Triethanolamine (TEA) -- What does it actually do?

[Rudeofus]

As for hypersensitization action. I recall seeing reports that it works with Acros (the old stuff) but the biggest problem was it removed the antihalation layer. The film also needed to be dried and used within 2 hours or so as the hypersensitization effect faded quickly. I have no idea how this actually works.

I can imagine, that the removal of the antihalation layer alone makes film more sensitive, albeit not in a desirable way. Since any kind of prewash also removes stabilizing agents from the emulsion, you may lose speed a few hours after that "hypersensitization bath" was used. I am quite sure, that whatever real benefit such a "hypersensitization bath" could have introduced, Fuji would have already built into the emulsion. Modern films are fine grained, because they reach spectacular speeds (compared to old emulsions) with smaller and smaller silver halide grains.

 

[Helge]

Have you gotten these results, or do you just think you'd get them based on your theory. Call the advice handed out by knowledgeable people here "platitudes" all you want, maybe these folks actually know a thing or two.

Looking forward to seeing great results from you with TMY @ EI6400. Can't be that hard, can it?

PS: I am aware of Dan Lee's promising results with preflashing, and realistically that's the best you'll get. Good luck proving us all wrong.

Nothing personal. Sometimes you just get a sense that many people are paraphrasing from the same books, and not talking out of personal experience.
Something about the wording is just too similar.
Nothing wrong with that, as long as they would tell you.

Babcocks original hydrogen hypering paper is pretty exhaustive in explaining how, and what to expect and even talks about liquid hypering, combined with hydrogen (which he doesn’t recommend, though humid atmosphere seems to give a good boost in the red end of the spectrum).

A bit before digipocalypse there was some quite interesting research papers out on hypering with results that showed that among other things vacuum treating and de-humidifying might not be such a good idea for film meant for use in pre reciprocity failure situations.
I’ll see if I can find the links a bit later.

 

[Raghu Kuvempunagar]

I’ll see if I can find the links a bit later.

Links aside it would be very useful if you can provide some examples of your own work where any method of hypering significantly improved the speed. Does the gain in speed come at some cost such as increased base fog, reduction in contrast, etc?

 

[Helge]

Links aside it would be very useful if you can provide some examples of your own work where any method of hypering significantly improved the speed. Does the gain in speed come at some cost such as increased base fog, reduction in contrast, etc?

A. How would you know I'm not just cheating?
B. The web is of full of examples of preflashed film.

Of course there is increase in base fog and decreased contrast‽ In some cases that's is the point. And in any case nothing you can't correct in the darkroom or in your favourite image editor.
Something has to give. Same on digital, where you give up progressively more dynamic range to have the high “ISO” pushes.

For what it's worth Daniel Lee/Athiril did some convincing tests some years ago, on here.
I haven't done that much myself that's why I'm posting here. No sense in repeating the mistakes of others and not learning from collective experience.
Hydrogen hypering for starters, is pretty daunting to get into. I have some ideas on how it could be simplified though, for general film speed up.

I've done preflashing on some frames though and that is quite effective combined with a push, it actually results in a real speed increase.
As made clear in research papers on concurrent/simu flashing it's hard to quantify just how many stops exactly, but I'd say at least two.
It's a bit of a chore though so, I'm researching how to build a concurrent flasher.

Here is one of the research papers I was talking about in a previous post.
The download is the same paper in an abbreviated, modified version, and the original thesis is here:
https://scholarworks.rit.edu/theses/2879/

As mentioned countless times before by Kodak people, the trouble with getting higher QE with film, is not so much having it as such, it's keeping it over longer periods. Especially for storage on store shelves.
When you can do your own hypering though, that becomes a moot point.

 

[Rudeofus]

Nothing personal. Sometimes you just get a sense that many people are paraphrasing from the same books, and not talking out of personal experience.
Something about the wording is just too similar.
Nothing wrong with that, as long as they would tell you.

I concur, quite a lot of people quote each other, the explanations nonetheless are credible and well founded. Ron Mowrey confirmed it multiple times both publicly and privately. The arguments were simple: while developer research and slow and stagnant, emulsion research was a very hot topic as long as it lasted. Most effects, which were very successfully used in the 50s and 60s were directly incorporated into modern emulsions. If specialty chemicals provide an advantage, it appears much more economical to put them into the emulsion, and you also get a lot more degrees of freedom (compounds don't have to be water soluble, can be deployed on grain surface or inside grain, can be placed into any emulsion layer and not necessarily from outside to inside, ...).

To make a long story short: this topic has been beaten to death, most people consider currently ongoing debates about this topic just rehashes of old discussions and will therefore resort to copy&paste replies instead of formulating something fresh each&every time this comes up again. Anyone is free to prove all of them wrong. Calling all these seemingly identical statements "platitudes" is just a display of inexperience.

PS: I just revisited the thread with Dan's preflash results. Obviously his results look very nice, what's not to prefer about that preflashed pic of the machine shop? However, when push comes to shove, his preflashed image offers not much more than one or 1 1/2 stops more shadow detail, which is already impressive, but not the giant push suggested by the "Superia 800 @ EI 12800" text. This is not a 4 1/2 stop speed increase we see here.

 

[Helge]

I concur, quite a lot of people quote each other, the explanations nonetheless are credible and well founded. Ron Mowrey confirmed it multiple times both publicly and privately. The arguments were simple: while developer research and slow and stagnant, emulsion research was a very hot topic as long as it lasted. Most effects, which were very successfully used in the 50s and 60s were directly incorporated into modern emulsions. If specialty chemicals provide an advantage, it appears much more economical to put them into the emulsion, and you also get a lot more degrees of freedom (compounds don't have to be water soluble, can be deployed on grain surface or inside grain, can be placed into any emulsion layer and not necessarily from outside to inside, ...).

To make a long story short: this topic has been beaten to death, most people consider currently ongoing debates about this topic just rehashes of old discussions and will therefore resort to copy&paste replies instead of formulating something fresh each&every time this comes up again. Anyone is free to prove all of them wrong. Calling all these seemingly identical statements "platitudes" is just a display of inexperience.

PS: I just revisited the thread with Dan's preflash results. Obviously his results look very nice, what's not to prefer about that preflashed pic of the machine shop? However, when push comes to shove, his preflashed image offers not much more than one or 1 1/2 stops more shadow detail, which is already impressive, but not the giant push suggested by the "Superia 800 @ EI 12800" text. This is not a 4 1/2 stop speed increase we see here.

PE and other insiders always made it clear that it all had to do with keepability.

For a long time there has existed a number of techniques, known to the public and more interesting perhaps others proprietary to research labs, to speed film up drastically.

But if the film treated or manufactured with these techniques only lasted a week or two weeks on the store shelves, it was clearly a problem, unless you where going to remodel the distribution channels.

It might have been a hot topic of research. But even professional astronomers and other scientific uses, was a very small market to make complex and advanced production lines for.
The hypering they needed they had to do for themselves, and then mostly tailored for long exposures.

Keepability is a fundamental once you go over a certain threshold.
Try putting a bodycap on a digital camera and set it for just a day long single exposure without any noise suppression or multi exposure malarky on, and you are going to see some heavy thermal and ambient related noise.
That is what film has to stand for, for sometimes years at a time, granted sometimes helped a bit by cold and shielded storage though. But only reciprocity failure saves it in the end from accumulated noise death.

Improving short ("normal") high sensitivity exposures, quickly fell off the radar of the industry when it became clear to film manufacturers that it required remodelling the entire distribution network and also the consumers approach and attitude to shooting (as in the cliche of the typical thrifty mom treating film as though it was gold, even if the actual expense of each shot was laughably low, having stretches of years of their childrens lives on a single roll of 36).
Professionals either didn't care too much for image quality or grain (newspaper shooters), or always carried a flash or worked in a studio.

The topic might seem beaten to death, because it has always been attacked from the same angle, with the same weapons and with the same mindset.
A lot of talk and very little action. And the "action" that was taken was either done in secret at EK, Fuji etc., only to be scrapped like so much other brilliant corporate research, or was done by amateurs with limited resources and knowledge to persevere despite initial setbacks.

We are in a unique position now, only within the last 10 years or so, that knowledge and access to knowledge in papers have become a lot easier to get at, and more free flowing.
If not online directly, then in sourcing the appropriate literature and actually getting at it.
That alone makes it worthwhile to have a fresh look at this old problem.

I'm sorry if I touched a nerve with "platitudes". But is there a better single word for automatic and conditioned response?