Vlad Soare
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Hello,
A friend of mine was kind enough to give me some Pyrocat-HD in glycol (the Photographer's Formulary kit), so I can try it out before deciding to buy more (or to mix it myself, which is what I'd prefer). I've never used staining developers before. My first film developed in Pyrocat, a TMY-2, looks interesting at first glance, it looks like it was toned in sepia.
Anyway, I'm going to make more tests before deciding if this developer (or staining developers in general) suit me or not, but until then I have a few questions.
I've noticed that solution B is very thick. It is mixed with glycol, too? If a solution of potassium carbonate in water should last indefinitely, then why would you use glycol? I'm asking this because if I happen to like Pyrocat then I'm going to try mixing it myself (though I'll probably mix the MC version), and I'd like to know if there's any advantage in using glycol for both solutions.
I'm very curious about something else. What exactly is that brown thing we call "stain", from a chemical point of view? I mean, the resulting image is made of metallic silver and... what?
And how stable is it? The metallic silver portion of the image will probably change very little, if at all, during the next decades, but how about the stain? Will it change over time? How sensitive is it to UV? Will it decay if you make a lot of alternative process prints, just like the pigments in a color slide decay if you project it too often?
Is Pyrocat a tanning developer, too? This may be a stupid question, but is the effect of a tanning developer visible to the naked eye, I mean can you tell if a tanning developer has been used on a negative? Should a slight relief be visible on the emulsion side, something like you see in a Kodachrome, for instance?
Thank you.
A friend of mine was kind enough to give me some Pyrocat-HD in glycol (the Photographer's Formulary kit), so I can try it out before deciding to buy more (or to mix it myself, which is what I'd prefer). I've never used staining developers before. My first film developed in Pyrocat, a TMY-2, looks interesting at first glance, it looks like it was toned in sepia.
Anyway, I'm going to make more tests before deciding if this developer (or staining developers in general) suit me or not, but until then I have a few questions.
I've noticed that solution B is very thick. It is mixed with glycol, too? If a solution of potassium carbonate in water should last indefinitely, then why would you use glycol? I'm asking this because if I happen to like Pyrocat then I'm going to try mixing it myself (though I'll probably mix the MC version), and I'd like to know if there's any advantage in using glycol for both solutions.
I'm very curious about something else. What exactly is that brown thing we call "stain", from a chemical point of view? I mean, the resulting image is made of metallic silver and... what?
And how stable is it? The metallic silver portion of the image will probably change very little, if at all, during the next decades, but how about the stain? Will it change over time? How sensitive is it to UV? Will it decay if you make a lot of alternative process prints, just like the pigments in a color slide decay if you project it too often?
Is Pyrocat a tanning developer, too? This may be a stupid question, but is the effect of a tanning developer visible to the naked eye, I mean can you tell if a tanning developer has been used on a negative? Should a slight relief be visible on the emulsion side, something like you see in a Kodachrome, for instance?
Thank you.