. It's trapped in there, not chemically adhering to it.

Greg Dickson said:
I am just chasing a faster way to harden gelatin than the potassium di-chromate path. If that makes sense.

Why?

Greg Dickson said:
I would like to harden the gelatin in camera.

Can't be done (at least in any appreciable time and image-selectively) unless you turn your camera into a wet darkroom. For all intents and purposes hardening is something for which the emulsion needs to be wet. Yes, dry gelatin also hardens, but we're talking unpractically long timescales here, and/or hazardous fumes (think formaldehyde et al.), and limited to no possibilities of creating relief that correlates with the image as in e.g. carbon transfer etc.

michael_r said:
it is not clear to what extent any imagewise gelatin tanning still occurs given the pre-hardened nature of most contemporary film emulsions.

Note that tanning and hardening can mean different things depending on definitions. Hardening is the contraction of the gelatin layer due to increased crosslinking. Tanning can either mean the combined effect of tanning in a strict sense and hardening, or only the strict sense of the coloration of the gelatin emulsion due to the creation and trapping of stable dyes. Not a biggie, but it can be slightly confusing. For instance, with carbon transfer, there is hardening, but no tanning. With pyro developers (and low/no sulfite), there's tanning as well as hardening. With developers such as lith (low sulfite hydroquinone) there may be tanning (in the strict sense) without significant hardening (i.e. only a colored dye is formed, but the gelatin itself remains more or less the same).

RalphLambrecht · Nov 28, 2021

Greg Dickson said:
I'm trying to get my head around something and I am sure someone here will know.
Not to be too long winded with the why I will keep my question simple.
When one develops film in the standard way and the negative is fixed also in the normal way.
Does the rinse remove the gelatin with the unexposed silver, or does the silver leach out leaving the gelatin the same thickness just without silver.

or looking at it another way does the development harden the gelatin like in carbon transfer or does it simply bond the silver to the gelatin.

I am just chasing a faster way to harden gelatin than the potassium di-chromate path. If that makes sense. I would like to harden the gelatin in camera.

the fixer renders unexposed silver halides and other silver complexes soluble so that the rinse can flush them out. the gelatine is not washed out.

Alan Johnson · Nov 28, 2021

Greg Dickson said:
Wow thanks heaps Micheal (@michael_r ) That is the sort of thing I wanted to hear.

So am I correct in presuming that
using hand made negatives not hardened.
and

Then fix and warmish water rinse
Followed by a hydrogen peroxide bleach.
I could end up with a relatively fast in camera positive with relief.
Similar to the reverse process on paper without the fogging step.
leaving a white image on the support.
One with both relief and greater tonality than is possible with paper alone.

If done on yupo as medium this could then be mated onto a black permanent backing as is done in carbon transfer.

Or would that be just going too far.

If you develop a traditional emulsion [not tabular grain type] negative in, say, Pyrocat HD or PMK Pyro ,stop and wash it the bleach I use is Ferricyanide+Bromide followed by re-fixing , washing and drying. This produces a rather faint negative image by tanning which can be printed or scanned but its dynamic range is not very high.

mshchem · Nov 28, 2021

MattKing said:
That relief is due to a very different type of process from standard black and white processing, including the addition of the colour at time of processing.

Yep, it's very easy to see. I don't see any relief on the black and white films I use. Modern films especially look different than the old days, not sure if this factory hardening or something else. Old days the emulsion side was very obvious.

koraks · Nov 28, 2021

michael_r said:
Not sure if this is what you’re referring to.

Yes, we're talking about the same thing. I was addressing the potential confusion that arises from the (lack of) distinction and overlap in definitions between 'tanning' and 'hardening'. This risk is underlined by the following post:

Alan Johnson said:
If you develop a traditional emulsion [not tabular grain type] negative in, say, Pyrocat HD or PMK Pyro ,stop and wash it the bleach I use is Ferricyanide+Bromide followed by re-fixing , washing and drying. This produces a rather faint negative image by tanning which can be printed or scanned but its dynamic range is not very high.

...which is not so much a function of the hardening of the gelatin, but rather the dye formation that's part of the tanning action.

Alan Johnson · Nov 28, 2021

I am using the old convention as found in eg, "The Theory of the Photographic Process" 3rd ed by Mees &James p304 "Tanning Development" which includes both.
IIRC when I have bleached Pyrocat negatives the relief image has been almost colorless.
https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/catechol-and-hydroquinone-stain.128555/#post-1697593

Greg Dickson · Nov 28, 2021

Ok guys thanks.
I don't really want to get caught up in a definition war here.

So clearly I am after a process that works as quickly as the in camera silver process
The why is a whole different long story that is a side issue here.

I would like to then use a second process.
The speed of this second process is irrelevant as it is done in the lab.
This second process would be chemical, simply making the gelatin in the latent image solid and insoluble, allowing the unaffected gelatin to be washed away.

If it is possible to make the remaining gelatin white then that would finish the job.

Thank you everyone for your input I will keep searching and experimenting.

Greg Dickson · Nov 28, 2021

RalphLambrecht said:
the fixer renders unexposed silver halides and other silver complexes soluble so that the rinse can flush them out. the gelatine is not washed out.

Thank you that clarifies something I didn't really understand.

koraks · Nov 29, 2021

Greg Dickson said:
simply making the gelatin in the latent image solid and insoluble, allowing the unaffected gelatin to be washed away.

You'd have to try it, but I'm fairly sure that this won't work with any modern camera film. The gelatin is already hardened to such an extent that any attempts to remove it will most likely remove all of it, and not just image-selectively.

Can you explain again why the hardening needs to occur in-camera? What if, say, you'd make a traditional negative in-camera, and develop with a tanning developer? It should get you *some* selective hardening. Probably not enough (see comment above), but worth a try.

I have, and I'm sure others have too, thought of doing 'negative' carbon transfers; i.e. with white-pigmented gelatin. This seems to accomplish a similar end result to what you have in mind - just through a completely different (and longer) route. But with the benefit that it will work in principle, since you have control over the gelatin tissue.

AgX · Nov 29, 2021

koraks said:
Yes, we're talking about the same thing. I was addressing the potential confusion that arises from the (lack of) distinction and overlap in definitions between 'tanning' and 'hardening'. This risk is underlined by the following post:

Seen from an engineering point´of view tanning and hardening in our case mean the same.

Problem though might be for native speakers that tanning is used at other fields for forming a hue (as in human skin tanning). Though in our case we then would use staining.

Greg Dickson · Nov 29, 2021

Thanks @koraks.
The hardening doesn't need to be in camera just the exposure like normal.

I make my own negatives anyway so I have some control there as well.
This is a long term project and is bound to have many failures.
My main goal here is to have a fast film ( colloidian is too slow for the type of images I shoot )
which can allow (like tintype) the originally exposed material to actually make the image.

I was planning to do a two step (normal negative then enlarged positive) to create white on black carbon transfer.
Why white on black is another story again.
However I realised one reason this is more difficult is because of the halation within the white tissue.
I came up with an idea of pre-dieing the english whitting with a temproary die before exposure
then bleaching it after which would help solve the halation problem and still give me a nice white.

Then I thought if I was going to bleach it anyway I may as well bleach the silver negative as is done in the reversal process.

I love the relief of carbon transfer.
But the most important part for me is to create images with the huge tonal range of film ( and carbon transfer )
not the limited one of normal paper development.

Currently I am thinking of the tanning development then cold rinse then bleach then mate it with a final support via a warm water transfer.
I realise they will look more like tintypes ie not pure white.

I suspect as is the case with carbon transfer the solidified gelatin will be closer to the surface and just trying to wash away the non solid gelatin will just wash everything in the midtones.
I have been working through this over the last few years I just wanted to find out if this was possible.

I will try it anyway and am currently investigating tanning developers now I understand that process better.

Thanks to this thread I have now a sort of direction to research that might work.

Kino · Nov 29, 2021

Perhaps you should explore the materials used in Dye Transfer printing.

See: http://www.dyetransfer.org/Site/Dye_Transfer_Resources.html

James Browning has posted very complete information on how he makes his own dye transfer matrix film emulsions; maybe something in this will suit your purpose.

Greg Dickson · Nov 29, 2021

Kino said:
Perhaps you should explore the materials used in Dye Transfer printing.

See: http://www.dyetransfer.org/Site/Dye_Transfer_Resources.html

James Browning has posted very complete information on how he makes his own dye transfer matrix film emulsions; maybe something in this will suit your purpose.

Excellent I will check that out.
After a quick read this is incredibly interesting and some of the required techniques can now be easily done with arduino controled pumps and sensors.
Right up my alley.
My goal is to use modern technology to make the connection between the subject and the viewer closer, rather than further away as is the case with digital.

@Kino Those images are amazing you have blown my mind
Thank you very very much.
ps. It appears he is using pyro and gains the relief that I am after.
The only part I need to solve now is how to bleach the gelatin to as white as can get without destroying it or losing the tonal separation.

Kino · Nov 30, 2021

Great! Glad to be of help...

DREW WILEY · Nov 30, 2021

There is mountains of information on this subject if you are patient enough to go back into the history of dye transfer printing and the Technicolor movie process. Modern thin emulsion films do not respond quite as much to tanning relief, but it's still there at times. Even Kodachrome distinctly exhibited relief even though it was not a dichromate process. Modern studies of gelatin cross-linking with respect to dichromates is underway in the medical prosthetics and artificial replacement tissue field - way way way above my pay grade to explain, a real specialty field !

Remember, that in things like carbon printing, you're actually getting REVERSE relief in the print, that is, the shadows on top, and highlights in the craters. There are just so so many variations on this theme in photographic history and literature. I have personally fooled around a little with reviving classic wash-off relief technique, the predecessor the the Eastman dye transfer process, using modern methods, but lack the scheduling window to perfect it print-wise. It's time and labor intensive, plus expensive.

The dye transfer process itself has been reinvented and commercially revived in Germany using modernized tweaks; but that has involved a very big up-front investment. And Jim Browning's home-made coating machine was bought by someone related to Photog Formulary, if I recall correctly. He now uses Efke matrix film, which I bought out the last of. One needs real commitment and serious capital to get into this kind of thing. Cost-wise, it's vasty easier to get into carbon printing, though you'll still need a lot of patience and commitment.

Greg Dickson · Nov 30, 2021

Thanks @DREW WILEY
Yes I am patiently working my way through this and would like to find an emulsion formula that will allow the greatest relief and be flexible enough to transfer to a final black background.
I started on this journey back in 2018 and have slowly been building my skills. So I am in no rush

DREW WILEY said:
Remember, that in things like carbon printing, you're actually getting REVERSE relief in the print,

That is the case BUT that is only if you use black in the glop I want to use white.
One way or the other this has always been my intent.

If anyone has an silver emulsion formula that is more likely to do this I would love to hear it.

Also I am currently investigating how white I can make the remaining silver.
If anyone has an idea to brighten this bleached region to bright white I would also love to hear that.

So to simplify the process
1 create specific emulsion and coat support with anti hallation backing.
2 take photo
3 develop and bleach photo at 20 degrees (bleach and brighten that is)
4 transfer image from negative support to final black support. Washing away un tanned gelatin.

Voila image with highlights being the thickest part of the relief and huge tonal range.
With the final image being the actual silver directly affected at the moment of the shot.

easier said than done though.

DREW WILEY · Nov 30, 2021

To appreciate the difficulty involved, you really need to get connected to that crowd, either on this forum or others, with actual experience. And as I already hinted, there are many iterations and variations through the history of photographic printing. Just be extra careful with dichromates, however. There is an experienced color carbon and dye transfer printer down under named Andy Cross. You might want to get in touch with him .... Just a short walk away on the other side of the continent ! But closer than here.

Greg Dickson · Nov 30, 2021

Thanks for the name @DREW WILEY do you have any contact details for him.
I have found some articles by Andy Cross but no contact details.

Thanks

DREW WILEY · Dec 1, 2021

The only direct link I have to him is on the DT Forum site message board. It's not a very active site anymore, but hums whenever something new stirs up. Jim Browning would have his contact information.

does developed film have relief.

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