Hello APUG from FILM Ferrania (PART 2)

[Photo Engineer]

Macfred, I've seen that sort of setup before!

PE

 

[macfred]

Macfred, I've seen that sort of setup before!

PE

Yes, I'm sure you did ...

 

[fdonadio]

Macfred, I've seen that sort of setup before!

But I bet you never saw a Bunsen burning directly under the glassware like that.

I loved my school’s lab. I spent a lot of time there and I miss it.

 

[Agulliver]

Film Ferrania used several professional labs in the initial testing phase of P30 in order to produce v1.0 of the best practice sheet. Dark room....lab...call it what you will, they were sent out to well known professional businesses.

 

[Agulliver]

But I bet you never saw a Bunsen burning directly under the glassware like that.

I loved my school’s lab. I spent a lot of time there and I miss it.

I like working in school laboratories.....I have an 80 square metre prep room more or less to myself....nice for making my own dichromate reversal bleach....though my wife does not like the dichromate stains on our kitchen cupboards from home processing!

 

[cmacd123]

I managed to obtain from an ABE-Books bookseller a copy of a Ferrania catalogue from 1965, which does have some real data sheets on P30 both still and 16mm size from that time.

If The Film Ferrania folks don't object, (I would assume that they have inherited the copyright) I will try to scan the relative portions in the next week or two. there are even some curves of what the film of 50 years ago worked like. I can either send it to Dave Bias and ask him to make it available, or I can probably find some web space on one of my e-mail accounts.

What My initial study DID reveal is that Ferrania at that time recommended their R 18/a Developer. with a time of 8-10 minutes for the still film, and 6 to 8 minutes for the 16mm film (both at 20C) I went to make a table of the formula of R18/a, (found in another book I bought, in Italian showing the 1958 range of Cine films) and smiled when I realized it is identical to D76.

P30 does not seem to show in the 1958 book, (I could have missed it as I have no clue reading Italian) although P3 does. Both P3 and P30 show in the 1965 book (in English) under Movie film.

The 1965 book had a slip of paper in it, 3m Ferrania's US representative had apparently provided it to a US photographer, after the photographer had seen a Ferrania Booth at at trade show, and made an inquiry. The letter noted that the products were not at that time sold in the USA.

 

[faberryman]

My initial study DID reveal is that Ferrania at that time recommended their R 18/a Developer. with a time of 8-10 minutes for the still film, and 6 to 8 minutes for the 16mm film (both at 20C) I went to make a table of the formula of R18/a, (found in another book I bought, in Italian showing the 1958 range of Cine films) and smiled when I realized it is identical to D76.

That's interesting. I thought Ferrania claimed that, as a motion picture film, its intended developer was D96.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Well, I have a good cartoon of "How Kodak Makes Film". It was posted elsewhere and I can't locate it right now, but it is in the book. It was posted all over Kodak Park by an anonymous artist.

We only used Bunsen Burners for heating Melting Point Tubes. We were past using them by my time, but I did learn.

PE

 

[cmacd123]

That's interesting. I thought Ferrania claimed that, as a motion picture film, its intended developer was D96.

d76 was originally a motion picture developer.

 

[Harry Callahan]

Real developing laboratory? You mean a darkroom?

Yep:
http://www.filmferrania.it/news-articles/2017/alpha-testing

"
We thank Officine Fahrenheit, and Matteo in particular, for their critical help in refining FERRANIA P30® ALPHA film for production.
The data generated during their tests, as well as our other sample labs, The Darkroom, Blue Moon Camera & Machine, and Icon,....."

Ahaha... no.

 

[Harry Callahan]

I managed to obtain from an ABE-Books bookseller a copy of a Ferrania catalogue from 1965, which does have some real data sheets on P30 both still and 16mm size from that time.....

That would be quite interesting.

 

[mshchem]

Well, I have a good cartoon of "How Kodak Makes Film". It was posted elsewhere and I can't locate it right now, but it is in the book. It was posted all over Kodak Park by an anonymous artist.

We only used Bunsen Burners for heating Melting Point Tubes. We were past using them by my time, but I did learn.

PE

I was employed as an analytical chemist in the early 90's by Amana Refrigeration. Before they hired the "Chemist" they had a bunch of mechanical engineers with a half a million dollars to spend on laboratory instruments. The FTIR guys were in the "golden era" they sold management a really amazing unit must have set them back 250 grand, the rest was spent on gas chromatographs, auto titration stuff etc.

Needless to say I shook my head and said great! Management thought you could put any matter in the universe into the FTIR it would search it's "library " and spit out an exact identification . The most reported answer when analyzing esters was Nutmeg oil!

We had a problem with contamination in compressors . I bought 1 piece of equipment, a Mel-temp melting point heater, thermometer, and magnifier glass $200. That's what I used to confirm what the suspect compound was. It was a type of ester wax, dissolved in ester oil for the compressor. Trying to identify it with melting point was the only practical way to do it.
Needless to say Amana was bought and sold 3 times, it's now the last refrigerator factory Whirlpool runs in the USA.

 

[alanrockwood]

I was employed as an analytical chemist in the early 90's by Amana Refrigeration. Before they hired the "Chemist" they had a bunch of mechanical engineers with a half a million dollars to spend on laboratory instruments. The FTIR guys were in the "golden era" they sold management a really amazing unit must have set them back 250 grand, the rest was spent on gas chromatographs, auto titration stuff etc.

Needless to say I shook my head and said great! Management thought you could put any matter in the universe into the FTIR it would search it's "library " and spit out an exact identification . The most reported answer when analyzing esters was Nutmeg oil!

We had a problem with contamination in compressors . I bought 1 piece of equipment, a Mel-temp melting point heater, thermometer, and magnifier glass $200. That's what I used to confirm what the suspect compound was. It was a type of ester wax, dissolved in ester oil for the compressor. Trying to identify it with melting point was the only practical way to do it.
Needless to say Amana was bought and sold 3 times, it's now the last refrigerator factory Whirlpool runs in the USA.

These days we are in the mass spectrometry golden era.

By the way, your story reminds me of a story my dissertation advisor once told me. There was an older faculty member. (I don't recall the name of the school where he worked.) Part of the PhD requirement was that the student had to present a proposal that was unrelated to their PhD project. Many students would come in with very elaborate proposals. This old faculty member would then say "just show me something you can do with a Mettler balance."

 

[Photo Engineer]

Oh, we had to learn pH measurement via a Wheatstone bridge to learn from the beginning.

BTW, Kodak loved that kind of breadth of knowledge.

PE

 

[mshchem]

These days we are in the mass spectrometry golden era.

By the way, your story reminds me of a story my dissertation advisor once told me. There was an older faculty member. (I don't recall the name of the school where he worked.) Part of the PhD requirement was that the student had to present a proposal that was unrelated to their PhD project. Many students would come in with very elaborate proposals. This old faculty member would then say "just show me something you can do with a Mettler balance."

I loved gravimetric assays. I worked as a bench, analytical chemist for about 12 years in 70's and 80's. The most fun was the classic wet chemistry assays. I was lucky, we had a single pan Sartorius balance. My Dad used an Ainsworth Chain-O-Matic twin pan. That was pretty nice right after WWII. I still have the Ainsworth, nice set of weights, Ivory tipped tweezers so you didn't harm the weights . I'm contemplating a mid-twentieth century lab in a spare room. Drives me crazy now that I'm retired that I don't have access to equipment. Does anyone run Kjeldahl nitrogen assays anymore? I bet I ran 5,000 over the years. Now days people stand in front of machines all day, boring.

 

[alanrockwood]

I loved gravimetric assays. I worked as a bench, analytical chemist for about 12 years in 70's and 80's. The most fun was the classic wet chemistry assays. I was lucky, we had a single pan Sartorius balance. My Dad used an Ainsworth Chain-O-Matic twin pan. That was pretty nice right after WWII. I still have the Ainsworth, nice set of weights, Ivory tipped tweezers so you didn't harm the weights . I'm contemplating a mid-twentieth century lab in a spare room. Drives me crazy now that I'm retired that I don't have access to equipment. Does anyone run Kjeldahl nitrogen assays anymore? I bet I ran 5,000 over the years. Now days people stand in front of machines all day, boring.

I never ran the Kjeldahl method. I ran some atomic absorption spectroscopy, a little UV/Vis spectroscopy, a little gravimetric analysis, and a lot of mass spectrometry. (I currently edit a journal in the field of mass spectrometry) I did a short stint in a routine analytical chemistry lab before I went to grad school. In grad school I specialized in physical chemistry, and stayed in that field for a few years. Then I drifted into analytical chemistry and instrumentation design. For the last sixteen years of my career I specialized in clinical chemistry, which is essentially analytical chemistry applied to the analysis of medical samples. I became board certified in that field during the final six years of my career. Interestingly, Richard J. Henry, who is known here mainly for writing a book on photography (Controls in Black and White Photography) was also a very prominent clinical chemist who wrote a very influential textbook in the field of clinical chemistry.

 

[wyofilm]

So many chemists on this site. I worked as an analytical chemist right out of college - mainly ground water samples. Pay was poor; boss was jerk. Best job ever as it pushed me into grad school. Most of my career was as a structural biologist studying the structure and function of proteins and nucleic acids. Main tools were NMR and x-ray crystallography. Gave the academic life up which was quickly becoming less science/teaching and more administration (yuk!) to find a better form of bull shit. I'm now a cattle rancher in Wyoming.

Never ran a Kjeldahl assay myself.

 

[Photo Engineer]

I ran exactly one, for a course.

 

[mshchem]

You guys did real chemistry . My real career was working on eliminating ozone depleting components from refrigerator foam and refrigerants. The US companies drug it out over 20 years. So unfortunately it meant a lot of meetings with US-EPA, suppliers etc. It was fun,but I ended up in engineering as an expert on application of polyurethane foam, no real chemistry.

 

[jonasfj]

What is the definiton of "This fall" anyways? Before 23 Dec?

 

[EdoNork]

We currently run 8 Kjeldahl assays daily at work. We prefer over the automatic procewdures. Rest of the lab is up to date standards

 

[cmacd123]

What is the definiton of "This fall" anyways? Before 23 Dec?

before the winter solstice... ->
Winter solstice 2018 in Northern Hemisphere will be at 5:23 p.m. on
Friday
,
December 21 Eastern Time.

 

[wlodekmj]

What is the definiton of "This fall" anyways? Before 23 Dec?

Well, the definition of fall/autumn has stopped being relevant as, unfortunately, the shop page now says "Returning Early 2019".

 

[jonasfj]

Well, the definition of fall/autumn has stopped being relevant as, unfortunately, the shop page now says "Returning Early 2019".

These guys are unbelievably consistent in missing deadlines... Let´s just face it, Film Ferrania will never ever deliver color reversal film!

 

[warden]

Well, the definition of fall/autumn has stopped being relevant as, unfortunately, the shop page now says "Returning Early 2019".

Oh lord not again.

It'll get done eventually. Lots of other films to shoot until then.