Efke-25 and tea

J. Smith · Mar 23, 2005

I did a test with some efke pl-25 last night. Shot two identicle sheets and processed one in distilled water and rodinal 1+50 and the second in tea made from distilled water and the same amount of rodinal. The tea negative is smoother and seems to print that way.Will try to include a scan of the two prints,the bottom one is from the tea negative.

mikewhi · Mar 23, 2005

Interesting but weird. What are you people going to try next? Grape Juice? Someone must have done this by accident the first time or they were drunk.

Anyway, were the exposures the same for each negative? The tea negative has far superior shadow detail. I don't like the tea's mid-tone seperation as much and I prefer the highlights in the latern in water version better, too. But the shadow detail defference is amazing. I think the 'smoothness' is really loss of contrast.

Can you see any difference in the grain structure under a grain magnifier? Is there any stain to the negatives like pyro? What kind of tea - herbal, green tea, English Breakfast tea, Lipton, etc? Do you develop with your pinky sticking out?

I don't want to alarm you, but someone shoved a lens into the front of one of your speakers.

-Mike

J. Smith · Mar 24, 2005

Mike the only change I made to the entire process was the tea, Lipton by the way,and yes the tea negative is stained. If its like pyro I can't tell ya, never used the stuff,yet. I was looking for a way to cut down on the contrast in this film when the situation demands and this may be a place to start.As far as the grain I just now put the Tea negative in my enlarger( 5x7 neg in a 4x5 enlarger, hmm) and cranked it up till the mamiya was 20 inches long and I can't see any grain yet.Oh and thanks for the heads up on the speaker ,I knew something was wrong when I got a light show instead of the Stone's.

noseoil · Mar 24, 2005

In a high contrast scene, I would be more inclined to use Efke 100 than 25. Efke 25 can certainly be used, but development times start to get pretty short unless your dilutions start creeping up more. Grain in sheet film isn't too bad with the 100, but the 25 still beats everything I have used when doing a bigger enlargement. With PMK pyro, I've used 35mm to make 8x10 prints which show no grain at all. Can't see it in a grain focuser, so I use an edge or a line to focus on instead.

Earl Dunbar · Mar 27, 2005

Since it would be extremely difficult to control the concentration of the tea, and hence any effect it has other than further dilution of the Rodinal, it seems like a pretty risky process to introduce into a standard workflow. It if was just for fun, then yeah, it's interesting.

For serious work, though, I would try varying dilutions, agitation schedules, etc., as ways of alterting the final results. JMHO.

Earl

alfred · Mar 28, 2005

What kind of tea did you use?
This is very important - I will not recommend Earl Grey for B&W-prints!
Which temperature?
What kind of pot? Glass or ceramics?

A.L.

Ian Grant · Mar 28, 2005

J. Smith said:
, , , , , thanks for the heads up on the speaker ,I knew something was wrong when I got a light show instead of the Stone's.

Maybe you could post a bit about your speaker design in a new thread. That looks remarkably like a Dagor acting as a tweater.

argon · Mar 28, 2005

This is fascinating...tea should have tannic acid in it and it has been touted as having anti-oxidants in it....do you think that the anti-oxidants are wiping out any free radicals in the developer and that that might be the reason for the increase in shadow detail?

I've heard of staining prints in tea and I've used both selenium and sepia toners on negatives...but Rodinal and Lipton's?

best

argon

J. Smith · Mar 28, 2005

Hey guys, been crazy busy and have not been back. Lets see, I made the tea in a pyrex cup, one measured cup boiled it in a microwave then one tea bag left to seep till room temp.70 deg., so it may not be all that hard to dilute this base with more water to get different results. I guess I should know why this worked but. Hey Ian you have good eyes that is a Dagor ,12", thats my box camera that I'm putting together to play with paper negatives. If it works out it will be preset for a 20' focus and have a slip-on back/negative holder that can use any paper or film size up to 12x20with the help of some magnets. Wide open the lens almost covers, have to wait and see what f-64 will do. Thanks for the interest.

Efke-25 and tea

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