Tag Archives: dektol

peroxide based photographic reversals

Oct

2017

im back at attempting to making direct postive reversals again.

there have been a number of different ways to do these over the years,
some use toxic chemistry ( sulfuric acid dichromate bleach ) some use a somewhat dangerous process
( wet plate ) and others are rather finicky ( silver gelatin ferrotypes ). there used to be a direct postive paper made by ilford
which was a single step, use normal photographic chemistry ( reglar old developer ) and it would develop a postive, instead of a negative,
these days when one says direct positive that is what comes to mind first … the good folks at galaxy have come up with their version of direct postive
( not sure what is in it, probably sulfuric acid ) i havne’t tried their chemistry yet but from what it seems in their website/video it seems pretty fun and easy.

there is another reversal process that uses permanganate instead of sulfuric acid …

i’ve tried a few of these processes .. the ilford paper is by far the easiest … the permanganate one worked OK but i messed up the PH of the clearing bath.
i love making silver gelatin tintypes, but it is a finicky process …

a few weeks ago ( maybe a month ago ) joe van cleave posted a video that was reposted on photrio.com ( neé apug ) that detailed
his experiments with a reveral process he discovered someplace online, and through conversations he had with the person who posted it.

the process uses hydrogen peroxide and citric acid as a bleach, no clearing bath and if you go to joe’s website ( strongly recommend lots of fun stuff there ..
he is a paper negative artist, afghan camera user and an avid typist ! ) you will see his 3 videos and the images he has made with the process.
be advised he uses STRONG hydrogen peroxide, about 15%, which can be purchased at a variety of places,it is not the weaker less concentrated hydrogen peroxide
you might find at your local pharmacy. i am kind of a scardie-cat when it comes to concentrated chemistr. its not that i don’t have good lab-technique, or
a rubber apron, gloves or a respirator, its just that if i can get away WITHOUT using peroxide that strong, i’d rather do that. it is one of my reasons
not currently doing wet plate photography … if i can do without collodion i am good with that, and if i DID do wet plate work, i would definately use
speed fixer instead of the traditional Potassium Cyanide.

so the other day i went to big lots and got a few cheap quarts of hydrogen peroxide ( 89¢ each ) and i headed over to whole foods
to get some citric acid. and i made a few exposures and attempts. first i was unsuccessful.
i was using coffee developer with a little d72 powder ( home mixed ) to boost the contrast and shorten development time. the negative looked great.
into the weak citric acid stop bath, short rinse with water too, and into the hydrogen peroxide ( about 1/2 cup ) and citric acid ( abou 1 tsp ) bleach ..

it is supposed to take about an hour but it didn’t do anything and by the end of it all, even after i waited a couple of hours, and then turned the lights on to fog the paper
( part of the process ) nothing happened.

i did a 2nd try, and still, it didn’t want to work.

so … i consulted someone who i knew would have a clue. he’s a photographer in california ned lewis, he’s a brilliant photographer a goes by the handle NedL ( on ipernety, photrio ).
i know he would know what was going on, he’s the guy who discovered how to fix lumen / retina/sun prints and he’s a paper negative artist who makes calotypes
( like the original fox talbot process ! )
has also been working the past week to get this 3% system to work, and he has had fantastic results.

he thought that maybe there was carry over from the sodium carbonate rich developer that was killing the bleach. makes sense to me. so, i changed my print developer
and mixed up some sprint print developer great developer, great chemistry, great folks !

and .. i exposed a 3rd paper negative and it worked great !, so i exposed another one.

instead of beng on a tiny scrap of paper stuffed in a 35mm camera, i put a 5×7 sheet into a graflex 3a and photographed the
dining room window. it took forever to bleach ( i had a 2nd 5×7 exposure n the same bleach bath ). 1 change of bleach, and about 6, maybe 8 ( i left and came back so i don’t
know exactly when it happened ) the paper negative was completely white, so i turned the lights on, fogged it and redeveloped it and it came out great. ( the 2nd one not so great bt that’s OK )

ned and joe’s peroxide reversal

basically here is how it works:

you expose a paper negative and develop it in print developer,

you short stop bath it in a little bit of water and citric acid

and then put it in about 1/2 cup of 3% hydrogen peroxide with about a teaspoon of citric acid.

( there are actually gram measures and real volume measures he and joe use but im just tinkering to see if it works )

with joe’s recipe the print bleaches to white in a short amount of time, with NedL’s it takes about an hour, maybe a little longer.

after it is bleached so it looks like a white piece of paper you expose the print to light ( joe and ned both have the kind of light, time and filtration )

you redevelop in print developer, and it turns into a postive print .. stop and fix and there you have it !

stay tuned !

Posted in alternative process photography, Misc., photographs Also tagged black and white, paper negatives, reversal, traditional photography |

late summer photographs

Aug

2017

by jnanian | 0 Comments

just a taste of what i have been doing lately.

it includes using a cyclone #3 and empire state …

as usual, i have been off the beaten path, i ended up in west greenwich at the plain meeting house

and also found myself at the abandonned and partially redeveloped lonsdale mill complex. i’ve been to both places

before, but its been months. i also found myself at home photographing closely.

cyclone #3, caffemol C + faux dektol

trailer truck along building, overcast sun peeking through

Posted in photographs Also tagged black and white, caffenol-c, cyclone, hand colored photographs, hybrid, paper negatives |

chloro bromide emulsion #2

Jun

2017

by jnanian | 0 Comments

its been a while since i made the emulsion i wrote about here
but that isn’t to say it hasnt been on my mind since a year ago january. i’ve been distracted with life and trying to finish off all my film, and making more sun and retina
and cyanotype prints. but this morning i decided to make some more go-juice.

i dont’ really have a recipe that belongs to someone else i follow but i mix and match hoping it will work, this time around here is what i am doing:

120cc water
4g iodized salt
12g potassium bromide
1cc of watered down D72 !
20g hard bloom gelatin

( my last batch was knox gelatin, it worked OK for a little while but eventually the gelatin broke down and made a mess )

i heated up the water and added and stirred all the ingredients so they are mixed and dissolved well. the water i put in a cheap metal pot
and i heated it up on the single burner i use to roast my coffee. when everything got dissolved and well mixed i took the salted gelatin out of the pot
it’s now sitting on the enlarger table. i’ll go back down in a little bit and re-heat it to liquid again as i mix the silver nitrate and water together.

next is the silver nitrate i put on an apron, gloves and EYE GOGGLES and measured 32g silver nitrate and 120cc warm water.
and mixed this until it was completely dissolved.

with the safelight on and the salted gelatin warm i stirred like mad and slowly mixed the silver nitrate into the gelatin.
eyesight is nothing to play with, and silver nitrate will blind you without a second thought. always use eye protection !

anyways i dribbled and mixed the silver nitrate in there and the whole mixture turned white.
i’ll use this as a paper emulsion, so i won’t bother to wash it. i put the ball jar into a locking air tight container
and then in a black paper bag and stuck it in the refrigerator to set.

i have no clue if it will work or not, i’m looking forward to finding out soon !

in a few days i will coat some paper and expose it and post my results

OK it is the next day and i really couldn’t help myself …

the emulsion was put in one of those hinged jars that have a rubber seal, like the stuff you might
have on your counter with coffee beans or sugar or whatever .. the bell jar was inside that .. the whole thing in
a black bag photo paper usually comes in when it is in the box .. i didn’t really trust that the jar i put it in was light proof
so i bagged it when i put it in the little fridge.

the moment of truth ..

i brought the jar to the red room and opened it, and it set ( WHEW ! ) i always worry i didn’t put enough gelatin in there
and it would be a watery mess. it was emulsion alright

i scooped a little out and warmed / melted it and painted it onto some card stock.

its drying now … but when its dry i will rip it in half and hide half of it. i’ll put something on the card and turn the lights on
and make a photogram in some dektol and see if this stuff works. after that i will put s cut piece in my K1000 and make a test strip to determine
exposure times and iso’s. and easy way i usually do is f 11, block the lens off and make a series of 1 second exposures. and develop the strip to see what happens.

OK …

well i realized the watered down 1cc ( if that ) of liquid i added at the end was dektol, not hypo
i hate amber bottles !

i did my first 2 tests and coated some more paper.

the photogram i made i counted to 6 with the room light on and it made a killer photogram.
i handheld a slip inside a camera f2 $ 15 seconds and it looks to be about right.

they are still washing and more paper is drying so i can’t really say for sure what everything is.
i know if in the camera ends up being too tedious i make enough photograms and sun prints it won’t be an issue using this home brew emulsion

Posted in alternative process photography, images on hand coated paper, liquid emulsion Also tagged "emulsion making", "home made emulsion", black and white, liquid light, paper negatives, pentax K1000, photogram, rockland colloid, traditional photography |

a few hand tinted images

May

2017

by jnanian | 0 Comments

first .. i probably have said this or explained my “terminology”
if i add colors by hand with paints &c i call the images hand painted, but if i
add the colors in photoshop i call them hand tinted. these negatives
were made last fall, even before that sometime, but only processed recently.
i have had a real backlog of film to process, and luckily i have some D72 and Sumatranol C
all mixed up so it is pretty painless.

i’ve posted a few images from this group already ( last entry ) but here are a few more…

4×5 negative, delmar camera, dektol+d72 and colors added in PS

4×5 negative, delmar camera, dektol+d72 and colors added in PS

4×5 negative, delmar camera, dektol+d72 and colors added in PS

Posted in photographs, technique and style Also tagged "rhode island", 4x5, d72, delmar, photoshop, tinted |

latest tinted images

May

2017

by jnanian | 0 Comments

i have been exposing film without processing it for about a year now. i had about 20 or 25 rolls of assorted black/white and color
35mm and a couple of rolls of 120 film. i also had about 30 sheets of assorted expired color and black and white 4×5 sheets. i had wanted
to process the film months ago, but i’d cut my finger or something random so i couldn’t. i am not someone who wears latex or nitril gloves when
i process film, i know i probably should, but when i process sheet film i can’t feel the sheets to pry them apart, and it makes it extra hard to shuffle
them in a tray. i suppose if i used a hand tank, or still used hangers / tank, or a unicolor drum it wouldn’t matter much, but i put film in a tray and shuffling them from bottom to top, over and over again, first in water, then in developer for whatever amount of time i need to, and then in water and then in fix and while i have attempted to use gloves, it just didn’t work well. i always use them when i make cyanotypes, both coating and washing. and i sometimes use them when i coat stuff with liquid emulsion. … anyways …

so i processed about 5 rolls of film and all 30 sheets on sunday.

they were all from last fall. some local stuff, some things i made when i was out of town.

there was a regatta when i was in boston that saturday. i don’t remember which day it was, i just remember it was sunny and cloudy and cold.
i parked by MIT and walked across the street with my box and made a handful of exposures. then i drove to magazine beach and did the same sort
of thing.

black and white negative, hand tinted in photoshop

black and white (4×5 ) negative, tinted in photoshop.

Posted in photographs Also tagged black and white, delmar, hand colored photographs, hybrid |

cyclone negative cyanotype

Nov

2016

by jnanian | 0 Comments

a couple of days ago i was making some more cyanotypes i loaded up some contact frames with waxed negatives to see if i could get a better print than i did with my old coated paper some of those prints just didnt’ work out .. and at the same time i found an old hand coated paper negative made with the cyclone #3 a while ago, that was just sitting on the tabletop. i had cleaned up quite a bit a week or 2 ago: i swept the floor; i organized; i put things away; i stacked things; i found things i hadn’t seen in a while. the paper negative was a rediscovery, even though it wasn’t really lost. it seems like it was coated on xerox paper, it is thin and durable. not sure what emulsion is on it, maybe foma? maybe my home-brew, not sure. it has a nice contrast and look and i stuck it in the contact frame. the waxed negatives took a ton of time before to expose, so i was banking on a day or 2 in the sun for all 3 of the cyanotypes. it was a lot more diffuclt in late october because the sun is low, and it moves across the sky differently than before, so i had to really follow the sun around with the print frames. i did OK i suppose, but i was more in open shade than i was in the sun, and that is OK too. the print is made from the same classic formula i coated the others with. and after 2 days in the sun i washed it in water and added a little hydrogen peroxide to finish the development, and eventually i painted some areas of the print with dilute washing soda to give a yellowish hue to some areas. anyhow, its the kitchen table and window and chairs. not sure if i am going to add my own colors or leave it, the blue tones of cyanotypes are starting to grow on me.

window table and chairs
classic cyanotype H2O2 to develop out faster as i always do, and a little washing soda to bleach and ad color

Posted in alternative process photography, images on hand coated paper, using vintage equipment Also tagged "foma emulsion", black and white, caffenol-c, cyanotype, paper negatives, sun print, traditional photography |

emulsive

Sep

2016

by jnanian | 0 Comments

i thought i posted a link to this but i guess it got away from me.

i was interviewed by emulsive.org a little while ago about film and emulsion and what i am up to. in case you don’t know about emulsive org what i am up to here is the link what’s emulsive.org ? feel free to go there, its a pretty interesting site

well worth the click !

I am John Nanian and this is why I shoot film

Posted in film development technique, technique and style Also tagged cyclone, dry plate tintypes, dry plates, film, hand colored photographs, paper negatives, photogram, rockland colloid, sumatra, traditional photography, tricolor, waxed negatives |

photo illustration sort of, PS colored photo reconstruction

Jun

2016

by jnanian | 0 Comments

a while back i made some paper negative from hand made emulsion the negatives were more like a collage of things, images, textures, brush strokes. i decided to scan big and crop small and the image i retrieved from the paper was a sweet photograph of trees and a fencepost, but it always seemed to be missing something whenever i looked at it. i put it aside for a good 6 months and looked at it a little bit more once i had distance from it

railing and trees

the other day i spent a handful of hours working on it.

i enlarged the canvas, i added colors ( which was i originally had hoped to do )

anyways, i worked and worked added, and subtracted and came up with this

reworked image

it took hours, and it really still isn’t completely done, but it was fun making something that never really existed.

Posted in alternative process photography, images on hand coated paper, liquid emulsion Also tagged black and white, caffenol-c, hand colored photographs, paper negatives |

a few photograms, with hand made emulsion

Jan

2016

by jnanian | 0 Comments

i love making photograms. they only take a second, and they are a blast.

inverted photogram
onion bulbs

hand made inverted photogram

Posted in images on hand coated paper, liquid emulsion Also tagged "home made emulsion", paper negatives, photogram |

for some things, thin paper seems best

Jan

2016

by jnanian | 0 Comments

its been a week or two since i mixed up the emulsion,and started playing with it. i’ve come to the conclusion that this emulsion works likes thin smooth paper like the butcher paper that i use thick velum paper i sometimes use for bottled emulsion paper negatives and cyanotypes don’t really provide a good negative for me with this emulsion, maybe it is because i don’t use photo grade gelatin, maybe its because i didn’t coat the paper with gelatin first like a sub layer so the emulsion sits too far in the paper, i’m not sure what it is, but the next coating sesison i do, i will coat more thin paper. i do have some thicker sheets coated, i actually double coated everything to give me better contrast. i get OK contrast but some of the images just don’t work well. i have some that worked well, but my success rate is not very high with thick paper.

ive been doing small test sheets, in a 35mm camera to get an idea of iso, and how the images look. the emulsion is starting to get white and black speckles in it so i have to use it up before it goes bad, and then i will probably use up my bottled stash and make some more fresh emulsion soon after.

a few photographs from my efforts

tree in the wind, 25 seconds

4×5 thick paper negative

same emulsion long exposure. the emulsion loves sunny windows

trees and umbrella crop from a larger negative

80+ seconds hand held
35mm test frame

Posted in alternative process photography, images on hand coated paper, liquid emulsion Also tagged "home made emulsion", cyclone, delmar, paper negatives, pentax K1000 |

a few more paper negatives

Jan

2016

by jnanian | 0 Comments

as i wait for single coated paper to flatten out so i can coat them a 2nd time i have a few paper negatives exposed the last few days in a cyclone, and processed yesterday.

i scanned 8 and have worked on a few .. i added color sometimes, or not they lean off center.

paper negative

railing and trees

Posted in alternative process photography, liquid emulsion, using vintage equipment Also tagged "emulsion making", "home made emulsion", cyclone |

new paper negatives from rockland AG+ emulsion

Nov

2015

by jnanian | 0 Comments

i’ve been coating thing with rockland emulsion off and on since i was told about it in 1986. i had never made the investment in a tube of ag+. i’ve always been on the poorer side of the street when it comes down to buying “stuff” so i used the regular old non multigrade emulsion and then most recently someone gave me a tube of their extremely expired VC emulsion. i am fond of making glass negatives and as you probably have read if you poked around this blog i like making ( or trying to make ! ) ferrotypes and glass positives, the ones made with silver gelatin emulsion, not collodion. the emulsion that comes with the rockland tintype parlor is the ag+. it was never enough for me in that tiny tube they provide, so i called bob, the guy at rockland and asked him if i could use the other emulsions ( regular, or vc or ? ) to make the tintypes and he said

“sure! just coat it thicker because it doesn’t have as much silver as the ag+ ”

so that is what i did for a few years, coated things 2x.

now i am out of the other emulsions ( they sort of crapped out on me and turned useless seeing they were so old ) so i cracked open a bottle of the ag+ i bought on a whim IDK 4 or 5 years ago. i chopped some out of the tube and double boilered it to melt it and i painted some on some butcher paper with a brush like i always do. i have a puddle pusher but to be honest i never liked using it, so i never did. the test negative i made came out terrible. well, it wasn’t THAT bad, but it wasn’t as good as i had hoped. i looked at the expiration date on the bottle and it wasn’t too out of date so i coated some more with the same bottle. this time i used the puddle pusher. and boy am i glad i did !

most of the things i coat tend to have brush marks, sometimes it is good and i like that painterly feel, its something extra, a bonus but after i used the puddle pusher i think i might continue to use it and use it often ! the emulsion spread smooth and evenly, no marks, no problems. i stuck a cut piece of 4×5 ( its actually 4 pieces of a little bigger than 35mm ) into my trusty old pentax K1000 and made an exposure out the window. mundane scene, shadow, concrete steps, brick walk, plants. it had contrast and texture and mid-day f16 iso 1 brightness, so i could figure out what the iso was of this now expired emulsion.

1 second hand held then into the soup.

i have my caffneol in a big tupperware tub and i have a small one to scoop it out for trays, like a ladle … seeing i don’t use much besides dektol and caffenol i sometimes have a bit of residual caked on coffee in the small tub. usually it just dissolves with the caffenol i drain out of the big tub, .. i didn’t use the big tub this time. i poured a little dektol into the container and added about 2x that amount of water. the coffee dissolved nicely as i stired it a little bit. the negative went in and i agitated it by flipping it, than by swirling the container and rocking it back and forth. the image slowly appeared as expected in about 30-45 seconds .. i developed to completion until i hit the 2 minute mark then into a water rinse then hardened fixer then i washed and hunt it to dry. i didn’t make a contact print of the small paper negative but i scanned and inverted it. no photoshop but sizing and inverting. i have to say i was happy with what i saw.

stoop

i have a handful more papers all coated and ready to expose.

Posted in liquid emulsion Also tagged black and white, rockland colloid |

last group of cups and plates

Dec

2014

by jnanian | 0 Comments

i had a mini project with cups and saucers and bowls and plates. all taken with a large camera on sheet film, processed in coffee and print developer .. scanned and colors added by me .. all sort of green and red, some better than others, all just fun and playing around.

the bottom cups and handles were not taken at the same time, and just sort of fit together and noticed after the fact …

hand colored

Posted in alternative process photography, film development technique, using vintage equipment Also tagged black and white, caffenol-c |

film processed in dektol and coffee

Dec

2014

by jnanian | 0 Comments

my last entry i mentioned i had finished exposing about 36 sheets of film. it was more than that .. 4 bag-mags filled with a variety of tmx ( 100 ) tmy (400 ) and some mystery film that was bad enough that it never exposed. maybe 10 sheets were as clear as unexposed film when it came out of the developer. they were some of the first sheets i processed to test the developers. i increased the times and added a little more dektol to my mix. originally it was about 1:8 but i added so it was more like 1:6.

i hadn’t ever processed film in dektol before, only heard about it, and i have to say i was happy with the results. i have to fine tune my dilutions and times but for the most part everything looked good.

i exposed in a variety of different lighting conditions, room light, weak window light, bright light and i exposed my film well. sometimes developers need a little encouragement. i go against convention.

here are 2 from my 39 sheets.

dektol and sumatranol test

dektol test

Posted in film development technique, Misc., technique and style Also tagged sumatra |

around 36 exposures

Dec

2014

by jnanian | 0 Comments

the last few days i have been using a graflex slr ( series D ) .. just moments ago i exposed my last 12 exposure ” bag mag ” full of what might be foma 2oo and tmx 100. i loaded the film a month or so ago in anticipation of using it up fast. i researched the notch codes seeing i didn’t recognize them, there are a lot of films that used that code and my best guess is that i loaded was fomapan200. i found this very strange because i have have only bought fomapan200 film once in my life and the film box is unopened. … i am certain there are elves living nearby and they seem very interested in large format photography! they have borrowed my light meters and cameras, film holders, glass plate holders, even film and dry plates in the past … usually the stuff is lost for about a year and they put things back with film i have never purchased. so, i’m guessing this 30 sheets of fomapan200 was an exchange for the 30 sheets of tmy ( old 400 ) that went missing about a year ago. it sounds almost like a modern brothers grimm story ( the shoemaker and the elves ), but that’s a post for a later date.

===

i loaded it in the bag mags ( 4 of them ) and made some controlled exposures to test my new film developer line which is DEKTOL 1:7 ( 4 mins ) then SUMATRA CAFFENOL C ( 5 mins ) then wash and fix normally. if you read my posts here from time to time you will notice this seems familiar. i usually do the same thing using ansco 130 …. while it is sort of a new adventure, i am quite certain it will be just fine and i probably won’t even notice the difference. i’ll post a few scans after i process the film.

Posted in film development technique, using vintage equipment Also tagged caffenol-c, graflex, sumatra |

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