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Two questions about Kodak

John Wiegerink said:
Hogwash on the equipment you say you need! Gadget Gainer would omit the scale and suggest a cheap set of measuring spoons for a simple developer like D23 or even D76 for that matter. Ha-ha, but true!
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That would work too. Electronic scales are so cheap might as well have one for kicks.
 
mshchem said:
Good to hear Sino Promise is still operating in China. The market keeps changing, small shops closing etc.
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Economy chaos in China is far more severe than we can imagine. My Kodak C-41 fixer is running out and need to order some more. There are only 4 retailers in the US that sell Kodak color chemicals. I checked all 4 and found only Unique Photo still has the fixer in stock. I really don't like their shipping charge so I called Freestyle in LA. I was told they have been waiting the shipment for two months and don't know if it will ever arrive. I asked if Sino Promise is out business. I was told The Kodak Chemicals are in the middle of transitioning to a different manufacturer. Before all the legal issues are resolved the manufacturing (I guess by Sino Promise who is unable to manufacture) is halted. I told them I was concerned if Kodak photochemicals are going away due to Sino Promise problems and never come back. The reply I got is a little surprising. They told me they are not worrying about it. It sounded that Kodak photo chemicals will not disappear. It's only a matter of time of when come back.

I don't want to wait until my fixer bottle becomes empty so I bit the bullet and placed my order with Unique Photo for the fixer. I ordered a quantity that will probably last me a decade. I figure if I wait until the manufacturing issue goes away and all C-41 chemicals become widely available again the price would go sky rocketing way higher than what I pay today. Unique Photo told me my order will be shipped today. OK I'll wait and see what happens.
 
John Wiegerink said:
Hogwash on the equipment you say you need! Gadget Gainer would omit the scale and suggest a cheap set of measuring spoons for a simple developer like D23 or even D76 for that matter. Ha-ha, but true!
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Yup, I totally agree. All you need are the chemicals themselves, spoons and some mixing beakers.
A trip to the supermarket is all it really takes.
 
I have many sets of measuring spoons with some odd sizes which come in handy. I also have a working Mettler P1000 lab scale but never got around to calibrating it. It's the same as the one I used in High School many years ago. I keep thinking I will get an Ohaus triple beam scale. My brother used to tell me in our college days that one of his friends used an Ohaus scale to weigh out marijuana.
 
The Ohaus scales that used to be in the school labs seem to all be on evil-bay now. I bought a few scales at an auction 10-15 years ago and started a scale collection to mix chemistry with. Before that I had a Kodak scale that was kind of crude but it worked. Mixing your own is a nice way to have a good secure supply of product at your disposal.
 
I used a digital scale and checked all my metric measuring spoons in the kitchen. All measured different. The 15ml spoon holds 18ml. The other brand 15ml holds 13ml.

Not accurate.
 
Electronic scales are so cheap, accurate, and readily available that it makes no sense to mix up chemicals from powdered ingredients using spoons and the like.
 
When I was taught photography, many many years ago, when measuring power chemicals it was always by weight. Because a gram is a gram.

Liquid chemicals were always measured by volume in millilitres, again because they are precise measurements.

I'm sure you can get away with a spoon of this and a scoop of that, but that sounds more like home baking.
 
John Finch seems to manage very well with kitchen measuring spoons for D23 Two chemicals and measuring spoons that you usually find in the kitchen equals success
It can't get much simpler than that, can it?

pentaxuser
 
pentaxuser said:
John Finch seems to manage very well with kitchen measuring spoons for D23 Two chemicals and measuring spoons that you usually find in the kitchen equals success
It can't get much simpler than that, can it?
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I prefer more precision.. Does Finch also count off development times "one potato, two potato, three potato,..."?
 
SodaAnt said:
I prefer more precision.. Does Finch also count off development times "one potato, two potato, three potato,..."?
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During the last printing session at a recent Darkroom Group meeting I was working with one of the Omega enlargers and an Omega electro-mechanical timer.
I made an initial test using the Kodak Projection Print Scale - always a useful start when working with a setup that is either new to you or you haven't used for a while.
The 60 second setting on the timer seemed really short - about 40 - 42 seconds. The 24 second setting yielded something closer to 14 seconds.
So I switched to counting: "one thousand and one, one thousand and two, one thousand and three ....". My previous experience was confirmed - that was much closer to being accurate (when compared to the stopwatch function on my watch).
So don't knock those potatoes ....
 
I have several mechanical balances (note not a scale ) I love using these, a lot like old film cameras.I do have a couple Sartorius electronic scales, made in Germany, must have been in the 70's or 80's, these are lovely too. I use digital timers but learned to print in the 60's with my Dad, 1 one thousand, 2 one thousand.... That and his Bulova wristwatch . Made little hatch marks with every sweep of the second hand past 12, this is how I did things until I got a job too buy a fancy Gralab timer, the big black model 300 with the godawful loud buzzer.
 
foc said:
When I was taught photography, many many years ago, when measuring power chemicals it was always by weight. Because a gram is a gram.
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"... a gram is a gram." Well, when it comes to measuring reagents that's not always quite true. If a reagent has a tendency to be hygroscopic then weighing out a certain number of grams does not always measure the same amount of active reagent because the amount of water adsorbed or absorbed by the reagent may differ between the two measurements, so weighing may not give an accurate measure of the amount of active reagent.
 

and it can make a big difference. I have attempted to ascertain the strength of my potassium carbonate Pyrocat Part_B by measuring the density of my supposed 750g/L solution and comparing it to the graph at engineeringtoolbox.com and have come to conclusion that I must increase the amount of solution used x1.25.

Potassium carbonate is not often cited as absorbing moisture but it looks as though it does. Maybe not as extreme as sodium carbonate. Does anyone know?
 
john_s said:
Potassium carbonate is not often cited as absorbing moisture but it looks as though it does.
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It's hygroscopic alright. See e.g. its wiki entry:
It is deliquescent, often appearing as a damp or wet solid.
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Appearance White, hygroscopic solid
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The stuff I use comes in granular form, probably for this reason, because it tends to not absorb as much water as powder this way. I store it in plastic tubs with tightly sealing lids; this reduces any problems to effectively zero.

I expect yours will be caked pretty badly if it has absorbed this much water already. Hygroscopic compounds tend to first cake and ultimately deliquesce if their absorbance is sufficiently high.
 
Depends on where you live, too. It's not much of an issue for me out here in the arid West, where humidity is often in the 20-30% range. If you live in a more tropical area with high humidity it's probably a much bigger issue.
 

It may be expensive in terms of absolute price per ounce but given the relatively high dilution the cost per film developed is probably not any worse than many and still better than some other developers. Of course if film developer cost is really an issue some other developer that works well replenished is a better choice. I just don't remotely shoot enough film to worry about the cost of developer (within reason of course, which includes pretty much all current developers.)
 

You can use black and white fixer for C-41. Fixer is fixer, pretty much.
 
Udor said:
Yup, I totally agree. All you need are the chemicals themselves, spoons and some mixing beakers.
A trip to the supermarket is all it really takes.
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Agree, BUT a digital scale and that magnetic mixer are both so cheap and so convenient that might as well get them anyway.
 
Roger Cole said:
You can use black and white fixer for C-41. Fixer is fixer, pretty much.
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Yes, it'll work, at least in my experience. Officially, though, a C41 fixer should be near-pH neutral; I think they're typically pH6.5-ish. This is allegedly to ensure the dyes adopt the hue as designed. However, as far as I know, the dyes in modern C41 films are pretty stable across a broad pH range, so the use of an acid B&W fixer probably won't make much of a difference.
 
I just looked on evil-pay and you can buy an Ohaus triple beam scale for 50 dollars delivered. No batteries to leak or go dead and a very fine piece of lab equipment. With a modest investment in raw chemicals you are pretty well insulated from the supply chain disruptions. Do you want d-76? no problem. D-23? no problem. Dektol? No problem. Ansco 130? No problem. The raw chemicals with exception of a few like glycin will keep for years if not decades if kept in glass jars and in the dark.
 
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