ZoneImaging Photochemicals: A new photochemical company

Raghu Kuvempunagar · Feb 23, 2022

https://zoneimaging-photochemicals.co.uk/about-us

"our vision .. to bring actual new developers to the commercial market that would be more environmentally friendly than the traditional ones already available with the added bonus of giving advancements in technical results and breakthroughs in the science."

"All of our film developers will always be ones formulated in the 21st century, either by us or by our partner photo-chemists. They will never be copies or rebrands."

"We guarantee that none of our products will ever contain hydroquinone and DPTA/EDTA. In all our products, we will strive to minimise the environmental footprint."

Dusty Negative · Feb 23, 2022

Will there really be new “breakthroughs” in the science of film development at this point?

cmacd123 · Feb 23, 2022

their may be some chemicals that have fewer restrictions than Hydroquinone and friends that might be able to create a new developer. now if anyone can manage to bring those to market might be a different issue.

faberryman · Feb 23, 2022

I took a quick look at their website. There is some discussion of them having formulated new C41 chemicals, but the only product they currently offer for sale is 510 Pyro, which was formulated by Jay DeFehr 15-20 years ago. There are plenty of posts about 510 Pyro here on Photrio beginning as far back as 2005.

Ian Grant · Feb 23, 2022

There's some issues here, first EDTA is biodegradable by bacteria at sewage treatment plants, the second is the Pyrogallol used in 510 Pyro is more toxic than Hydroquinone. The main reason Hydroquinone has a bad name is its now illegal use in skin whiteners, causing poisoning, so there are some restrictions on its transport. This has caused problems shipping chemistry that contains Hydroquinone by air freight, they have to go by sea, or over-land.

When I worked in the precious metal industry we recovered silver from spent fixer and blix, we also took spent developers, B&W and Colour there were no issues with disposal to sewers/foul drains provided the Silver level was below 5ppm and the pH was close to neutral. While I wasn't involve with this process directly, I was responsible for liaising and negotiating with UK water boards and getting relevant permissions. UK practice was identical to the US, we were working with a US, NY state, company.

Ian

Sirius Glass · Feb 23, 2022

Thank you. I subscribed to their emailing and I will watch to see what develops.

Pun intended. I have plenty of Pyrocat-HD in Glycol so it will be a long time before I buy more pyro.

Tom Kershaw · Feb 23, 2022

To quote, 'This further progressed to experimenting to make his own black and white developers after sparking a friendship with Jay DeFehr, the most celebrated photo-chemist of the 21st century' - citation? This kind of marketing hyperbole instantly puts me off the company.

Another quote: “The only problem with 510 Pyro is after you’ve used it regularly for a while and then go back to traditional chemistry, the results from it are different. It’s almost like 510 Pyro produces 4K pictures to the 720p of traditional stuff.” - this makes no sense, where is the comparison, process, methodology? - How about Pyrocat-HD?

pentaxuser · Feb 23, 2022

Tom Kershaw said:
To quote, 'This further progressed to experimenting to make his own black and white developers after sparking a friendship with Jay DeFehr, the most celebrated photo-chemist of the 21st century' - citation? This kind of marketing hyperbole instantly puts me off the company.

Another quote: “The only problem with 510 Pyro is after you’ve used it regularly for a while and then go back to traditional chemistry, the results from it are different. It’s almost like 510 Pyro produces 4K pictures to the 720p of traditional stuff.” - this makes no sense, where is the comparison, process, methodology? - How about Pyrocat-HD?

You have said enough for me to cast sideways glances at this new company but as a species we have this tendency to gloss over what may be or not be behind such emerging companies when they "appear" to offer anything that is new and with a hint of "green " credentials"

pentaxuser

Tom Kershaw · Feb 23, 2022

pentaxuser said:
You have said enough for me to cast sideways glances at this new company but as a species we have this tendency to gloss over what may be or not be behind such emerging companies when they "appear" to offer anything that is new and with a hint of "green " credentials"

Agreed. I'm not one to over-emphasise "green" issues in chemistry, and Ian Grant would be better placed to comment, but struggle to see how this product is more "eco" than any other black & white film developer.

Jemzyboz · Feb 23, 2022

I say to give it a chance. It may be a product to get them off their feet to fund research for more products.

I saw that @Ian Grant was talking to them directly on another forum and they mentioned they were working on a phenidone-ascorbate tablet developer. Now I don't know about you but I've never heard of one before so that is definitely new.

Pyrogallol is certainly more toxic than hydroquinone but it oxidises a lot faster and is naturally found in lots of things like coffee so I don't see it being dangerous to aquatic life when used in small amounts at the home user level

Jemzyboz · Feb 23, 2022

Tom Kershaw said:
Agreed. I'm not one to over-emphasise "green" issues in chemistry, and Ian Grant would be better placed to comment, but struggle to see how this product is more "eco" than any other black & white film developer.

Well, it's certainly using less plastic as it is so concentrated. It's marketed as capable of doing 30-100 rolls, that alone would make it more eco compared to let's say a litre bottle of DDX which has a capacity of 16 135 rolls!

Less plastic is a plus imo

Cholentpot · Feb 23, 2022

I didn't know that hydroquinone was such a massive problem. No more G&Ts?

Raghu Kuvempunagar · Feb 24, 2022

Tom Kershaw said:
Another quote: “The only problem with 510 Pyro is after you’ve used it regularly for a while and then go back to traditional chemistry, the results from it are different. It’s almost like 510 Pyro produces 4K pictures to the 720p of traditional stuff.” - this makes no sense, where is the comparison, process, methodology? - How about Pyrocat-HD?

I agree that a systematic comparison of the results of 510-Pyro with any of the widely used developers would be a valuable contribution. Let's hope that the new photochemical company or somebody commissioned by the company will take the initiative and enlighten us with their findings.

As far as comparison with other staining developers are concerned, Moersch pointed out last year in a Facebook discussion that all of them are speed losing and hence he had to engineer a solution in the form of Tanol Speed which employs a few tricks to get better speed than others. I wonder 510-Pyro does anything special in this regard.

Raghu Kuvempunagar · Feb 24, 2022

Jemzyboz said:
Well, it's certainly using less plastic as it is so concentrated. It's marketed as capable of doing 30-100 rolls, that alone would make it more eco compared to let's say a litre bottle of DDX which has a capacity of 16 135 rolls!

Less plastic is a plus imo

Good point. Also the long shelf-life of the concentrate implies that it won't be dumped because of it going bad, something that often happens with other developers.

Jemzyboz · Feb 24, 2022

Raghu Kuvempunagar said:
I agree that a systematic comparison of the results of 510-Pyro with any of the widely used developers would be a valuable contribution. Let's hope that the new photochemical company or somebody commissioned by the company will take the initiative and enlighten us with their findings.

As far as comparison with other staining developers are concerned, Moersch pointed out last year in a Facebook discussion that all of them are speed losing and hence he had to engineer a solution in the form of Tanol Speed which employs a few tricks to get better speed than others. I wonder 510-Pyro does anything special in this regard.

I had a look at the testimonials where that was written. They're all quotes from actual customers it seems and there are several high profile people on there - Andrew Sanderson, Martin Henson, a lab etc who all have given detailed testimonials. Some of them have mentioned specifically other developers in comparison and the sort of people that would know what they're talking about too!

There's also a thread here by an American lab made recently that does compare 510 Pyro to Xtol replenished if you're interested to look...

That is true that pyro developers can be speed losing but then again, I had a peek at their technical data sheet and the semi stand developing time section was interesting - nearly all films were rated for full speed and only a very few were speed losing. The table was sorted by base speed the films are at in the developer rather than alphabetical so I think this developer is truly full speed

Jemzyboz · Feb 24, 2022

Raghu Kuvempunagar said:
Good point. Also the long shelf-life of the concentrate implies that it won't be dumped because of it going bad, something that often happens with other developers.

Agreed!

Raghu Kuvempunagar · Feb 24, 2022

Testimonials are no doubt useful and clearly point to the fact that some users are happy with the product. However, positive testimonials represent only part of the spectrum of user opinion. No manufacturer publishes and would want to publish negative testimonials any way. They can at least do a systematic comparison and let the data speak for itself. I don't see anything wrong in encouraging them to do a study and produce data that potentially benefits them and users. After all this is 21st century, the century of data driven decision making.

Frankly, convenience aside, I'm curious to know what shortcomings of 20th century developers that 510-Pyro has solved.

BTW I've seen @NortheastPhotographic thread comparing 510-Pyro with XTol-r. In the same thread I've thanked them for their little study. IIRC @Lachlan Young made some pertinent comments about the comparison, in case you have not seen them you should.

halfaman · Feb 24, 2022

I would say this is a very modest start for the company goals and misssion in photochemistry, TEA and pyrogallol instead of sulfite and hidroquinone is not a strong presentation as enviromental friendly chemistry. Let's see what that announced new developer is...

Development of photochemistry with the least enviromental impact possible is a fascinating and much needed challenge, specially in color processes, but without forgetting other equalliy important aspects like for example single use packaging as already mentioned.

ruilourosa · Feb 24, 2022

Give the kid a chance

Don_ih · Feb 24, 2022

Any new venture in this field is a good thing. Any attempt to bring about something new is a good thing. Success, on the other hand, won't be easy.

Lachlan Young · Feb 24, 2022

Anyone who calumnises DTPA (rather essential to getting Ascorbate developers to stay functional for a meaningful period of time) and puts the hard sell on a developer full of Pyrogallol is frankly rather worrying (from a toxicological standpoint).

All the currently fashionable staining developers were not formulated by actual photographic chemists (likely because the results are not good enough under rigorous microdensitometric and double-blind visual print tests for effort to be expended on ameliorating their potential toxicity) - and the one that does generally seem to deliver reasonable results on some materials (Pyrocat) likely does so because it fortuitously complies with the requisite Phenidone to Dihydroxybenzene ratio (which is in the industry standard engineering handbook (which I don't think any of the formulators of current staining developers have even glanced at - ever) - along with why Dimezone-S is largely a better choice) rather than by intent.

Adox are putting the effort in to innovate & evolve materials in a more environmentally conscious way - this guy isn't. The problem is that if he actually had enough of the science to understand what he should be doing, he'd end up back at XT-3 (or Xtol/ DD-X) or Ilfosol-3 & realise it would take a lot of work to truly evolve from there.

The one thing the staining developers do is broaden the margin for operator errors in time & temperature control - which seems alarmingly high amongst their user base.

AgX · Feb 24, 2022

He runs both, a film processing lab and a chemicals sale. At the chemistry department he states to be going the environmentally friendly way, at the processing department he proudly states to run his pseudo C-41 process single-use. This raises at least questions. (To be fair, he runs a low bath-volume process, where replenishíng volume would be close to the bath volume.)

Andrew O'Neill · Feb 24, 2022

Sirius Glass said:
Thank you. I subscribed to their emailing and I will watch to see what develops. View attachment 299127 Pun intended. I have plenty of Pyrocat-HD in Glycol so it will be a long time before I buy more pyro.

Anybody who has Pyrocat-HD in glycol means they don't develop film very often...

Ian Grant · Feb 24, 2022

Andrew O'Neill said:
Anybody who has Pyrocat-HD in glycol means they don't develop film very often...

I have some Pyrocat HD Part A in Glycol that is at least 12 years old Actually it's double strength to cut weight when flying when I was living abroad, Actually it keeps for around 4 years mixed in water as long as the Metabisulphite is fresh when made up. I realised this as my stock in the UK lasted while I was living in Turkey.

Ian

Raghu Kuvempunagar · Feb 24, 2022

An eco friendly developer concentrate that offers the convenience of 510-Pyro and the quality of XTol would be a truly welcome addition. Tablet is also fine if it offers all the goodness of XTol.

ZoneImaging Photochemicals: A new photochemical company

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