Edible Film Developers

DarkroomExperimente · Mar 10, 2012

500 ml 70% isopropyl alcohol

4 tbsp sodium carbonate ( not all dissolved ) entire bottle of Vitamin E pills ...400 IU 100 pills ( gel caps...didn't get ALL the goop out )

68F ...in at 7:47...out after I come home from a movie

tri-x

pH seems to be 9.5-10

DarkroomExperimente · Mar 11, 2012

vitamin E worked!!!!

it left a greasy goopy mess on film and tank/reels...but I did get a few FAINT images of the birghtest portion of a couple frames

so now I need to see how Vit E & C work together....but that might be pretty hard since Vitamin E is so weak any amount of C will overpower it

Alan Johnson · Mar 11, 2012

I looked up the formula for Vitamin E and it contains rings of 6 carbon with an OH attached.This is similar to Hydroquinone,Pyrogallol,Pyrocatechin and it might be superadditive with Phenidone.It's only a possibility and I think it depends on each compound individually.
You have found some interesting things, I was surprised the glucose worked.

graflexboy · Mar 11, 2012

DarkroomExperimente said:
tonight's test:

500 ml water

Dextrose 3 tbsp

Sodium carbonate 4 tbsp

...this is pure dextrose from a pharmacy....so I'm hoping to learn is it REALLY this glucic acid I think I'm creating....or other stuff in the honey

Hi, I'm following your experiments with interest!

What did the dextrose negatives look like? Faint or good?

Thanks,
Micah in NC

DarkroomExperimente · Mar 11, 2012

dextrose negs were dense with fog...I want to tweak the recipe to make it better...I usually dump in a ton of carbonate and develop for a long time when I'm not sure something will work or not

eventually I'll try adding a restrainer and using less carbonate and developing for less time, etc.....but for now I'm just seeing what works

since a LOT of things have dextrose in them -- like the honey I started with -- there should be a zillion things that can be made to work

I also got some quercetin from the GNC nutrition store...and red & shallot onions...so I gotta try them too

my red wine test came out kinda faint, but since (1) quercetin apparently is more soluble in alcohol than water and (2) apparently quercetin occurs in red wine....so adding it to red wine seems a natural idea...especially since the alcohol would help it dissolve

graflexboy · Mar 11, 2012

Okay. Thanks!
--Micah in NC

DarkroomExperimente · Mar 11, 2012

tested Quercetin tonight:

500 ml water & isopropyl alcohol

saturated with quercetin ( couldn't dissolve any more tablets...actually wasted most of it )

9 tsp sodium carbonate

pinch of KBr

75F 30 min

dense negative...lots of fog

gee, ya think I might learn to use less sodium carbonate?

....after drying ilm has a strong curl

pawlowski6132 · Mar 12, 2012

ABC Pyro.

DarkroomExperimente · Mar 12, 2012

testing glucic acid/dexrose again tonight on 2 separate film strips...one with and one without KBr

removed account4 · Mar 12, 2012

use table salt as your restrainer !

a lot of the caffenol-folks happened onto that tid-bit

not sure how it will work with your strange brew though

john

Photo Engineer · Mar 12, 2012

Ordinary table salt contains KI (Potassium Iodide) which is a restrainer. It also decreases sharpness. Sodium Chloride (NaCl or table salt) is not a significant restrainer for films.

PE

DarkroomExperimente · Mar 12, 2012

Just saw something online that suggests I can make glucic acid with ordinary sugar --- sucrose --- instead of dextrose

haven't found much online yet about glucic acid....could be time for a trip to the U of Md library or something...

this is my first real test with KBr.....developing the film strips side by side so temp, agitation, developer, etc are pretty much identical...eager to see the results...only 20 min or so to go

DarkroomExperimente · Mar 12, 2012

SUCCESS!

film still rinsing but it seems to be a clear difference between with & without KBr

negatives a bit thin, but fog is way down in both strips --- I changed time, temp, dilution, and pH ( at least I think I did )

I like doing two strips of film at the same time....this is gonna be a great way to test variables

clayne · Mar 13, 2012

Watch out! Pretty soon you'll be adding sodium sulfite and metol to the mix!

DarkroomExperimente · Mar 13, 2012

no metol, but I have plenty of sodium sulfite lying around

bt for now using "real" developers is cheating

I do have a supply of phenidone that I got to use with ascorbate developer, but I haven't used it yet

Athiril · Mar 13, 2012

As long as you're collection vitamins, vitamins B1 and B2 looked viable, but never tried them.

As well as tryptophan, tyrosine and tyrosine, these are some of the ones I shortlisted and never got around to trying. <-- you could find many of these in body building supplements.

DarkroomExperimente · Mar 13, 2012

thanks...was trying to decide what to test tonight....

I'll go get some B1 and B2 this afternoon and try it tonight....maybe even tryptphan & tyrosine too since I'm going to a GNC that has bodybuilding supplements

I also want to test different sugars & see if I have any luck with them

I think from now on I'm going to do more of what I did last night -- do 2 tests at the same time

albada · Mar 13, 2012

Athiril said:
As long as you're collection vitamins, vitamins B1 and B2 looked viable, but never tried them.

Ryuji Suzuki in (there was a url link here which no longer exists) claimed that some vitamin-B derivatives "worked well".

BTW, have you been trying any of your developers with vitamin-C? Some might be superadditive with it.

Mark Overton

DarkroomExperimente · Mar 13, 2012

haven't mixed anything with vitamin C recently.....I probably did a few years ago....for now I'm trying to stick to one thing at a time

just got back with B-1, B-2, tryptophan ( 5-hydroxytryptophan ), and tyrosine

saw Ribose on the shelf....label showed the structure & now that I have a pavlovian response to seeing any kind of ring with OH's on them...I googled it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribose

....time to shoot a roll of tri-X and start tossing film in the soup

scottnichol · Mar 13, 2012

i experimented a bit with caffenol this weekend using the Caffenol-STD recipe detailed at caffenol.org. i had some mis-steps (adding the washing soda to the diluted Vitamin C caused a bit of frothing/foamy mix!), but eventually got a developer mixture that was usable and produced a good, clean image. the negatives were a little thin and i tried again. extending development time gave me some additional density, but overall the negatives scanned well and produced very serviceable image! i documented my results in an article that i submitted to caffenol.org. it appears here!

View attachment 47758

DarkroomExperimente · Mar 13, 2012

aha now I see that vitamin B2 aka riboflavin sortta kinda has ribose ( a sugar ) attached to the flavin part

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riboflavin

ironically for a potential deveoper...ribflavin is destroyed when exposed to light - especially in solution....

hmmmm....not that soluble in water, insoluble in alcohol, soluble in dilute alkali...

http://chemicalland21.com/lifescience/foco/RIBOFLAVIN.htm

this could be a tricky one if I have to protect it from light after mixing it up

...............

vitamin B1 is soluble in water...but unstable in alkaline solutions...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiamine

......................

Tyrosine ...an amino acid....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrosine

.................

tryptophan ...also an amino acid..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tryptophan

SO...today I will test trysine and tryptophan since both B vitamins seem trickier

DarkroomExperimente · Mar 13, 2012

OK tri-X is in a milky-white brew of Tyrosine @ 80F

how much tyrosine? ...oh a whole bunch of it
how much sodium carbonate? oh, not that much....ph looks like 11 or so
500 ml water

DarkroomExperimente · Mar 13, 2012

after 3 hours in tyrosine+sodium carbonate....

didn't work...clear film...except the very tip of the film that has been out in the light for ages has slight density

DarkroomExperimente · Mar 13, 2012

here's an observation and a question

several times I pull the film out of the fixer and think "look it worked!" because the end of the film that sticks out of the 35mm cassette was slightly dark...but the rest of the film was clear

if I take a piece of film and let it sit out in the light and toss it in fixer....it clears

if I take a piece of film and let it sit out in the light for a while, toss it in a solution of sodium carbonate WITHOUT anything else, then toss it in fixer...there is some density there

what's causing this?

Photo Engineer · Mar 13, 2012

It could be excess exposure causing the grains (emulsion) to form Silver metal in the absence of development. This is called print out. It is not unusual.

But, with all of this work, it would be nice to see some scanned examples.

Thanks.

PE

Edible Film Developers

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