Negative stain from non pyro developer

larfe · Apr 25, 2016

Hi APUG,

I wanted to ask others since I've just taken a lose shot at developing a roll of film 'experimentally.'

I've basically boiled my dev and cooked my film with that for a couple of minutes and fixed it directly from dev to fix without stop bath or water in between.

The results are a very dense neg with some yellowish parts. Before anyone suggests, no that is not the reults from underfixed negative that I am seeing which can indeed leave a brown type of residue. This is a stain that reminds me vaguely what I see on lith prints in the highlights.

I have read before that going directly from dev to fix can cause this, my questions are whether someone is familiar with this 'method' and if the stain is the same thing as a pyro stain.

Thank you.

pentaxuser · Apr 25, 2016

larfe said:
Hi APUG,

I've basically boiled my dev and cooked my film with that for a couple of minutes and fixed it directly from dev to fix without stop bath or water in between.

Thank you.

I feel it might help if you were to quantify in temperature and developing time terms what boiling your developer and cooking your film means

pentaxuser

larfe · Apr 25, 2016

Well it's not quite the point of what I'm asking but I don't mind. Boiled as in boiled to boiling point and developed for about 3 minutes then fixed without stop bath.

It's more the staining effect that I want to know about.

pentaxuser · Apr 25, 2016

larfe said:
Well it's not quite the point of what I'm asking but I don't mind. Boiled as in boiled to boiling point and developed for about 3 minutes then fixed without stop bath.

It's more the staining effect that I want to know about.

Thanks. It just seemed to me that boiling a developer then using it for film developing( temp might be important )might have some relevance to what you describe as the staining effect outcome. I just thought I'd ask the question to speed things along

If it has no relevance then fine. I look forward to following this thread

pentaxuser

larfe · Apr 25, 2016

Sure, I wanted to see if I could induce some kind of reticulation but it didn't do much. There was however a lot of crackling as I poured the dev but can't figure out what it was...

Andrew O'Neill · Apr 25, 2016

It would be neat to see a scan...

Saganich · Apr 25, 2016

If it's useful I haven't stopped for 10 years and never noticed any staining. I tend to develop at room temp. Perhaps an accounting of the chemistry would be helpful. I believe that generally speaking the stain is an effect of silver reduction, which I suppose can be created with any strong developer under the right conditions. So, it sounds like severe silver reduction in those areas caused by temperature, chemical oxidation, or some such thing.

larfe · Apr 25, 2016

Andrew O'Neill said:
It would be neat to see a scan...

A scan of a print or???

Saganich said:
If it's useful I haven't stopped for 10 years and never noticed any staining. I tend to develop at room temp. Perhaps an accounting of the chemistry would be helpful. I believe that generally speaking the stain is an effect of silver reduction, which I suppose can be created with any strong developer under the right conditions. So, it sounds like severe silver reduction in those areas caused by temperature, chemical oxidation, or some such thing.

Indeed, since the stain is 'warmtone' (yellow) it would make sense

larfe · Apr 25, 2016

I've just checked the contact sheets from that particular roll and cannot find anything special save for very few cracks in the emulsion, perhaps I should have tried freezing the tank before pouting in the dev and cooling down the fixer (yuk)

Wayne · Apr 25, 2016

larfe said:
A scan of a print or???

I don't think the stain will show up in the print... so a negative scan would be useful

Saganich · Apr 25, 2016

Yes hot developer to freezing water stop or fix might do the trick. The greater the temperature difference between baths to higher the likelihood or reticulation. I once got a some mild reticulated emulsion after keeping an undeveloped film in a tank with a cotton ball soaked with glacial acetic acid. It was an attempt to increase density of the latent image before development.

pentaxuser · Apr 25, 2016

Just out of interest does any photographic chemist here know what effect boiling developer has on its abilty to do the job it is designed for? It just seems incredible that boiling developer and presumably then using it at a very high temp to develop film only has a reticulation effect and then only that because the fixer is used at ambient temperature

Does this mean that we can boil developer, use it on film at very high temperature and then fix at an equally high temperature there is no effect on the film compared to developer and fix at say 20C?

pentaxuser

larfe · Apr 25, 2016

I'm obviously no chemist but I regularly boil my lith developer to 60c to speed it up. it does lead to an increase in warm tones in the highlights, which I suspect is similar to what's happened to my film

Gerald C Koch · Apr 25, 2016

pentaxuser said:
Just out of interest does any photographic chemist here know what effect boiling developer has on its abilty to do the job it is designed for? It just seems incredible that boiling developer and presumably then using it at a very high temp to develop film only has a reticulation effect and then only that because the fixer is used at ambient temperature

Does this mean that we can boil developer, use it on film at very high temperature and then fix at an equally high temperature there is no effect on the film compared to developer and fix at say 20C?

pentaxuser

Yes, you are correct. All that boiling is going to do is cause the emulsion to slough off the film base. It is a sudden change in temperature that causes reticulation not temperature alone. Reticulation is caused by two adjacent film layers being exposed to dramatically different temperatures. You can see this in photographs that show the very distinctive reticulation pattern. The effect is caused by contraction/expansion in the film layers being different for a moment. The torsions involved cause the pattern. You don't need a microscope to see it. The naked eye or with a weak magnifier are sufficient. With todays emulsions ordinary photographers very seldom get a chance to actually see reticulation. However that does not prevent it from being blamed for a variety of conditions.

Reticulation can also be caused by rapid changes in osmotic pressure. However the average photographer is not apt to encounter it.

During the last few years on APUG I don't remember seeing any authentic sample posted. But often it is difficult with bad scans.

pentaxuser · Apr 26, 2016

larfe said:
I'm obviously no chemist but I regularly boil my lith developer to 60c to speed it up. it does lead to an increase in warm tones in the highlights, which I suspect is similar to what's happened to my film

Thanks for that. 60C is hot but still 40c below boiling point. I thought you had said that you boiled the developer (100C) for a period( seconds, mins?) then developed film in the boiled developer( seconds, minutes after it had boiled)?

Are you developing film in lith developer at 60C?

I think it would really help if you stated what the film is, what the developer is, how long it was boiled for and then what the temperature of the previously boiled developer was when you immerse the film into it? In cases where you need answers you cannot give us too much accurate information
Thanks

pentaxuser

larfe · Apr 26, 2016

^^

I have to admit to your enthusiasm being rather unusual, at least for me but it's ok.

I meant that I use lith developer for my prints and regularly boil the dev to 60c. This particular roll of film was foma 400 developed in d76 which was boiled to boiling point.
Having printed a few of the frames today, I'd have to say that not adding images to this thread does not do it justice.

The results came out unpredictably good, something which could not be seen from contact sheets. Very grainy prints probably due to the amount of base fog, it rather adds to the surrealism feel of the thing.

All good!

pentaxuser · Apr 27, 2016

larfe said:
^^

This particular roll of film was foma 400 developed in d76 which was boiled to boiling point.
Having printed a few of the frames today, I'd have to say that not adding images to this thread does not do it justice.

The results came out unpredictably good, something which could not be seen from contact sheets. Very grainy prints probably due to the amount of base fog, it rather adds to the surrealism feel of the thing.

All good!

Just one more question and I am being repetitive here. Thanks for confirming that the D76 was at one point actually boiling i.e. 100C but can you say what was the temperature of the D76 when you immersed the Foma film into it. If you cannot say accurately what it was then it will help if you are able to say how many minutes after boiling point that the film was immersed into it as this may give us a chance to estimate the temperature. We will assume that after boiling, the D76 was kept at roughly room temperature, say 20C unless you tell us otherwise

I do urge you to shows us scans as it would seem that you have managed good prints from what most would regard as a damaging temperature for the D76 and possibly damaging temperature for the Foma film, depending on how long it was after boiling that you immersed the film.

Thanks

pentaxuser

larfe · May 4, 2016

^^

Sorry for taking so long on this. I can't really answer this unfortunately as I can't remember.

I can post scans though, there they are:

larfe · May 4, 2016

What I did though was a second experiment with 2 rolls in boiled dev again to about 80c. This time instead of developing in a tank I did it in a bucket with loose film in it and a chem mixer to agitate.

The results came out somewhat similar except that I did get some form of reticulation this time... and and and most of the emulsion came off which gives a type of death punk style to the images. End joy:

Negative stain from non pyro developer

larfe

pentaxuser

larfe

pentaxuser

larfe

Andrew O'Neill

Moderator

Saganich

larfe

larfe

Wayne

Saganich

Attachments

pentaxuser

larfe

Gerald C Koch

pentaxuser

larfe

pentaxuser

larfe

larfe

Negative stain from non pyro developer

Moderator

Attachments

Privacy & Transparency

Privacy & Transparency