Making a color infrared emulsion

Hello everybody,

I would like to attempt to make a homemade color infrared emulsion. The goal would be to get as close as possible to the look of the famous Kodak Aerochrome film.
The thing is, I know very little about the chemistry of color film. I am not even sure how feasible is my idea.
Can someone enlighten me on this? Do you think this is possible to achieve? Where do I even start?

As homemade B/W IR is perfectly feasible, I don't think a colour IR is. Colour films have multiple layers. Unless you have a setup to do that, I wouldn't have a clue how to otherwise. I guess you would probably have to learn all about the making of colour film, and then try and make your own. If successful, then add an IR layer.

Andrew O'Neill said:

As homemade B/W IR is perfectly feasible.

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Oh yes? Tell us more, please.

paulbarden said:

Oh yes? Tell us more, please.

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All one would have to do learn emulsion making, then get their hands on an IR sensitising dye (sourced on the net), then add it to an emulsion...in complete darkness. A few years ago PE mentioned here which dyes would be best to use. Definitely much easier to make than a colour version.

root said:

Hello everybody,

I would like to attempt to make a homemade color infrared emulsion. The goal would be to get as close as possible to the look of the famous Kodak Aerochrome film.
The thing is, I know very little about the chemistry of color film. I am not even sure how feasible is my idea.
Can someone enlighten me on this? Do you think this is possible to achieve? Where do I even start?

Click to expand...

Very interested! I'm afraid the Aerochrome would be a patent from Kodak, unless ifn there were other color IR film manufacturers I am not aware of?

I just remembered the dye mentioned...neocyanine. Not cheap though. Could cost $100 or more per gram...luckily a gram could make a lot of emulsion.

Once my emulsion-making skills have ascended from non-existent to middling, I'm planning to try my hand at making separate blue, green, red and IR-sensitive B&W plates which could then be exposed through color-separation filters to create quadchromatic B&W negatives, and then re-combined in print using something like a color carbon process. To me that gives a lot more artistic freedom in the final print and is also seems like a somewhat more achievable goal than a DIY color emulsion IMHO.

Andrew O'Neill said:

I just remembered the dye mentioned...neocyanine. Not cheap though. Could cost $100 or more per gram...luckily a gram could make a lot of emulsion.

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Who else wants to go in on a gram?

Andrew O'Neill said:

I just remembered the dye mentioned...neocyanine. Not cheap though. Could cost $100 or more per gram...luckily a gram could make a lot of emulsion.

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Thanks for that. Do you suppose you could add that to an emulsion like the Foma stuff and make it IR sensitive??

paulbarden said:

Thanks for that. Do you suppose you could add that to an emulsion like the Foma stuff and make it IR sensitive??

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That could very well work!

ProfessorC1983 said:

Who else wants to go in on a gram?

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I haven't heard that since the eighties...

eddie said:

I haven't heard that since the eighties...

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ProfessorC1983 said:

Who else wants to go in on a gram?

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Where do you get neocyanine?

I once saw it on ebay, but just checked and couldn't see any... There are chemical companies that sell it. Too rich for my blood, though.

It would be rather simple to do colour IR with multible exposures through various filters on different frames or rolls of film.

That is one of the advantages of current IR emulsions being super pan chromatic, that you can use just about any filtration you see fit and within the range of the film, and keep the films character.

It would be far easier to set up three cameras with filters, through a four way cross, half silvered mirror, than do colour IR film.

root said:

I would like to attempt to make a homemade color infrared emulsion.

Click to expand...

Since no one else say this in a clear way, I’m telling you: there’s no such thing as a “color emulsion”.

A color film is coated with several layers (imagine a stack of black and white films), with one or more of these layers having a chemical sensitizer that makes it react to only (sort of) one of the primary colors.

By everything I’ve read about home emulsion making, it’s impossible to make color film at home. Period.

That said, you can do what others said here and use multiple negatives, each one exposed through a filter (red, green and blue) and then scan, colorize and combine them into a digital image. Or, if you’re more adventurous, use these negatives to make color carbon tissues and create a color image on paper.

But I guess you asked for information on making color film, right?

root said:

I would like to attempt to make a homemade color infrared emulsion. The goal would be to get as close as possible to the look of the famous Kodak Aerochrome film.
The thing is, I know very little about the chemistry of color film.

Click to expand...

This already should answer you inquiry.

From the fellows here with expertise in home emulsion-making and coating no one ever made a trilayer colour film, necessary to achieve your goal. The leeway for a film as you got in mind is larger than for a classic colour film, but the basic difficulties remain.

fabulousrice said:

Very interested! I'm afraid the Aerochrome would be a patent from Kodak, unless ifn there were other color IR film manufacturers I am not aware of?

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All respective patents would have been expired. Furthermore be aware Kodak were not the only one to make such films.

Helge said:

It would be far easier to set up three cameras with filters, through a four way cross, half silvered mirror, than do colour IR film.

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I've always wondered about simply shooting an E6 positive, and then using an enlarger and filters to make the B&W separation plates, either via contact printing or enlarging. A couple silkscreen pins and your registration would be much simpler as well.

ProfessorC1983 said:

Once my emulsion-making skills have ascended from non-existent to middling, I'm planning to try my hand at making separate blue, green, red and IR-sensitive B&W plates which could then be exposed through color-separation filters to create quadchromatic B&W negatives, and then re-combined in print using something like a color carbon process. To me that gives a lot more artistic freedom in the final print and is also seems like a somewhat more achievable goal than a DIY color emulsion IMHO.

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in Denise Ross' book she makes tri chromes using three different home made emulsions I was just in awe...
its hard enough making tri chromes with panchromatic film. ...

M Carter said:

I've always wondered about simply shooting an E6 positive, and then using an enlarger and filters to make the B&W separation plates, either via contact printing or enlarging. A couple silkscreen pins and your registration would be much simpler as well.

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You'd probably want to mask the transparency for contrast and colour correction too. Pretty standard colour separation practices otherwise - nothing special about it. But what Helge appears to be suggesting is using an IR sensitised film to make in-camera seps into the ranges that EIR delivered - a regular colour transparency film is usually sensitised up to somewhere in the 680-700nm range - EIR went up to somewhere closing in on 900nm. Hypothetically this might work - if your materials had sensitivity in the manner that EIR did. Anybody trying to get that sensitisation to work is going to likely discover how many things emit/ transmit IR and/ or will affect any emulsions sensitised up into that range.

fdonadio said:

By everything I’ve read about home emulsion making, it’s impossible to make color film at home. Period.

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It's not impossible (nothing of this sort is completely impossible), but it would require suitable couplers, a means of encapsulating then dispersing the couplers, a suitable set of emulsions that are sensitised correctly and maintain relative speed relationships etc after layer build-up, a CLS/ dye filter layer and interlayer scavengers, then carefully coating all those a layer at a time. Each of those steps represent quite steep technological challenges - and at the end, with the best will in the world, you'd likely end up about 1950-55's technology level. And that's before you have to deal with getting suitable IR sensitising dyes. People tend to rather willfully forget that false colour IR was not originally meant for fine detail usage, nor for aesthetic purposes - and that processing in E-6 rather than AR-5, while aesthetically interesting, would not deliver the 'correct' colours that AR-5 was intended to deliver.

We may have convinced the OP and rightly so that making colour IR film, given his knowledge of chemistry, facilities, expense involved was not possible but while he was only with us for 4 days and one post I'd have thought that before he went he might have thanked us for our efforts. Making IR colour film seems to have been his only interest in analogue photography as he left after 4 days

There's "nowt as queer as folk" as the saying goes i.e. people are a puzzle. I wonder what he was hoping for in terms of answers?

pentaxuser

Lachlan Young said:

and at the end, with the best will in the world, you'd likely end up about 1950-55's technology level. And that's before you have to deal with getting suitable IR sensitising dyes

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I'm happy that you think this is possible, that's what I've been trying to work towards

pentaxuser said:

There's "nowt as queer as folk" as the saying goes i.e. people are a puzzle. I wonder what he was hoping for in terms of answers?

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He probably liked aerochrome and thought it might be something in the realm of a DIY, which it isn't, really.

fdonadio said:

Since no one else say this in a clear way, I’m telling you: there’s no such thing as a “color emulsion”.

A color film is coated with several layers (imagine a stack of black and white films), with one or more of these layers having a chemical sensitizer that makes it react to only (sort of) one of the primary colors.

By everything I’ve read about home emulsion making, it’s impossible to make color film at home. Period.

That said, you can do what others said here and use multiple negatives, each one exposed through a filter (red, green and blue) and then scan, colorize and combine them into a digital image. Or, if you’re more adventurous, use these negatives to make color carbon tissues and create a color image on paper.

But I guess you asked for information on making color film, right?

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Actually, colour IR film.

As indicated by others, the least difficult way would be to take three colour separations, one on IR film, and then print them in súccesion each with the respective (wrong) colour onto RA-4.

Lachlan Young said:

You'd probably want to mask the transparency for contrast and colour correction too. Pretty standard colour separation practices otherwise - nothing special about it. But what Helge appears to be suggesting is using an IR sensitised film to make in-camera seps into the ranges that EIR delivered - a regular colour transparency film is usually sensitised up to somewhere in the 680-700nm range - EIR went up to somewhere closing in on 900nm. Hypothetically this might work - if your materials had sensitivity in the manner that EIR did. Anybody trying to get that sensitisation to work is going to likely discover how many things emit/ transmit IR and/ or will affect any emulsions sensitised up into that range..

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Oh for sure, I was more musing about the comments that had branched off into color separation ideas vs. B&W - and you'd really need to watch the contrast on the E6, mask it, maybe flash it, lots of testing I'd guess. My first real job was in a repro shop in the early 80's, and I use a masking setup/pin registration on my enlarger, so if I wanted to try something like color bromoil and so on, there's a potential path. (And for compositing images, one could shoot E6 against a blue screen and make masks for B&W or color work the old-school way, which would be something that might interest an obsessive ADHD type).

As far as IR film with that old-school look, I did a very quick experiment where I pre-washed Rollei's IR 400 and dried it before exposing it - it was very very "glowey", but haven't done anything further with it. The Rollei is a nice film with several moods available, but really works best with a 680 vs 720 filter, not as IR sensitive. I'm kinda "seen one white tree, seen 'em all" so I like it with a deep red filter for lith prints, can get a little surreal.