Kodak Ektonol: Reverse Engineering The Formula Help

Kodak Ektonol was a favorite of mine to use for warm-toned printing for years. After Kodak stopped making it I stocked up with a full case but soon after I switched to mixing my own from established formulas. Last year I needed to do a quick printing session and was short/low on a few standard chems from Photographers Formulary, and I spied the case of Ektonol in my darkroom, and mixed up a gallon. It worked just as I remembered; a standard warm-toned developer with good capacity and keeping qualities, and the finished fiber prints were quite lovely. I mixed one more gallon size and have used that up, and now I would like to reverse engineer this formula but have not found a formula that is close enough as a starting point. I do have a few more packets to use as a control, and I have a good idea of the components they are pretty standard based on the package: Sodium Sulfite, Metol, Hydroquinone, Sodium Tetraborate (as per the package info), Potassium Bromide and here's the kicker, Sodium Hydroxide separately packed in Part B. Part A package states total weight as 227g, no weight given for Part B but a quick weigh with packaging is 31.5g ( I will be weighing the packaging of both A and B after I mix up this next batch to see what the weight of the chemicals is.)

SO, how can I go about devising either the formula or a close approximate? Anyone know of a warm-toned paper developer that used Sodium Hydroxide and no carbonate with lots of Potassium Bromide that I can use as a starting point?

I'd be willing to part with one of my treasured 1 gallon package to someone who wants to help figure this out, many thanks in advance.

Commercial developers like Ektanol are trade secrets you are not going to find the formula. You may be able to find something that yields similar results.

Yes thank you Mr Koch, I am looking to make my own version, and so far I've not come across a MQ non-carbonate Sodium Hydroxide formula to start from, hence my post.

I just mixed 2 packages, the first one the Metol went off and was unusably black and the 2nd was good.

The weight of the Part B was 26.8g and 26.7, both measured separately and with packaging and packaging weighed after.

The weight of Part A was 225g and 228g so pretty close to what Kodak states.

What I am thinking is to start with D-72 and replace the Sodium Carbonate with Sodium Hydroxide and a bit of Sodium Metaborate and lots of Potassium Bromide.

The Ektanol formula is a trade secret, and you will not find out the exact composition. Some minor ingredients (<1%) may not even be listed. These could be important, but that is unlikely. The ingredients list gives some hints as to what makes this developer special. It looks like an ordinary MQ warm tone developer except for the alkali, which is borax and sodium hydroxide. These will combine to form a buffer somewhat like Kodalk but maybe with a higher pH. You can measure the pH of a working solution to find out. Then you can try to figure out a formula that is at least a little like Ektanol, experimenting with known warm tone formulas but with a borate alkali that you concoct to give the same pH as Ektanol. It will take time and involve frustration. You will never get Ektanol. But you will have fun and you may learn something. A lot of people think Kodalk (sodium metaborate) influences image tone, so you may be onto something.

Be careful trying to determine the pH and use only pHydrion paper to do so. The developer will destroy a AgCl electrode if your pH meter uses one.

I applaud your confidence trying to reverse engineer Ektonol but it is not an easy task. How's your knowledge of photographic chemistry? Do you have a fully equipped analytical laboratory at your disposal? It might be better to use one of Kodak's warm tone developer formulas such as D-52, D-155, D-163 or D-166. There are also many Ilford and Agfa formulas available. Who knows you may like one of these even more. BTW, starting with D-72 is not the best choice.

I don't see anything particularly special about the developer composition. It is well known that Metol won't dissolve well in caustic solution, so they put Borax into part A and then raise pH with Sodium Hydroxide in part B. I doubt that pH will be much above 10 because such a high pH would give fog and an unstable developer. Also note that contrast and gradation are builtin into modern papers, and regardless of developer composition you will get more or less the same results, except for maybe warm vs. cold tone.

I would recommend you get the Darkroom Cookbook and read up on some warm tone formulas, or use the ones Gerald suggested. You should have all the required compounds already, there are few paper developers with unusual ingredients and most are not worth the effort with today's papers.

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the attached file contains a formula for Ilford's warm-tone developer ID78, given to us by Ian Grant,and it may give you a good starting point. I tried it with good success on MGIVfiber

Mai uoki , aole lohe, ho'olohe, ho'olona lolo, hüpo, hepa olelo a'o

It's interesting that sodium hydroxide is listed. The only time I've seen it as a paper developer ingredient is for cold tones, and often a warning that the mixed developer doesn't last long in the tray.

john_s said:

It's interesting that sodium hydroxide is listed. The only time I've seen it as a paper developer ingredient is for cold tones, and often a warning that the mixed developer doesn't last long in the tray.

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The problems you list would only occur with developers that use NaOH as their sole alkali. In this case there is Borax in part A, and together with NaOH this will form Metaborate, which has about the same pH as Carbonate. See my previous post in this thread.

One of the problems with Material Safety Data Sheets is that they often list what chemicals are mixed to create a product but do not consider any reactions between these chemicals. In other words they do not tell what is actually in a product. In this case the sodium hydroxide and borax react to form sodium metaborate. There would not be any free sodium hydroxide in the solution.

Kodak D156 was sold commercially as a warm tone developer. However as Ektanol uses Hydroxide it's probably a slight variation of a published Kodak warm tone developer and instead of Carbonate uses Borax and Hydroxide to form Sodium Metaborate. It's about economics it's very cheap to make,

Personally I'd swap to Phenidone as it gives far warmer tones than Metol.

Ian

I should have added that it's quite common for major manufacturers to modify earlier formulae by changing the alkali from just Carbonate particularly for liquid developers, Ilford, Agfa and Kodak all used variations - cutting the carbonate and adding some hydroxide, or using borax and hydroxide instead of carbonate.

A typical Agfa (commercial) liquid developer uses less cabonate and more hydroxide than it's Ilford equivalent. Kodak have their own variations but all are done because the solubility of Carbonates prohibits the production of highly concentrated developer (one or two part).

Ian

Ok thank you for the info, this makes a good starting point.
D-52, D-54 and D-55 are regular formulas in my kit, and I Meant to say I was going to start from D-52 rather than D-72.
I am currently combing my older formula books to see if there is a film formula that does the Borax/Hydroxide flip to metaborate, otherwise I will just use the metaborate to start.
I will do a ph test on the mixed Ektonol, and perhaps on the mixed Part A so I can figure out how much the ph sigts when adding the 26.5g of Part B.

Nobody took the bait, but my curiosity got the better of me and I tried something. I didn't have any Ekatanol, but I could still play.

First I examined various warm tone MQ developers. Their compositions are all over the place, but most contain less carbonate and more hydroquinone and bromide than their cold tone counterparts. An interesting note is that a working solution of Kodak D-52 is identical to a working solution of D-72 except for the carbonate concentration.

I then mixed up a couple of small batches of developer. The first was Kodak D-52. The other was identical to D-52 except that I substituted roughly an equimolar amount of sodium metaborate (29 g/l) for the carbonate. I found the remains of a rather aged box of Multigrade Warmtone RC, made a print, and developed it in D-52 for 2 minutes, and finished its processing. I also exposed a small strip of the paper to a step tablet and processed it. Then I dumped the developer and made another print and step tablet strip using the modified D-52 (with metaborate). I used the same exposure and development times. The prints turned out to be nearly identical except that the metaborate developed print was just perceptibly more yellow. Densitometry measurements bore this out, and also showed that the metaborate developed print was very slightly more contrasty in the midsection. The difference was not very much (.02 to .13 density units), but it was there. Visually the prints were essentially identical - even the color difference was very hard to see.

So Kodalk (sodium metaborate) can be substituted for carbonate in D-52 and probably in other warm tone developers without any change in exposure or processing. The results are similar, but there are just perceptible differences.

Note that warm tone developers vary a lot in the tones they give for different papers. Traditionally, photographers have also traded off between exposure and development time to vary the tone - something you can't do very well with cold tone papers and developers. Varying the bromide content also affects the tone (more -> warmer).

D-52m Warm tone Developer
Metaborate version of Kodak D-52

Water (52C) 500 ml
Metol 1.5 g
Sodium sulfite (anh) 21.2 g
Hydroquinone 6 g
Sodium metaborate 29 g
Potassium bromide 1.5 g
Water to make 1 l

nworth said:

So Kodalk (sodium metaborate) can be substituted for carbonate in D-52 and probably in other warm tone developers without any change in exposure or processing. The results are similar, but there are just perceptible differences.

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Can you confirm that the warming effect came from the Metaborate ion and not from a possible difference in pH? How would substitution of Carbonate with Bicarbonate affect the image tone?

Rudeofus said:

Can you confirm that the warming effect came from the Metaborate ion and not from a possible difference in pH? How would substitution of Carbonate with Bicarbonate affect the image tone?

Click to expand...

No, I can't. In any case, it was very slight.

I didn't experiment any further than just the simple substitution. Bicarbonate might be an interesting thing to try. I've seen a couple of formulas that use a carbonate/bicarbonate system, but I have never tried them. Since lowering the carbonate concentration is pretty standard in warm tone formulas, controlling things at a lower pH could be helpful.

I remember a Kodak spiel about controlling the activity of a developer being easy with Kodalk by just varying the concentration. That was a long time before I started playing with such things, but varying the metaborate concentration may also be an interesting experiment.

If you change from Sodium Carbonate to Potassium Carbonate you get very slightly warmer results so a change to Metaborate may well have a similar effect.

Ian

Awesome! How did you come up with the substitution amount for the Metaborate?
The combined weights to make 1gallon seem pretty close: Part A is 227g and Part B is 26.5 (but keeping in mind the part B is just to make the Metaborate).
One of the reasons for this experiment is how the print takes the toner and how the developer effects the final toning, and my Ektonol prints are different with the same paper and toning process, and I happen to really like what the Ektonol does.
I think I'll try this and maybe boost the Potassium Bromide a bit