eric_chamberlain

I'll agree with Pete G. If you are just getting into the swing of home development, stick with simple chemisty that has a nice shelf life. I'm in the same position, started developing a few months ago after taking some classes several years ago. I'm using HC110, but it seems like rodinal has a good following as well. But for rodinal, you'll have a much harder time getting ahold of it. I don't see it in local shops, and BH doesn't ship it. HC110 is fairly versatile with films (no flames please, just remembering the Kodak BW dataguide) and it has several different official and unofficial dilutions for you to play around with, all based off the same stock solution (read: great for one-shot developing for experimental rolls). Have fun with it. Oh yeah, don't use the $7 SS rolls that Adorama sells. If your cheap like me, and don't want to shell out for the $20 Hewes, get the $10 Kalt reels from BH.

I don't know either, but try this link, Phil Gainer had a hand in it (although it has nothing to do with HC110).

 

<a href="http://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/VitC/vitc.html">http://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/VitC/vitc.html</a>

I don't know either, but try this link, Phil Gainer had a hand in it (although it has nothing to do with HC110).

 

<a ref="http://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/VitC/vitc.html">http://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/VitC/vitc.html</a>

You should ask him what developer specifically that he uses on your work. As for the other solutions, fixer and stop aren't an issue unless you are using exotic developers. Just buying Kodak of these two is fine. As for wetting agent, I heard many people like Edwal LFN over Kodak Photo-flo.

Another point to consider when using tanks with agitation paddles, but using inversion routines, is the displacement of chemistry from the added piece of plastic in the tank. The same amount of chemistry will sit lower if you switch to inversion agitation. Of course this is only effective if you put the bare minimum chemistry in to cover the reels. I myself use steel inversion.

I second the "pull it out and measure it" technique. I had an old TMX400 roll from a couple years ago sitting around, and rather than kill a pint of fixer or get some result that differs from my typical triX, I just killed the TMX400 and sacrificed it to the god of darkroom reference tools.

There are very few polymers that have nearly the same optical quality and brittleness as silica glass. Two of these are polycarbonate and acrylic. Speaking in terms of specific gravity acrylic and polycarbonate are much lighter than glass (1.15 and 1.10 compared to 2.21). All three will sink in water solutions (a developer) but only glass (of these three materials) will sink in a solution of 1.2 specific gravity. This solution can be made with table salt and water.

 

In my current days of fluid mechanics, I recall that specific gravity is the density divided by 1000. So to reach an SG of 1.2 you would have to dissolve 449g of table salt (SG of 2.165) into a liter of water. Which would probably require boiling.

 

Yes this sounds impractical but it would be a fairly absolute way of determining if these marbles are glass or not.

 

I agree on the chemical inertness of glass. The high melting temp of glass also sheds light on the reactivity of a chemical required to react with it. Mostly around the strength of hydroflouric acid.

 

Thoughts of a scientifically grounded guy.....

This question can be asked equally in a couple forums but arbitrarily

decided on this one. I, at the current time, work for a company that

keeps locating me at plants located in small towns. I've always had

a hard time finding good traditional camera shops that buy/sell used

equipment, sell b&w and color chemicals, darkroom equipment and have

a staff that actually cares about photography. Those living in large

cities probably don't have this same problem, due to a higher culture

density. Here's the question, do any of you out there living in BFE,

ya know turn left at the second fence post after the tree cluster,

feel that they know a traditional camera shop that they feel is

worthy to pass along to a fellow photographer. Here are my three

contributions:

 

1) Staunton, VA: located in the shenandoah valley near the Rockfish

gap of the beautiful Blue Ridge mountains, there is a shop called

Camera & Palette on W. Beverly St, a quiet shop, I got a long FL lens

for a steal

 

2) Lafayette, IN: not a extremely small town, but if you depart more

than 5 minutes from main street you could get lost in corn, home of

Purdue University, there is a shop Berry's Camera on 4th St one block

north of Main, I haven't done a whole lot of business here, just

enough to know I'll need them ever increasingly in the future

 

3) Cape Girardeau, MO: this city is a small city on the river, being

2 hrs from St Louis it became the veritable Mecca for consumers of

the bootheel region of this Twain country. I live 1-1/2 hrs from it

and its the only thing in my area. There is a shop called Nowell's

Camera on Broadway Ave, a few blocks from the river. He even has

some large format stuff and is a practitioner of the zone system

 

So there are a few of my crutches. Maybe someone can tell me where a

shop is thats closer to Blytheville, AR than Cape Girardeau?

If you search through the archives you can find stuff on the type of glass to use. From what i've heard, you'll want 1/4" anti-reflection, or anti-newtonian ring glass that is almost flawless. You may wish to tell the person cutting the glass what you're using it for. You'll also want a small sheet of rubber foam to place below the negatives and paper, so that when you clamp the glass down, there won't be any microscopic gaps. Once again, read up on previous threads for more information. The LF guys are really interested in this because their contact print is the FINAL print.

The system to bottle and preserve wine has the goal of preventing O2 from reaching the imbibing liquid. Ethanol, present in wine beer and nyquil, will oxidize just like a developer. If the wineries will sell their $80 aged cabernet in a cork stoppered glass bottle, then you should trust that your developer will also be safe. But as was previously mentioned, there is O2 inside the bottle when you go to stopper it, and using a vacuum seal device will remove this, or Protectan will displace it. Have fun emptying the wine bottles.

So what about color chemicals? Erin questioned about color and B&W. From what I've read, most people seem to assume only the b&w disposal, and never mention anything directly about the toxic nature of color chemicals.

So I was reading about the turn-of-the-century Russian photographer

who used filters to separate the primary colors in the light and

create a B&W negative for each one, then recombined to create a color

projection. I wondered if anyone has tried this using liquid light

as the emulsion, because it would have to be panchromatic, and

safelights would be out of the question.