Laser Exposure - Solarol and HC110

I am solarizing Ortho 25 film today, two 16 x20 images at a time.

I have an excellent balance for HC110 chemistry and making nice negs for traditional printing . I also have a large tray of Solarol Developer (metol based) and I am finding the negatives weak. I would like to JUICE up my Solarol Dev to be more active with out adding hydroquinone and without changing my laser settings.. (bigger deal than changing chems)

I have solved the situation by processing 1/2 in HC110 and then taking out of dev and putting in the Solarol Dev then flashing the film.. This works but I would really like to keep a single bath dev for economics, sanity and metol only sakes.

Ok Chemists , how do I juice the Solarol ???

I tried looking up the formula but couldn't find it published. Higher contrast would/might be achieved by increasing Metol to about 10g/liter first and if that doesn't work try increasing volumes of 10:1 sodium carb (monohydrate) and potassium bromide up to about 50 grams and 5 grams per liter each. That worked well for old techpan film.

Would temperature make a difference?

cowanw said:

Would temperature make a difference?

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unfortunately I am talking about 30liters for chem so raising and keeping it hot would be an impossible task.

Saganich said:

I tried looking up the formula but couldn't find it published. Higher contrast would/might be achieved by increasing Metol to about 10g/liter first and if that doesn't work try increasing volumes of 10:1 sodium carb (monohydrate) and potassium bromide up to about 50 grams and 5 grams per liter each. That worked well for old techpan film.

Click to expand...

My formula is as follows...

Metol 144g
Sodium Sulfite- 450 grams
Sodium Carbonate - 420 grams
Sodium Bromide - 56 grams

Water - 24litres


Other related notes:
For this particular application I am only using a single dev for sanity's sake, when I do print solarizations I add a second bath
Potassium Bromide- 432 grams to 6 litres of water.

then I add above stock 6 liter of the orig.. The idea is that I develop 1/2 time in one dev, then move to the second and flash. from W Jollys notes this second Pot Bromide laden dev changes the grain structure of the flashed areas and therefore when tone gives a quad tone affect.

Try increase metol and carbonate.
Metol 240g
Sodium Sulfite 450
Sodium Carbonate 560
Sodium Bromide 56
Water 24 l

Thank you I will give it a go next round.

Image courtesy of Brendan Meadows

So I comprimised and processed 1/2 time in HC110 and 1/2 time in Solaral - the flash was given once the film was completely immersed in the second dev.

The print you see is a Contact of the solarized silver negative from phase back capture. The print is a lith print on Art 300.

I really think this will be a great series... Brendan now has to figure out how to light the original scene so that he can control the solarization a bit before I hit the flash.

What is cool about this process is that since the film is Ortho 25 I can use a safelight and with some extensive testing Brendan and I can work this out to a predictable workflow for him.

This work is Slated for Capture 2018 Vancover and Contact 2018 Toronto so we have all the winter to work out the bugs.