Highly concentrated stock developer solutions from powder?

Will S said:

So, I'm probably missing something here, but why not just mix before printing? I do that with amidol and it takes roughly three minutes as opposed to maybe 1 minute for something like ansco 120 or ilford warmtone. Yea, it has 3 or four dry chemicals to mix, but everything is done at room temperature. I used to make up a couple of gallons of ansco 120 and it would last a good while too. For film, rodinal or pyrocat-hd in glycol keep a really long time.

Thanks, Will

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Will:

If I had an appropriate location available to me to both store and mix up "3 or four dry chemicals" I would seriously consider mixing my own.

And if I had room to keep "a couple of gallons" of anything, that too would be an option.

Neither apply to my circumstances, and I expect they don't apply to the circumstances of many others too.

MattKing said:

And it would be even better if it came packaged as, for example, an envelope containing 10 individual packets, with each packet containing enough powder to make up 700 ml of stock Dektol (yielding 2.1 litres of working strength at 1+2 dilution).

So maybe my request is really about nothing more than packaging.

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Matt, if you have such limited storage lets take a case from this earlier post of yours.

Lets say that 10 packets weigh between 100 and 200 grams, a not unusual amount considering all chemistry and the packing materials. This means that they weigh between 1 and 2 kg and will probably take up about 10x10x5 cm as a rough guess. That is 500 cm cubed or about 1/2 kg, again not too much considering save packing and up to 200 grams of chemistry.

Mix up one and you still have to contend with the outer packaging and now 1L of liquid of developer and fix each. This would be 2.5 liters of material plus the original package.

Do you have room for this or is there extra left over?

If you plan on mixing them yourself, of course, you need a LOT more room considering the amount and packaging you would have to store.

I think what you need is a liquid kit of 1L, and the ability to mix and discard about 250 ml of working solution with each session.

PE

MattKing said:

Will:

If I had an appropriate location available to me to both store and mix up "3 or four dry chemicals" I would seriously consider mixing my own.

And if I had room to keep "a couple of gallons" of anything, that too would be an option.

Neither apply to my circumstances, and I expect they don't apply to the circumstances of many others too.

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Pic of mixing area by sink attached. Cat included for scale.

This is one of those optimization problems you can't win. There are three constraints:

1) Minimal storage.
2) High cost of shipping + customs
3) Not generally advisable to divide dry developer powder, making large quantities wasteful instead of being more economical in shipping and customs due to fewer orders.

If you remove any one of these the solution is easy, e.g.:

1) (if you have storage): buy dektol or lpd or ansco 130 and store your stock and/or working solutions. You mix it all, they come in powders that are lower cost to ship, and you can batch up your orders to minimize customs charges.
2) (if shippings/customs was not expensive): buy concentrated liquid developer 1l at a time as needed.
3) (if you didn't need to mix all your powder at once): order dektol in quantity and mix only as needed.

Assuming the storage problem just can't be solved, and accepting that we can't change countries or shipping, that only leaves number 3 to play with.
So that's the one we should compromise. A couple ways it could be compromised:

* you could try dividing up a big batch of powdered dektol. It wouldn't be optimal, but if you mix up the powder carefully and divvy it up into small 1-session ziplocks, I'm sure it would make prints. There might be inconsistency between batches, but that might be offset by the convenience of mix-on-demand and minimal storage requirements. If I were you, I'd try it and see how it goes. You'd probably have to start each printing session with hot water to mix it with and then let it cool for use. But if it solved the overall problem, that seems minimally inconvenient and there are ways to work around it ( a bucket of ice water will cool your 2l bottle of dektol quickly enough ). It's a pain to divvy up the original batch with a dust mask, etc, but you wouldn't have to do it very often. It seems like the easiest compromise to me.

* you could try to tailor your entire process to the first 2 constraints only:
Use all your storage for hypo crystals, a box of washing soda, instant coffee, and a bottle of vitamin C powder. Then mix your caffenol developer and traditional fixer fresh for each session. Use vinegar from your kitchen for stop, or just use water. Possibly the only thing you'll ever need to order is the hypo, so make a big order of that and use most of your storage for that, to minimize shipping and customs. It's gonna be a stinky darkroom, but I'll bet you can make nice prints. This has a true positive side benefit too: because you are dumping everything after each printing session, it's nicer to dump mostly-used caffenol than still very active dektol. A variation on this theme would be to make 2 smallish bottles of highly concentrated soda and ascorbic acid, to make setup more convenient. Maybe a bottle of concentrated 130 to spike it with a couple spoonfuls like John does would make the developer act more normal. It solves all your problems, but you'd have to learn how to print with a new process, and there would be a learning curve and some challenges I'm sure.

I didn't mention your other constraint of using huge trays of liquids. That's another one that is not necessary and if you worked at it and were willing to try, you could probably use a lot less in each session, which would maximize the usefulness of your storage and save money too.

I think something has to break somewhere: either more storage, more money, or mixing powders a little at a time. The caffenol would be a fun adventure if nothing else!

But you have opened my eyes to the problem: I went to B&H and tried for myself. That's why folks from Australia and New Zealand "make orders" from friends who are traveling in the US or Europe, or make big combined orders so everything comes in one big shipment for several people...

Expanding a bit on my previous post. To reproduce the color response of earlier emulsions you can:

o Use a blue camera filter for very early color blind emulsions. This will lighten blues and darken all other colors.
o Use a cyan (minus red) filter to produce the color response of orthochromatic films.

So there need not be any collective handwringing as to the availability of present day orthochromatic film. One need only filter out the appropriate portion of the spectrum. All photographers should be familiar with the color wheel and its uses.

Interesting - when I looked for the 500ml multigrade at the B&H site, the taxes for that are 4 bucks to Ontario, but 11 to BC, the difference being "Security and handling" I wonder why? I wonder what Security and Handling amounts to?

Looks like Henry's or Vistek would not be of assistance, Vistek wants you to order 8 bottles of the 500 Ml size, and henry's only sells it in store.

Can you quantify exactly how much volume you have available for storage? I think that would help with determining if an answer is feasible.

Powdered LPD seems an obvious answer, especially if you replenish it; you'd need room for just the tin of powder plus a 2L bottle of your working solution. I think you'll struggle to find any solution that takes up less space than that.

I have a left-field suggestion: don't tray-develop; use a rotary processor and process your prints in drums. I realise that the processor itself requires storage, but they're either tiny or big hollow funky-shaped things that you can probably store all your other materials in. The benefit of a rotary processor is that you use a lot less chemistry, which means less storage required for a given number of sessions. For example, I use Multigrade (it's readily available locally in 5L bottles, even way out here in Adelaide) and I use only about 80mL of concentrate per session, which makes up about 600mL of working solution. My 8x10 drum needs only about 60mL, and that 60mL can be used 2 or 3 times before it oxidises, so you get about 20 or 30 processing runs (test strip batches, 8x10 prints, whatever) from the 80mL of concentrate. So that's about 12 sessions from a little 1L bottle of concentrate. A bonus side-effect is that because a rotary processor does its thing serially (you don't have trays out for every step), you can process quite big prints with just 1m of bench space and a tiny tiny sink.

If you are really stuck painkiller

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

and drain killer (wear full safety googles) i.e. lye or sodium hydroxide

make an excellent film and print developer.

i.e. a Rodinal clone 1:7 for prints, 1:100 for 'finest' grain...

PaRodinal

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

Lasts for decades or a bottle of real Rodinal smuggled over the 49th in a Whisky bottle he he he

I would highly recommend 130 developer. For all the requirements it fits perfectly, storage, powder, concentrated (1-1 through 1-3 for paper and I use 1-10 for film). Photography formulary sells a version of it http://stores.photoformulary.com/130-paper-developer/


I started using it as a paper developer and wow. It made the prints just spark. I had to try it on film and now it is my only developer. I use it 1-1 for 2 mins on fiber prints and 1-10 for 9:30, 75 degrees with FP4, I have also used it on tri-x for the same time (9:30) and seemed to turn out. Have not done any testing with tri-x.

I have a batch right now that is 3 years old (I think) and I just printed with it yesterday and worked perfect.

I thank everyone for the suggestions. Some I have tried (roller processors - but they aren't as much fun!), and some I have considered, and may yet try.

I think the suggestions of LPD and 130 are the closest to a generally useful answer - one that might be used by a lot of people like me who have small spaces and temporary darkrooms and, unlike me, find it difficult to get liquid chemicals.

As I've said earlier, I have a few work-arounds available to me due to my proximity to the US border. I started this thread to both ask for suggestions that might be usable by me and, more generally, ask if anyone in the industry has or does offer solutions that will help lots of people in similar situations.

Has anyone experimented with determining what the smallest useful quantity of water is that one can safely dissolve a 1 gallon package of Dektol?

I think I must have missed this thread originally but it seems to me that a pre-mixed powder that you can take say a teaspoon or tablespoon or whatever amount required each time, mix with water to make 250-300ml of film developer as one shot then seal the bag and it lasts almost for ever is a real winner. The snag is that surely if this is were possible then one of the manufacturers would have devised it by now.

D76 spring to mind as a one pouch developer. If the powder is transferred from the pouch to the kind of pouch that can be squeezed to rid it of air and sealed and it is very vigorously shaken each time prior to the the insertion of tea/tablespoon I wonder what the problem would be. Some people claim to be able to distribute the ingredients this way and successfully develop each film.

pentaxuser

The soap companies package laundry and dishwasher detergent in Pods, maybe could do the same with photo chemistry powder/liquid combination?

pentaxuser said:

I think I must have missed this thread originally but it seems to me that a pre-mixed powder that you can take say a teaspoon or tablespoon or whatever amount required each time, mix with water to make 250-300ml of film developer as one shot then seal the bag and it lasts almost for ever is a real winner. The snag is that surely if this is were possible then one of the manufacturers would have devised it by now.

D76 spring to mind as a one pouch developer. If the powder is transferred from the pouch to the kind of pouch that can be squeezed to rid it of air and sealed and it is very vigorously shaken each time prior to the the insertion of tea/tablespoon I wonder what the problem would be. Some people claim to be able to distribute the ingredients this way and successfully develop each film.

pentaxuser

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The reason this does not work is explained several times in several threads.

PE