grainyvision
Subscriber
I see Amidol often used as a standalone developing agent, but only very rarely with other developing agents. Gainer had documented that a proportionally tiny amount of amidol (0.1g vs 10g) and ascorbic acid was capable of developing a negative on film. If there is some way to reduce or otherwise neutralize oxidized amidol, then there is also some hope of forming a superadditive pair AND being capable of reliably using lower quality stocks of amidol. I personally have some Amidol I purchased in 2019 and promptly forgot about, and is now a murkey dark grey, and produces deep brown solutions. It produces a bad color, but does work well alone for developing prints. The typical formulas called for will stain everything it touches. However, I tried making a formula using amidol and ascorbic acid, and there was no staining despite the solution still remaining a deep yellow-brown. There was no staining of trays or glass like I had seen before. However, this developer could produce a reasonable amount of density at pH 6.5 on some fogged RC paper. (just tested under daylight). With more bicarbonate added to bring pH to 7, it could produce a reasonable max density for printing with. I tested this and found the developer to produce a nice gradation but was quite slow, requiring likely 3-5m for standard modern FB papers of today, and producing a speed decrease with 2m of development. Spiking the solution with a very small amount of potassium carbonate very quickly brought the pH to around 9. At this pH paper would readily produce a reasonable max black in 2m. I've not done any real formal testing other than "it works" though. The concentrate listed below is a dark yellow-brown. When diluted 100ml to make 1L of working solution, the developer is initially a pale yellow-brown. Leaving this solution out overnight shifts the color to "dead ascorbate" bright orange and the solution will not produce any density at all even with greatly extended time. The concentrate was left open to air overnight and used to make a working solution 12 hours later. This solution worked well with no issues. No observable color change could been seen in either the concentrate nor working solution.
GVXB1 prototype #1 -- amidol-ascorbic acid print developer
Usage 100ml to make 1L of working solution.
* 200ml water
* 50ml propylene glycol (used for solubility reasons, unsure if this is actually needed)
* 25g ascorbic acid
* 5g amidol
* 5ml 1% benzotriazole solution (mine is dissolved in glycol)
* 26.5g sodium bicarbonate
* 1g potassium bromide
* 5g sodium sulfite (this is very difficult to dissolve and likely unneeded)
* pH ~7
* 0.4g potassium carbonate (if wanting to "spike" for faster development times, likely more stable without this)
* Top to 300ml with water
* pH ~9
* Appearance: Deep yellow-brown
Initial tests with images on Ilford Warmtone FB with spiking produced very warm tones with good black tones, similar to what I've always heard Amidol developers described to give. Without spiking produced a similar image but with less contrast and less speed (under exposed slightly). I did not try extending development beyond 2m to see if that would solve the issue.
Tests with another prototype formula (attempted monobath using a patent based formula) produced streaking, fog, low dmax, and poor tonality for paper, but may have been reasonable for film. This was using an amidol-catechol formula, it died quite quickly in the tray also, but was of much higher pH ~10.
I've seen one other person messing around with amidol as a superadditive developer. This was Jay DeFehr (a name that I at least recognize) and republished here: http://real-photographs.co.uk/formulae/print-developers/an-interesting-amidol-recipe/ However, this was a suspension rather than actually dissolving the amidol, so I'm unsure if it is a fair comparison to this.
Anyway, has anyone messed with formulating a superadditive amidol developers or seen any other work in this direction?
Print example:
GVXB1 prototype #1 -- amidol-ascorbic acid print developer
Usage 100ml to make 1L of working solution.
* 200ml water
* 50ml propylene glycol (used for solubility reasons, unsure if this is actually needed)
* 25g ascorbic acid
* 5g amidol
* 5ml 1% benzotriazole solution (mine is dissolved in glycol)
* 26.5g sodium bicarbonate
* 1g potassium bromide
* 5g sodium sulfite (this is very difficult to dissolve and likely unneeded)
* pH ~7
* 0.4g potassium carbonate (if wanting to "spike" for faster development times, likely more stable without this)
* Top to 300ml with water
* pH ~9
* Appearance: Deep yellow-brown
Initial tests with images on Ilford Warmtone FB with spiking produced very warm tones with good black tones, similar to what I've always heard Amidol developers described to give. Without spiking produced a similar image but with less contrast and less speed (under exposed slightly). I did not try extending development beyond 2m to see if that would solve the issue.
Tests with another prototype formula (attempted monobath using a patent based formula) produced streaking, fog, low dmax, and poor tonality for paper, but may have been reasonable for film. This was using an amidol-catechol formula, it died quite quickly in the tray also, but was of much higher pH ~10.
I've seen one other person messing around with amidol as a superadditive developer. This was Jay DeFehr (a name that I at least recognize) and republished here: http://real-photographs.co.uk/formulae/print-developers/an-interesting-amidol-recipe/ However, this was a suspension rather than actually dissolving the amidol, so I'm unsure if it is a fair comparison to this.
Anyway, has anyone messed with formulating a superadditive amidol developers or seen any other work in this direction?
Print example:
