are they still using silver in B&W film emulsion?

[gardenmartha]

I have been told by a professional photographer friend that there is no longer silver in B&W

film emulsions. Is this true? Are there none left?

[stephen sullivan]

I'd go back an ask, "What did they replace it with?"

[rowland_mowrey]

Martha, your professional doesn't know what he is talking about!

 

No other way to put it.

 

Ron Mowrey

[dennisprice]

He must have been thinking of digital B&W film, where the silver halide has been replaced by millions of teenie-tiny silicon CCDs... <wink>

[oceanphysics]

The use of silver is not limited to black and white. All film uses it, though with color it gets taken out in processing.

[michaelging]

The photographer is incorrect,what he or she might be talking about is Tabular Grained films like T-max and Delta,which is still silver ,its just put on the film in a different way.

[john_mullaney]

I read about this in the NY Times. Apparently Hillary Clinton was blaming George Bush and the Republican controlled house.

[michaelging]

It was those other Texans,the Hunt brothers who cornered the silver market that kiled silver rich films and papers.

[michael_beckmann]

I think this is a misunderstanding. He refers to chromogenic b&w film. There is indeed no silver in it after development. But initially there is. Also, the chromogenic film has not replaced traditional film for a number of good reasons.

[mikeseb]

So THIS is why the Iranians want to enrich uranium. They want to corner the enriched

uranium market so that we decadent Western photographers will have to use depleted

uranium in our emulsions henceforth. You don't even have to develop it, and the images are

supposed to have a certain glow....

 

Seriously, your "professional" friend has fruit filling leaking from his pie-hole.

 

Best.

[dave_s]

What Michael said. Your friend was talking about chromogenic films, like Ilford XP2. (And in fact even chromogenic films contain silver, but silver grains don't remain in the processed negative to form the image.) You just misunderstood.

[alexis_neel]

Actually Bush and company declared silver a threat to the American way of life, and had Rummy "take care of it". After many months of searching, Rummy, who couldn't find anything but silver in film, declared Kodak a supplier of Weapons of Mass Exposing, and put the company out of business.

[roger_hicks1]

Dear Michael,

 

An aside: Delta ISN'T tabular-grain. The core-shell epitaxial technology is significantly different.

 

To quote an Ilford spokesman, "It isn't necessarily a better technology, but we think it's better behaved."

 

Cheers,

 

Roger

[profhlynnjones]

Hi Martha,

 

As has been said before, all photographic films, color or b/w are created using silver salts which have been reduced to metallic silver in the processing. And, has been said before, color emulsions and chromogenic b/w emulsions have been bleached out, leaving only the dye images, but they all started as silver images.

 

Lynn