Edible Film Developers

[DarkroomExperimente]

thanks.....I had a vague memory of reading about it before

my scanner is an old flatbed that is awkward to use with negatives and gets rather mediocre results....so I probably won't post images until I get something worth putting in the enlarger and printing in the darkroom

 

[Athiril]

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

I haven't yet tried any vitamin B stuff yet, I've tried only a couple amino acids in the past with little luck.

 

[DarkroomExperimente]

I haven't yet tried any vitamin B stuff yet, I've tried only a couple amino acids in the past with little luck.

does "with little luck" mean the amino acids you tried didn't work at all...or didn't work very well?

tonight I'm going to try either tryptophan or regular sugar(heated with sodium carbonate like the honey & dextrose )

...maybe I'll do both

 

[DarkroomExperimente]

film is in the tryptophan...gonna pull it out in 3 hours

sucrose+sodium carbonate in the microwave heating away --- so far it isn't turning brown like the dextrose

eventually I want to mix all the things that don't work together in one batch and see what happens....just for fun

 

[DarkroomExperimente]

Tryptophan worked! ....very weak....most of the film is clear with only faint images of bright objects -- like when I pointed the camera at the SUN

but...it worked....kinda

it was only in the soup for 90 minutes -- I was gonna go for 3 hours, but I got bored, tired, and impatient

I still have enough left to try it at double the concentration....now all I need is a turkey to take a photo of

thank you Athiril for the suggestion...I doubt I would have thought of it

 

[DarkroomExperimente]

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

I wonder if this can also occur when I include the sun in an image.....like I did with the tryptophan experiment....the only parts of the film that show any density seem to be faint images of the sun....perhaps what I think is weak development is really a small amount of "print out"

I should probably test this to make sure I don't fool myself into thinking something completely useless is actually doing something

 

[Photo Engineer]

You know that this has gone on a long time with no data.

I suggest that this be suspended until you can give us some evidence of results. No insult intended, just a scientists request for some concrete data.

Thanks.

PE

 

[DarkroomExperimente]

OK, I'll scan some stuff tomorrow

tryptophan negative is dry now & there's more there than I thought...but still very thin

 

[DarkroomExperimente]

here's something from the test of dextrose w/o KBr on 3-12-2012

kinda crude because I used a webcam instead of my scanner -- the scanner's driver is a pain to deal with if I want to scan negatives...I'll wrestle with that mess tomorrow....

 

[albada]

here's something from the test of dextrose w/o KBr on 3-12-2012

That's a positive, not a negative! How did that happen?

Mark Overton

 

[DarkroomExperimente]

inverted it in photoshop

 

[DarkroomExperimente]

did the sucrose/carbonate test this morning

3 tablespoons sucrose, 4 tablespoons sodium carbonate 500ml water...

heated/boiled for about twice as long as I did for the dextrose experiments

68f for..3 hours.....no images...clear film

although I didn't really expect it to work...I always hope for surprises

 

[DarkroomExperimente]

PE -- I'm glad you asked for scans...I had been avoiding using my scanner because the driver usually creates weird problems...but it seems to be working fine for now


this is one of the images developed with vitamin E....it's just a light on the ceiling, nothing exciting...I had forgotten it was such a dark & boring subject...so perhaps I need to upgrade Vitamin E from astronomically weak to extremely weak



all these negatives have lint and scratches on them because they're just tests & I'm pretty rough with them...the images are round because they're from a cheap "Fisheye 2" camera

 

[DarkroomExperimente]

here is the dextrose test WITH KBr

View attachment 47798

 

[DarkroomExperimente]

this is the tryptophan test....much better than I expected...I need to find a turkey to photograph now...unfortunately it seems the National Zoo downtown doesn't have turkeys

 

[DarkroomExperimente]

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.

I should be more clear:

....sometimes I've been saying glucose or dextrose because that's what I start with ....but after heating the dextrose with sodium carbonate it's supposed to form glucic acid which I read online was the real developer

I tried dextrose and sodium carbonate without heating and there was no development...so it's not the original sugar

one reason I got into the habit of referring to the experiments as glucose or dextrose or honey is that although I can be confident some reaction took place that formed a new compound.... I'm not a chemist and I have found hardly any information online about glucic acid so I'm relucant to say I know it's glucic acid when there could easily be other compunds involved that I know nothing about

 

[DarkroomExperimente]

got some more information on the effect of alkaline solutions on sugars....seems it's time to play with fructose ( aka levulose )...fructose is in honey, but i want to try it by itself

http://chestofbooks.com/food/science/Experimental-Cookery/Effect-Of-Alkalies-Upon-Sugars.html

from the link above: "...of the 116 possible decomposition products with dextrose and a weak alkali, 93 have been isolated..."

so is it glucic acid that's developing the film or one or more of the "116 possible decomposition products" ???

 

[DarkroomExperimente]

here is one of the results from last night's run:

two strips of tri-x in:

500ml water, 3 tbsp dextrose, 3tbsp, sodium carbonate, 1 tbsp sodium bicarbonate, 0.3 grams KBr, 72F

dextrose & sodium carbonate are heated together in the microwave for over an hour to generate the developing agents....glucic acid...and perhaps others ( gluconic acid is a new suspect ).....then the other ingredients are added...I thought the sodium bicarbonate was going to create a buffer solution and lower the pH...but pH was 11 before & after I added it....KBr was guesstimated at 0.3 grams because in a previous test 1.1 grams was helpful but waayyyy too much

one strip of tri-x was removed after 45 minutes, the other after 90 minutes

both negatives had decent images without all the fog I used to get....after only 45 minutes the negative looked usable, but thin...the negative that was developed for 90 minutes looked pretty good

here's a scan of one of the 90min images:



Today's experiment is heating table sugar aka sucrose with vinegar for several hours. Sucrose is made from glucose ( aka dextrose ) joined to fructose. Heating with vinegar/acetic acid is supposed to split the sucrose into glucose & fructose. After I treat the sucrose with the acetic acid I will then react it with the sodium carbonate the usual way and see if it works. I tried sucrose before & it did not work the way honey ( contains glucose & fructose ) and glucose did.

N.B. to be clear....dextrose is "right-handed" glucose...so all dextrose is glucose, but not all glucose is dextrose...but there apparently isn't much left-handed glucose lying around...so both names tend to be used. Sorry if it gets confusing when I use different names for the same thing.

I read that fructose breaks down even easier than glucose/dextrose...so I ordered some fructose to test that. If both glucose and fructose generate developers that would make honey an even more convenient raw material since it contains both.

I thought this was funny...while looking for sources of fructose online I ended up at several bodybuilding websites...they seem to have the best prices for dextrose & fructose ...well in their explanations of the benefits of dextrose the bodybuilding websites explained that dextrose dissolves easily in water...and after using the word "dissolved" in parentheses it said "disappears" --- as if Bruno the weightlifter might not know what "dissolve" means.

 

[Alan Johnson]

The following thread mentions patents for gluconic acid developers:
http://photo.net/black-and-white-photo-film-processing-forum/00CPMC?start=0

 

[DarkroomExperimente]

Thank you Alan -- very interesting.

Ran a new test today: sucrose heated with carbonate did not form a developer when I tested it the other day....but today I heated sucrose with vinegar first THEN added carbonate & gave it the usual heat treatment and it DID develop film. Heating with the weak acid apparently splits the sucrose into glucose and fructose....which is then converted by the carbonate into the developer....kind of re-inventing the wheel here, but this is a fun way to learn/re-learn some chemistry

to be thorough I guess I need to test film in the sucrose/acid mix after adding carbonate but without heating it a second time to test if the heating with acid formed any developing stuff

I am testing the fructose-based developer right now and will know in a couple hours if fructose works the way the glucose does

 

[DarkroomExperimente]

the fructose test worked...seems basically similar to the dextrose...

fructose + sodium carbonate, heated for over an hour, developed for 45 minutes

 

[Photo Engineer]

Did you use brown or white vinegar? If brown, repeat with Acetic Acid. That may prove different.

PE

 

[DarkroomExperimente]

I used white vinegar

thanks

 

[DarkroomExperimente]

now testing 600mg of Ginkgo Biloba in 500ml water ( with a dash of alcohol ) + 2 tbsp sodium carbonate

 

[DarkroomExperimente]

the Ginkgo worked after 90 minutes

negative has a nice earthy tint

now I need to go photograph a Ginkgo tree in a few weeks when the leaves are out