New Workshops

Photo Engineer · Feb 17, 2006

As you all know, I am giving two workshops in emulsion making and coating in 2006. I have under development a total of 3 workshops for the future. They are listed below and I solicit your comments.

1. Emulsion making and coating, a repeat of 2006 with any improvements.

2. Advanced emulsion and coating including multiple layers, blended emulsions and multigrade papers.

3. Advanced color processing. Since I helped develop the C41 and Ektaprint 2/3 processes and the corresponding films and papers for them, there isn't much I don't know about these products. I really can make the elephant dance (so to speak). I am an expert on BLIXes, Fixes, Bleaches and etc. If you do RA processes and use either EK, Fuji, Agfa, Tetenal, or etc chemistry, you are using my 1066 Blix (developed in October 1966 at EK).

If no comments or few comments, no further development will take place. If you show an interest, I will go ahead. It will take me about from now until June 2007 for development taking into account all other commitments.

Your comments are gratefully accepted and any criticisms will be also appreciated.

PE

Silverpixels5 · Feb 17, 2006

jdef said:
All of your workshops are very interesting to me, and depending on logistics, I would try attend any and all.

Jay

Same here

Dave Wooten · Feb 17, 2006

PE,

I would certainly encourage you to procede, and would be interested in posted updates on your progress!

Bob Carnie · Feb 17, 2006

I would be interested in all your workshops.

Photo Engineer · Feb 17, 2006

Dave Wooten said:
PE,

I would certainly encourage you to procede, and would be interested in posted updates on your progress!

I hesitate to reply with updates as the previous ones have generated an equal share of both encouragement and adverse comments (those negative comments being in PMs and e-mail). I hate to 'toot my own horn' so to speak, and am becoming sensitive to the subject.

Your comments on interest will be enough for now, thanks. Suggestions for subject matter will be taken into consideration.

PE

DeanC · Feb 17, 2006

I'd be interested in all of it. My participation would depend on timing and logistics (yours and mine).

Struan Gray · Feb 17, 2006

I was very intrigued by the threads on photo.net about reverse processing RA4 paper. It is doubtful that I would be able to attend a US workshop on the technique, but I would happily buy a set of workshop notes, were any available. You could use a print-on-demand book service like lulu.com if you want to avoid the hassles of collecting money and packaging and posting the notes.

I would especially be interested in trying to understand how the various stages of the processing interact, and how to tweak and optimise them for different sorts of subjects or effects. In-camera use for ULF colour would be my main aim, but also photograms and conventional printing from transparencies.

Bob Carnie · Feb 17, 2006

I would be very interested in a silver emulsion process to coat on rag paper for contact printing from enlarged negatives.

Craig · Feb 17, 2006

I'd be interested in the colour processing course. I'd love to take your course this summer, but it just won't work for me time wise.

Jeremy · Feb 17, 2006

Bob Carnie said:
I would be very interested in a silver emulsion process to coat on rag paper for contact printing from enlarged negatives.

Ditto.

bill schwab · Feb 17, 2006

Go for it PE!

Photo Engineer · Feb 17, 2006

Bob Carnie said:
I would be very interested in a silver emulsion process to coat on rag paper for contact printing from enlarged negatives.

I do coat on Bergger COT320, a cotton rag paper. It works out very nicely, but rag varies from batch to batch and therefore you would have to adjust the formula for the batch of paper. I have also coated on Strathmore, Cranes and Lanaquarelle.

Basically it is a surfactant issue.

Baryta paper varies as well, but for a different reason.

I forgot to add that this summer and fall, I will be showing examples of coating contact paper on all of the above.

PE

L Gebhardt · Feb 17, 2006

I am very interested and would try to attend all of them, but most likely would only be able to participate in one or maybe two this year.

Would these be in Rochester, and about how long are you thinking?

Photo Engineer · Feb 17, 2006

L Gebhardt said:
I am very interested and would try to attend all of them, but most likely would only be able to participate in one or maybe two this year.

Would these be in Rochester, and about how long are you thinking?

This summer, I am giving 2. One is at the Formulary in June, and the other is in NYC in Sept. Both are 1 week long and deal with emulsion making and coating.

The others in the OP are for 2007.

I would do custom tailored workshops in my home, if anyone was interested. These would be in Rochester at the persons convenience, but so far I have only done demos on the coating equipment.

PE

reggie · Feb 17, 2006

Has there been any progress on putting together a coating kit(s)?
Also, you mentioned a while back that there may be a non-sensitized baryta paper coming out. Is there any news on that.

As for the workshops, I am interested in the coating one at PF or another one down the road.

-Mike

Photo Engineer · Feb 17, 2006

reggie said:
Has there been any progress on putting together a coating kit(s)?
Also, you mentioned a while back that there may be a non-sensitized baryta paper coming out. Is there any news on that.

As for the workshops, I am interested in the coating one at PF or another one down the road.

-Mike

The Kit is under construction and the bare essentials are already down on paper. These will be given to all participants in my workshops first. Parts of the kit are spread out over 2 rooms in our house right now.

The first shipment of baryta paper is on its way to me. Five hundred sheets of 11x14 for coating tests and 150 sheets of 16x20 were shipped. I will keep everyone apprised, but remember that all formulas for every process will need to be reviesed for this paper, as there are barytas with barium sulfate and others with barium oxide. In addition, any impurities and surfactants change required formulations, so I have a LOT of work ahead of me on this seemingly simple problem. This paper is stabilized with phenol and Kodak used thymol, so I have to learn how this influences the final results. I only have experinece with the use of thymol. Surfactant changes further complicate this. This may change things more than I can predict. IDK. Fair enough?

PE

Ryuji · Mar 1, 2006

Photo Engineer said:
In addition, any impurities and surfactants change required formulations, so I have a LOT of work ahead of me on this seemingly simple problem. This paper is stabilized with phenol and Kodak used thymol, so I have to learn how this influences the final results. I only have experinece with the use of thymol. Surfactant changes further complicate this. This may change things more than I can predict. IDK. Fair enough?

Are you sure about this?

I've tested a LOT of surfactants and biocides before settling on the ones I use, but the difference in the biocides is minimal, as long as they are added to the finished emulsions. Both phenol and thymol are very old generation biocides and there are better ones that are safer to humans and environments, and inexpensively available because they are used in many industrial applications. I've tried all sorts of stuff but the choice of biocide is rather irrelevant to photographic property (except for certain quarternary ammonium salts), and the choice can be made by the biocide functionality alone.

Surfactant is also a very important factor in making beautiful prints, but I see little need to change the surfactants added to the sizing, subbing, emulsion or overcoat layer to accomodate the differences among paper stocks. The surfactant choice is more strongly influenced by the coating speed, coating method, emulsion viscosity and the coating temperature.

I don't know how fast you coat, but unless you are coating at the industrial speed, there are many surfactants that work very well.

There is a larger issue that is not mentioned in your post. The binder system in modern emulsions incorporate nongelatin polymers in a small proportion (5 to 40%). The formulation of the binder system has a large impact on the quality of coated layers, such as swelling property, wet strength, brittleness, etc. If you are having problems in obtaining good coating, you should be looking at these issues together with the coating speed and temperature issues, because they are mutually dependent factors.

Good luck

avandesande · Mar 1, 2006

Methylparaben is what we used for polymers used in consumer products.

Silverpixels5 · Mar 1, 2006

We use glutaraldehyde to keep the bugs from eating the starches and polymers.

Bruce Osgood · Mar 1, 2006

Photo Engineer said:
This summer, I am giving 2. One is at the Formulary in June, and the other is in NYC in Sept. Both are 1 week long and deal with emulsion making and coating.

The others in the OP are for 2007.

I would do custom tailored workshops in my home, if anyone was interested. These would be in Rochester at the persons convenience, but so far I have only done demos on the coating equipment.

PE

I would like to learn more about your Sept NYC workshop. Could you put me on a mailing list or however you spread information.

Ryuji · Mar 1, 2006

Silverpixels5 said:
We use glutaraldehyde to keep the bugs from eating the starches and polymers.

Glut is an excellent gelatin hardener and it would be consumed by the crosslinking reaction and won't work as a biocide in gelatin emulsion. (Glut doesn't harden phthalated and trimillitiated gelatins, so in these solutions, it mail remain effective, but only for a while, because the glut molecules are easily oxidized and/or polymerized.)

Photo Engineer · Mar 1, 2006

Bruce (Camclicker) said:
I would like to learn more about your Sept NYC workshop. Could you put me on a mailing list or however you spread information.

www.cfaahp.org

Look under the September workshops.

PE

Photo Engineer · Mar 1, 2006

Ryuji said:
Are you sure about this?

I've tested a LOT of surfactants and biocides before settling on the ones I use, but the difference in the biocides is minimal, as long as they are added to the finished emulsions. Both phenol and thymol are very old generation biocides and there are better ones that are safer to humans and environments, and inexpensively available because they are used in many industrial applications. I've tried all sorts of stuff but the choice of biocide is rather irrelevant to photographic property (except for certain quarternary ammonium salts), and the choice can be made by the biocide functionality alone.

Surfactant is also a very important factor in making beautiful prints, but I see little need to change the surfactants added to the sizing, subbing, emulsion or overcoat layer to accomodate the differences among paper stocks. The surfactant choice is more strongly influenced by the coating speed, coating method, emulsion viscosity and the coating temperature.

I don't know how fast you coat, but unless you are coating at the industrial speed, there are many surfactants that work very well.

There is a larger issue that is not mentioned in your post. The binder system in modern emulsions incorporate nongelatin polymers in a small proportion (5 to 40%). The formulation of the binder system has a large impact on the quality of coated layers, such as swelling property, wet strength, brittleness, etc. If you are having problems in obtaining good coating, you should be looking at these issues together with the coating speed and temperature issues, because they are mutually dependent factors.

Good luck

Ryuji;

I have an AgBr and an AgCl emulsion that take two different surfactant levels on one type of paper and two different surfactant levels on another type of paper for a total of 4 surfactant levels at what amounts to the same coating formulation of silver, gelatin, hardener and excess salt (Br or Cl being the difference as well as a slight difference in density and ionic strength due to the different halides).

In addition, I see differences in response to the same paper from different batches. One example is COT320 and another is plain baryta support. All papers vary in some way or another. One batch of Strathmore I got repelled heavily and on inspection had small red dots in the center of each repellancy spot. These dots were embedded in the paper itself. Only about 1/2 of the sheets in the package had the spots and they were only visible by inspection with a loupe.

Regarding the biocide or the surfactant in the baryta, these are the differences that I know about. I'm not saying that these are what cause the problem, but if the baryta is sized with an anionic surfactant then this would alter the coating properties compared to a paper with no surfactant. That is just an OTOMH example. The phenol level is so high that the odor of it in my darkroom is quite heavy while coating on baryta support. Just open a new pack of Ilford MGIV paper and take a sniff. Phenol!

I do know that the baryta is very strongly repellant to anything unless I use much higher levels of surfactant than needed on good COT320. I have demonstrated this time and again in my own lab.

Also, there appears to be a mild reducing agent in some of the baryta supports. It comes and goes, but introduces black streaks in the emulsion. It is also a batch to batch variation that I have observed and test for.

In any event, I don't know the formulation of the baryta, but I do know that what I have behaves differently than any baryta I worked with at EK. I don't know the exact reason(s), but I have derived methods to work with these differences.

But then, all of this is just a small snippet of what I will cover in the workshop, with examples and specific formulas that were duplicated 2 - 4x in the lab to be sure that what I see is correct and what I pass on to the student will work in their labs.

PE

Ryuji · Mar 1, 2006

Ron, the kind of surfactants whose surface tension property is affected by Cl-, Br- or other electrolytes are not very suitable for silver halide emulsions. Those often influence on the photographic properties of the finished product. Also, each surfactant agent has its own surface tension profile and the time required to lower the surface tension after applying. Varying the amount of surfactant makes one kind of difference but the problem is not reliably solved by that approach. Anyway, it seems to me that more thorough investigation of surfactant and foam controling agents should help your problems.

I just looked at your workshop description. It costs $895 per person for five days? For that money, I would do private workshop or consulting... (Tho I wouldn't do that in central US... of course... but I'd do it in central Europe or somewhere...)

Photo Engineer · Mar 1, 2006

Ryuji;

Let us not debate here!

I have had 32 years of practical experience coating using hand blades, x-hopper, slide and curtain. I know what I'm doing. I have used anionic, cationic and nonionic surfactants. My results are proven and I have samples to show the students who take the course. I have demostrated this for fellow engineers here at my home and elsewhere. It works. I have the patents and internal reports to prove it!

I'm sorry it doesn't make you happy that I am getting results that seem to you to be at odds with yours. Now, lets drop the matter.

As for the price, I don't set that. The sponsoring institution does!

Go talk to them! Set up your own workshops. Whatever. But please don't belittle my efforts, results or my knowledge. Don't comment on the cost. I have nothing more to do with that than you would in my position.

I'm sure that your work is just fine and that you are doing well. Good luck to you.

PE

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