Paper for Printing with Amidol

I want to give amidol a whirl. I have read that amidol is best with long-scale chloride papers, of which there are very few. I know about Lodima, but what are the others? I have heard about Bergger Art Contact, but I can't find it anywhere (I also can't find Bergger graded papers, but that is another question).

Doc W said:

I want to give amidol a whirl.

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Why?

c6h6o3 said:

Why?

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Can I conclude from this that you don't know of any long-scale chloride papers?

I guess the answer to this is the same as the mountaineers give when asked why they climb some godforsaken mountain somewhere - "because it is there".

Foma Fomalux, perhaps?

Lodima is the only readily available chloro-bromide paper that I'm aware of nowadays. That said, however, Amidol is not restricted to only that class of paper, depending on the formulation. For example, the Amidol Paper Developer sold by Photo Formulary is, according to them, best used with bromide papers; opens up quite a few more possibilities. I've only ever used the MAS Amidol with Lodima which is such a beautiful combination that I didn't look any further! The tricky part with any Amidol formula is the Amidol chemical itself--Chinese or English. Some folks use the Chinese version and never have any problems; I had lots of issues. The English Amidol seems to be hard to come by nowadays, but in my own personal experience it's much "cleaner" than the other.

Good luck!

Jerevan said:

I guess the answer to this is the same as the mountaineers give when asked why they climb some godforsaken mountain somewhere - "because it is there".

Foma Fomalux, perhaps?

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As an aside: On the old Bewitched series Aunt Clara would steal doorknobs. When asked why she did it. Her response was "Because they are there."

I have 3 large jars of Amidol that I bought some 25 years ago. Two kilos each I think. Guess I should get around to using it.

Luis-F-S said:

I have 3 large jars of Amidol that I bought some 25 years ago. Two kilos each I think. Guess I should get around to using it.

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Have you looked at it recently? Amidol does not keep very well and quickly turns black.

There are a few devotees that claim a certain look to slow chloride papers developed with Amidol. However if you are not going to use a paper of this type then Amidol offers no particular advantage when used with modern papers. There are also several downsides to this developing agent. The solid and its solutions can stain any porous object. It is poisonous and requires gloves when being used. It is expensive and often hard to obtain in any decent purity. The cold to neutral black tone it produces can be achieved with other developing agents and formulas.

In later life Edward Weston developed a neurological condition similar to Parkinson's Disease. The condition was attributed to his use of Amidol without using gloves or tongs. The condition eventually killed him.

Gerald C Koch said:

There are a few devotees that claim a certain look to slow chloride papers developed with Amidol. However if you are not going to use a paper of this type then Amidol offers no particular advantage when used with modern papers. There are also several downsides to this developing agent. The solid and its solutions can stain any porous object. It is poisonous and requires gloves when being used. It is expensive and often hard to obtain in any decent purity. The cold to neutral black tone it produces can be achieved with other developing agents and formulas.

In later life Edward Weston developed a neurological condition similar to Parkinson's Disease. The condition was attributed to his use of Amidol without using gloves or tongs. The condition eventually killed him.

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Very interesting Gerald. Can you point me to a reference about it's being a "neurological condition similar to Parkinson's Disease" and not Parkinson's itself? Also I had read/heard that his condition was ascribed to his use of pyrogallic acid, not amidol. Can anyone confirm this impression?
David

Pyrogallol and Amidol have similar toxicity and mode of action. Both agents are readily absorbed thru the skin. Since there is a photograph of Weston showing him with black fingernails it would seems that Amidol is the culprit. I watched a video recently where he shows one of his students how he develops a print. No gloves, no tongs, just his fingers in the developer. In addition photographers are more exposed to paper developers than film developers since they do more printing. The article where I read that his condition was similar to Parkinson's but different was in an old Popular or Modern Photography magazine. It is possible by today's standards that his condition was a variant of Parkinson's. Anyway he was forced to give up photography and died 8 or 9 years later.

As a chemist there are three developing agents that I will not keep in my house; Amidol, pyrogallol and para-phenylenediamine. I know that some people use a pyrogallol based developer but accidents happen too frequently to run the risk of contaminating one's living quarters. This is particularly true when working with one of the solids. As a graduate student I witnessed another student being poisoned with potassium cyanide. He was pouring some of the powder from a jar to a beaker when the entire contents of the jar plopped out. In surprise he breathed in. He survived the accident but it was close. The lab had to be closed and decontaminated. S___ does happen.

Thank you.
David

I have seen one person having an allergic reaction to PPD - and that wasn't pretty, I can tell you.

I have mixed it up a few times and used it with Foma papers. I really liked the results, a sort of hard to describe "glow".
Still have some down iin the basement. I was tray developing with rubber gloves.

Already mentioned, but Fomalux is easy to get, in Europe at least. Very nice with contact prints, and projection printing apart from being so slow, though I have never tried Amidol at all.

Gerald C Koch said:

Have you looked at it recently? Amidol does not keep very well and quickly turns black.

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Still light gray!

A bit more on Weston's Parkinson's like condition. It is now known that there are certain chemicals that can cause the symptoms of the disease. The first to be found was MPTP which can cause symptoms within days of exposure. MPTP is a simple organic molecule that is capable to passing the blood-brain barrier where it is metabolized to the actual toxin. Since then others have been found. Notice that the article is careful to say that the toxin causes the symptoms of the disease and not asserting that it causes the disease itself. However the effects of the toxin are permanent unless a particular antidote is administered promptly. So it appears reasonable that Weston's condition could have been caused by the long term exposure to one or more developing agents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPTP