Reducing sugars useful in developers?

alanrockwood · Jun 7, 2014

Do reducing sugars like glucose have any usefulness in film developers?

alanrockwood · Jun 7, 2014

Michael R 1974 said:
Sugar has been used in certain two-bath formulations (most notably the SD developers formulated by Russell at Kodak). It was added to the first bath to help supress development. I don't know exactly what kind of sugar was used, however. The indication in the formulas is simply "sugar".

Chances are when they say "sugar" they mean sucrose, which is not a reducing sugar. Reducing sugars like Glucose have a free aldehyde group, or in some cases a ketone group that can isomerise to a reducing form. The free aldehyde can act as a reducing group. Under certain conditions these can reduce silver salts to metallic silver, which makes me think there might be some utility of reducing sugars for film developers, possibly as a super-additive ingredient.

Ian Grant · Jun 7, 2014

Sugars have also been used in super fine grain developers, the idea is to retard the speed of development as a vigorous developers give coarser grain. Ilford's pre-WII super fine grain developer ID-44 used Glucose (Dextrose) and Salicylic acid. Harry Champlin used similar techniques but his developers weren't taken seriously.

Ian

Gerald C Koch · Jun 7, 2014

Pierre Glafkides in his book discusses making a developing agent from glucose. IIRC a glucose solution is heated with an alkali in the absence of oxygen.

DarkroomExperimente · Jun 7, 2014

Gerald C Koch said:
Pierre Glafkides in his book discusses making a developing agent from glucose. IIRC a glucose solution is heated with an alkali in the absence of oxygen.

I did some experimenting with this...I used table sugar, honey, dextrose, etc...heated with sodium carbonate in the microwave...and it worked

I had a thread called "edible developers" a while back or something that has more details

DarkroomExperimente · Jun 7, 2014

here's a link: (there was a url link here which no longer exists)

NedL · Jun 7, 2014

That is one of the best threads ever on APUG.

c6h6o3 · Jun 10, 2014

Sweet

NedL · Jun 10, 2014

Jim, you've only got half enough H's and O's!

Reducing sugars useful in developers?

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