Bill C

You unscrew the cap on the bottom of the flashgun, then put in some D-cell batteries. Then insert whatever flashbulb you wanna use (if you hold the bulb with a cloth you won't have to worry about burning your fingers if you accidentally set it off). To fire the bulb you just press the red button on the back. After flashing the bulb is trash. It'll be plenty hot right after firing so be careful handling it. A lot of people will recommend using a shield in front of the flash bulb just in case it shatters. The standard way to use one of these is to clip the flashgun to the side of the camera. You need a cable that plugs into the flashgun; probably one of those outlets is labeled "shutter." The other end of the cable attaches to a solenoid which is typically mounted on the lens board. Then whenever you press the red button on the flashgun it will also fire the solenoid ("fire" means that it makes a "click" sound as the internal part pulls in). The solenoid should move the little trip lever on the shutter - the one that you would otherwise trip with your finger. So the operation is: you manually cock the shutter, then trip it by pressing the button on the flashgun. If you want to use a flashbulb to take a picture, same basic operation. Put in a flashbulb and cock the shutter. When ready to shoot, just press the red button on the flashgun. This will simultaneously fire the flashbulb and trigger the solenoid. The way they synchronize is that the flashbulb has a certain "burn time," and this covers the mechanical delay time for the solenoid/shutter operation. You mentioned that you have a Speed Graphic, where the "speed" part normally means that it also has a built-in focal plane shutter. The method I described is only for the front shutter. If you're not familiar with it, piles of info are available at Graflex.Org: Speed Graphics, Large Format Photography, and More

Again I don't share your view. Of course one can make it as technically challenging as they want, but it can also be simplified. Would it change your view to know that I was shooting weddings for a local wedding guy, a "budget specialist," while I was still in high school? On borrowed equipment, even (I couldn't afford any pro grade equipment). I'd pick up the film at his house; he'd give me a shot list with any special instructions along with a camera and flash. It'd typically be a Mamyia C2 or C3, or an older Rolleiflex (this was 1960s) and one of those big Stroboflash units (battery pack on a shoulder strap). Five rolls of Kodak CPS plus one roll as a spare (but don't use it if I don't have to). Plus a roll of b&w if they needed a shot for the newspaper. (These are all 2 1/4" square cameras, so 12 shots per roll.) You can't use the entire first roll though; you gotta pull it out early so as to not run out of film during the aisle shot sequence, etc. Here's how you make it simple, per his method. You work with three basic distances: 5 or 6 feet for a half body shot, about 8 feet for a 3/4 length, and about 10 to 12 feet for a full-length. Surprise! These distances are each one f-stop apart with respect to the flash. The Stroboflash IV was wonderful for this; it had a rotary power switch on top of the battery pack - full power, then 3/4, half, and one quarter. So you just leave the camera f-stop in the same place, maybe f/8 or f/11, and set the flash power for the distance. A half-body shot is at 1/4 power, a 3/4 body shot is at 1/2 power, and a full-length shot is at full power. (Obviously for the group shots you gotta open up another f-stop, depending; for closeup shots close down an f-stop.) With a fixed-power flash unit you change the camera f-stop in full stop increments - a cheat sheet stuck on the flash helps if you are subject to brain fade. Now, how long did my training take? Well, originally he planned on me to be with him for 5 or 6 weddings, then evaluate. The reality was, on the third wedding he got into a bind with another shooter, or whatever. So he says I'm on my own for the wedding, group shots, etc. He'll show up at the reception as soon as he can wrap up his other wedding. After that wedding (no problem) I was on my own and started getting paid. Granted, photography was as something of an obsession with me (I started young) and I had quite a lot of overall experience, but still - after the first two weddings I was pretty comfortable with it. After about 6 or 8 weddings, at something like $20 or $25 each, I was able to afford a used Rolleiflex. (They had largely gone out of style by then, so were a great bargain compared to other pro level gear.) I largely "retired" from weddings with less than 100 under my belt when I took on a full-time traveling job, so not that much overall experience. But I don't see them as necessarily difficult from a technical standpoint. But... you can certainly make them so if you want to try elaborate balancing of light, etc. I think the key thing is to work out a general shooting strategy that you can mostly stick with. If you get into trouble with your experimentation you can always revert back to the standard setup.

Harry, you and I have completely different outlooks on what this site was originally intended to be. As I recall, Philip Greenspun, the founder, had stated that it was intended to be a repository of photographic information (or knowledge?). Threads were edited down to remove extraneous text, with the apparent purpose of making it easier for future users to find more concise information in a search. And at a later date he mentioned that he had NOT intended to build an xxx thousand dollar "chat server." Unfortunately, in my view, this is largely what it turned into. But I guess, given human nature, this almost had to happen in order for photo.net to survive. People want to have a say in things, even if they don't have much experience, so they do. And this tends to dilute the information content, etc., but I'm not gonna go there. But back to job referrals, etc., I ask, mostly rhetorically, why would anyone recommend someone, anyone, on this website that they do not personally know, for any sort of job? I had nearly 30 years of full-time experience in photography when I joined this site (bout 20 years ago). The number of people I would recommend is near zero. (Actually there is one, a guy I once met in Rochester (yep, it's you C H), provided the work was in his wheelhouse, so to speak). Now, the fact that I would NOT recommend someone should not be seen as an insult; it's more a case that I don't KNOW that person - I don't know their capabilities, their demeanor, their reliability, etc. Anyway, bottom line, if you're nursing a grudge against photo.net for a lack of referrals, I think it would be a misplaced view. Just my opinion.

Color neg is basically gonna record what's in the scene in the same relative quantities as to what's there. Except for what is known as "reciprocity failure," a defect that can occur in films under certain exposure conditions (digital capture is essentially immune to this problem). I pretty much concur. Same thing would've happened to you back during the years of optical mini-labs. Back then, if you had reduced the film exposure the likely result would have been similar, except that the optical prints would not have solid blacks - rather they would be grainy shades of gray. Unless you could have told the operator, "hey, these are night shots! And I want em to look like night." Then the operator would override the auto system and force them to print darker. Or even darker until you were satisfied (provided that you were willing to keep paying for the prints). The same basic situation exists for your scans. I'm sure it would be possible for the software people to try to interpret a scan as a night scene, and then give a night-like representation of same. But I guess they're mostly not doing it yet. Heck, they don't even do that good a job on auto-color, in my opinion. So I'd say you gotta just make the adjustments to your taste. Fwiw they'll probably look more night-like if you remove most of the color from the darker parts. Our vision behaves like this - we simply can't see color in dim light. But a long film exposure DOES see the color. So it's largely your artistic call as to how you want it to look. You might get some benefit with color balancing filters on the lens, depending on the makeup of the lighting. The standard color neg films are balanced for "daylight," a color temp of around 5500K. So if you filter to balance the ambient light closer to this you'll probably have a better starting point. I don't know how big a deal this is, though.

Regarding film, a couple people suggested XP2 for its wide exposure latitude. To be honest, I've never ever tried it - I never quite got the point except that it could be processed in the ubiquitous C-41 minilabs of the day. Let me counter with an example set of curves for Kodak Tmax 100. This also shows a tremendous "luminance recording range." (Personally I don't wanna be the guy making the prints once the film density starts getting near 3, but the point is that it can be done.) I'm guessing that the high-density Tmax is gonna print grainier than the XP2, but it's just an educated guess. Anyway, just a little more fuel for the fire... this link >> Video: 'Why We Still Love Film' by NBC

Ahhh.. I see. I had sort of envisioned something like a semi-abandoned industrial property. Where perhaps it is too dark to even get a meter reading, etc. Now, given that you have the ability to turn on the lights, I'm guessing that it's normally lit by minimal-access lighting during the off hours. So something else you might consider is to split your exposure with lights on/off. As an example, if you could stretch it out to, say a 10-second exposure, you might turn the main lights off at the 2-second point. Or, if possible, a double exposure. This would let you balance the lights on/off situation to your liking. Regarding exposure, sure you can do lots of bracketing, etc. But personally I would just get my partner to give me some baseline exposures based on trial and error with the digital camera. Then I'd do much more limited bracketing based on that - I tend to be more frugal with the film.

Not so. It should be portable to any system using ICC color management. The embedded profile establishes the meaning of the image pixel values vs the so-called "profile connection space." So an ICC color management system "knows" what the colors should look like and should therefore properly translate them to any profiled output device, such as a monitor. To be clear, I'm not saying that I think this is a good idea; I'm just saying that it should function properly within any color-managed system. It is NOT limited to specific hardware in a "one-off" manner.

I'd let my partner establish the necessary exposure with his (presumably) digital Canon. But establish ahead of time, via an actual test, how the two exposures correlate. Like Conrad suggests, make sure you consider the reciprocity characteristics of the film; if you test with film x, don't count on film y behaving the same. (Note: I'm presuming that it's potentially too dark for reliable exposure meter readings; if not then I'd just rely on the meter.) I'd probably bring along a hot-shoe flash or two, to be used manually, to either supplement or otherwise "dress up" the existing light a little. If you use exposure times longer than a few seconds you'll probably have time for several low-power flashes that you can manually direct at different parts of the scene. Again, test ahead of time to make sure you know what exposure effects to expect from the flash. If your exposures are too short for manual use of flash you could still use the camera sync to fire them (radio slaves would let you put them wherever you want). Make sure you have a means to focus your camera - a hand-held light bright enough to focus with, or even a long tape measure to allow using the focus scale on your lens. This is an example of something just like I described - too dark to focus without a flashlight propped on the engine. Handheld hot-shoe flash manually flashed 8 or 10 times during the roughly 10-second exposure. (This was the culmination of a series of test shots, tweaking the position and angle of the flash until I was more or less satisfied.) https://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/16600574-orig.jpg

Hi John, probably depends more on what you've got and how you like to do things. Fwiw the OP clearly wasn't having much success with digital per his first paragraph, "My attempts at scanning and inverting the images look really bad..." My first response, though, was more a reaction to the situation of, "I want 8x10s" and the response that I take as essentially asking - my interpretation - "why aren't you satisfied with 4x5?"

Well, in the other thread he said he wanted to get 8x10 glossy prints from each image. Now, I can't speak for the OP, but if it were me wanting an 8x10, and someone asked me, "hey, why do you find 4x5 unsuitable?" I'd just say, cuz I want 8x10s. If one of my friends had those negs (four 4x5" images on an 8x10" sheet of film), I'd say to bring a few over. I'd probably use some mount board to make a negative carrier (sandwich the 8x10" film between a pair of 8x10" mounting boards, with a 4x5" aperture cut into the corner). Then I'd stick that corner into a 4x5 enlarger and make whatever size prints they want. Am I missing something here? (Of course, 4x5 enlargers probably aren't that common, but there ought to still be plenty of em around.)

Arthur, sorry to have sidetracked your post so much. I think it's a good plan, but unfortunately I don't have any lab recs. What I would personally do is probably to look online for some labs and get on the phone with them. Since I've done this sort of thing for a living I'd probably be asking different questions than you would, but you can probably still get a lot out of this. Just ask in terms of what you know and what you're worried about. I'd be clear that I want their best product (or near to it) and am willing to pay for it (assuming that you are). (A "best" product probably means that a more skilled person is handling the job, and probably is given the leeway to spend more time on it.) I'd ask about their success in whatever sort of shooting you do. (I've primarily worked with portraits, so I'd be asking about skin tones - the gradation and how do different complexions and hair colors come out?) Are their other customers happy, etc.? And what specific films are they most successful with? What about such-and-such film (my favorite); are they successful with it? If you do something else, say landscapes, these are open to more "interpretation," meaning that it is not cut and dried what the color SHOULD be. So I'd ask how they zero in, can they perhaps run some smaller samples for you to choose from? They might, for example, ask you to initially include some color charts in the scene; I dunno what they might suggest. Maybe they would keep a "profile" of you on file where they keep notes on the sort of color tones and "sharpening," etc., that you prefer. Fwiw, different films may have different spectral makeups - the specific dyes in the film. And the specific scanners that they use may see the dyes differently than a different scanner. So the ideal situation is that the lab gets specific "setup data" for that film/scanner combination from either the film or scanner manufacturer. This is the main reason why I suggest to find out what films they "are successful" with. I would sort of expect a pro-level lab to be competent with Kodak Portra films (for portrait work) and perhaps Ektar 100 for landscape-type work. If you're not happy with the answers, but the price is right, you might still wanna try em out, I dunno. I'd probably also look for lab recs from something like photrio.org. You may get recs from people to get the lab scans and handle the digital files yourself. If you're knowledgeable about this sort of thing, great! If not, there's a big learning curve (yep, I think it's bigger than for optical printing). I'd suggest Bruce Fraser's (older) "Digital Color Management" as a good primer. The digital files will be in a so-called color space where each set of RGB values will represent a definite "color," or something akin to that. But unless your computer monitor has been "profiled" with a hardware/software package you won't know for sure how accurate it is. So if you try to fix up a digital file with an unprofiled monitor it's something of a crap shoot what you'll get back. As long as you're ok with this, it's another way to experiment. You might try several variations in a smaller size (to keep costs down) then order your preferred version in a larger size. (You might still find that the "sharpening" effect is set up differently on a large printer. One last thing to note: you may have a choice to have the lab print on either inkjet or a silver halide RA4 paper. (The RA4 would most likely be exposed by digital means, such as a scanning laser.) As Conrad suggested, a "pigment-based" inkjet printer will likely hold up better under display conditions over a long period of time. And most likely will have the capability of having "stronger" colors, provided that such colors are in your image file. In typical portrait work this won't make much difference, but it may for certain colorful flowers, etc., it might; I dunno. One area where the RA4 probably still holds an advantage is in the ability to maintain its "color" under different lighting conditions. This is the counter side of the ability to show stronger colors. Stronger colors are a result of using colorants with narrower spectral peaks; this also tends to exaggerate differences in the light source, especially with something like energy-efficient fluorescent lamps. I believe that some more modern inkjet printers are using a greater number of inks in order to deal with this. At any rate, the bottom line is that you ultimately have to just pick something out and try it. Best of luck!

I'm smiling; it's kinda unusual for someone to play "that card" with me. I gotta applaud you for going color back then. I was strictly b&w then, being first exposed to electronic flash and cameras with built-in sync. I didn't start working with PROCESSING of color until near 10 years later; it was still a "black art" to me and I started working in a large lab with the intention of learning about it. No way I could have afforded to do my own color, nor did I have much interest in it other to understand the issues involved in shooting it for weddings, etc. (My primary interest was photojournalism, which was obviously b&w in those days, but I wanted to be well-rounded). But back to color printing... I don't know what you had in your neck of the woods, but in the US the primary system in those days was Kodak's Ektaprint system (EP-3). Big difference from today. The developer used benzyl alcohol which was very difficult to get dissolved, and helped lead to these tarry blobs floating in the developer. If your paper passed through such a blob it was ruined and had to be reprinted. Then there was the long (relatively) process time, and high sensitivity to byproducts - the developer was very "touchy" in that respect. So learning to color balance was a "hard row to hoe," as they say. One of my jobs back then, as a wet-behind-the-ears QC tech was printing sensitometric wedges on color papers that we were testing. I'm sure I exposed well over a thousand in those days, trying to balance to a neutral color. The boss would explain that each additional filter surface in the pack would reduce the transmission slightly, and that the filters are not identical, so that I may get unexpected results if I had to remove, say, 2 CC from a pack with a 40CC filter in it (the 40 is replaced with a 20, a 10, a 5, and a 2). So perhaps the new pack would show the 2 CC change, or perhaps not. At any rate, whatever the result, that was the current result, and testing continued from that point. Periodically there was an unexpected color jump, presumably a result of me screwing something up. I spent plenty of time thinking through the corrections, thinking along these lines: "ok, the print is too red - that means too much yellow and magenta dye. Those come from the blue-sensitive and green-sensitive layers, so I need to reduce exposure on those two layers, only (OR, increase exposure on the red-sensitive layer). So I want to add, to my filter pack, filters that will block both bluish light and greenish light - that is, to add both a yellow (to block bluish light) and a magenta filter (to block greenish light)." Obviously this line of thinking was prone to error - one little slip up and you take an unexpected jump in the wrong direction. Then one day I read an article by a guy who knew what he was doing. He said that, in color-correcting prints from color negs, simply do "the wrong thing." It turns out that an idea that simple is just about infallible, and after that I never (that I recall) screwed up the direction of a color correction. Now, coming back to more modern times - no more benzyl alcohol; the developer mixes quick and easy. The paper is chloride based - no more bromide being released to slow down development. The system is incredibly tolerant to replenishment errors (or "overuse" to a hobbyist user). And development is FAST - 45 seconds at aim temp, as I recall. And for the commercial users, no more benzyl alcohol carryover into the blix (in electrolytic silver recovery it gets oxidized to benzaldehyde, that cherry-candy smelling chemical, which tends to put a yellowish stain on the paper). So the new process/paper, Kodak's RA-4, was like a minor miracle. On top of this is the fact that dichroic filters became standard in enlargers - you just turn a dial to move the filter in or out of the light path. (Older Chromega color heads had large continuously variable filters that were subject to fading; the dichroic filters are hard-cutting non-fading setups). Granted, the people I was dealing with weren't rookies; they had at least some "color theory" behind them - the sort that is taught with respect to photography. But with that sort of person, who has maybe struggled to understand how to color-correct, in one or two hours I could teach them enough to stop their "wrong-direction" errors. A lot of the time would be spent "proving" that it works by walking them through the full sequence of ideas (like I did above). Once they buy-in to the idea, AND if they make a set of ring-a-round prints, their color-correcting problems are mostly over. (Unless they have screwed up chemicals.) I'm pretty darn confident that I could teach just about any serious and dedicated photo student to make decent color-corrected prints inside of 2 to 3 days (yes, days, cuz now I'm including mixing the chems and processing). As long as they don't suffer from a terminal case of "clumsiness" or brain-fade, nor have significant color vision deficiencies. Back in the office we'd use the "Farnsworth-Munsell 100-hue test" (I believe it was called) on potential color-correctors. This is probably about the best single test there is for this purpose. It consists of a series of color "caps" covering the entire range of hues in a sort of pastel shade. So it is a moderately saturated series of colors, not unlike the amount of saturation in typical skin tones. The test subject basically puts them all in order. If they have a color vision deficiency there will be a range of hues that look the same to them, and they'll get some out of order. The "scoring" of the test essentially rates them on how many were out of order, and how far out of position they were.

I don't think so. I came right out and said there's a big learning curve, etc. Here's part of what I said: In my view, nobody NEEDS to think in complementary colors. All they've gotta do is follow a simple rule for color correction, "Always do the wrong thing!" Now to get from there to the standard filters, magenta and yellow, yeah, you do need to sometimes go to the complementary colors, but this can simply be a mechanical procedure using a "color wheel" that someone can sketch in two minutes (three overlapping circles labeled red, green, and blue). Then the overlapping parts are labeled cyan, magenta, and yellow. I can teach this to someone in an hour or two. Here's an example of how it works: say that your print is too red. Ok, you see that it's too red, and since you should "do the wrong thing," you're thinking that you want to add red filtration. But... we don't use red filters so you look at the color wheel and see that red is between magenta and yellow. So you add equal amounts of both magenta and yellow filtration. The only problem now is to learn how to recognize the colors and how much correction is needed. If one (again) has the discipline to print a set of color ring-a-rounds for reference then this is a great help. But let me go back and reiterate what I first said. My actual recommendation is to go with scanned negs and digital printing. And preferably these would be done by someone who knows what they're doing. I just bring up the possibility of diy printing as the OP already has a darkroom.

Well, "best" and "least expensive" can each mean different things to different people, but for the most part I would concur with having the film scanned and then printed by some "digital means." If you were doing significant amounts of portrait or wedding work, and had little interest in doing your own "lab work," I'd recommend to farm it all out to an outfit that knows what they're doing, and pay to have them do the color correction. This may APPEAR to be more expensive, but if doing so can save YOUR time, well, it can depend on how you value your own time. Now, if the sort of work you do is of an artistic nature, and you have certain ways that you want it "interpreted," then this may be hard to get out of a lab. You might end up spending quite a bit having experimental versions printed. In the latter case it MIGHT be worth taking the dive into learning to prep your own files, etc., or even to buy a largish inkjet printer. I dunno, though, there is quite a lot to learn. This is often glossed over by people on the internet who want to convert you to their "religion," digital imaging. At a minimum you would need to learn something about so-called "color management," meaning the "care and handling" of ICC profiles. You'd ideally get "profiling equipment," both hardware and software, for your computer monitor, as well as learn how to use an image processing program such as Photoshop. Now if these are things that you already intended to learn about then you might see it as simply getting an education. Otherwise you should perhaps treat it as an expensive surcharge to the cost of your prints. I should perhaps mention that I've spent the majority of my work life heavily involved with pro-level lab work, so I'm pretty familiar with most of the aspects of portrait work from either traditional chemical or digital processes. This spans from prior to the current film and paper processes (C-41 and RA-4) up to around a half-dozen years ago. Fwiw I've never been a proponent of people doing their own color film development and printing at home, provided that they had a good lab available. (Pro lab people were just so much better than even a very devoted hobbyist.) But today things may be different. Good labs are pretty scarce and anybody with an internet connection has easy access to technical information on the current processes. (See Kodak Z manuals, Z-130 and Z-131, I believe.) But there can also a big learning curve to all of this, as you'll discover if you look through the Z manuals. But... if you have the discipline to follow the process rules, and shoot professional color neg films under "proper" conditions such that manipulation is not much needed, and have a good-quality color head on your enlarger (and good color judgment), you ought to be able to make high quality color prints in a home darkroom. They're just not very easy to manipulate much beyond a straight print. (See Ctein's book on printing, available for free download from his website, for lots of info on optical printing.) Best of luck on your endeavors. I'll be glad to elaborate further on anything you'd like.

The typical method, with an immobile subject, is to put your camera on some sort of stand in a darkened room. Then you open the camera shutter for some period of time, say a couple of seconds or longer. During that time you can move the light around, or point it at different parts of the subject. One of the tricky parts is to known how much exposure you need, that is, how long to shine the light on something. With a digital camera you can do it experimentally. With a film camera it's probably better to start out with an exposure meter reading. Then, as you "paint" with the light you try to let the light beam "dwell" on the important parts of the subjects for as long as the exposure meter suggests. It's a little bit like spray painting, which is, I guess, why they sometimes call it "painting with light." Another variation on this is to set something up in dim light, such that an exposure time of several seconds is just barely enough with the ambient light. Then you can "dress up" the image a little by letting your handheld light "play" on certain parts.

Not about contests, etc., but I spent an afternoon at that same lock and dam about 6 or 8 years ago. Taking pictures. No one stopped me. I did have some questions about things, etc., and had to hunt people down to even ask. Slow afternoon, I guess, probably less than 10 visitors in the whole place. I have frequently read things on the internet about photographers being harassed by government officials, etc., but I don't recall it happening to me. I have, on occasion, asked those "in charge," more or less, if there are rules. A bunch of years back I "knew" from the internet that taking photos inside of an airport was a no-no, especially near the TSA areas. I was meeting someone there and had a camera with me. So I caught a security guy passing by, and asked him, is there any problem with taking photos in here? Nope, no problem. What about if the screening areas are in the photo? Nope, no problem. Shoot all you like.

Yeah, white foam core should work great, you just want to make sure that the camera lens can not "see" the lit-up foam core to prevent lens flare. This won't happen with a mirror cuz the light will be so directional. (In either case the hair light WILL be soft due to the (presumed) diffusion panel in the strip light. And light fall-off is gonna be based on distance to the "source," the last diffusion surface, so the foam core panel will probably have slight more fall-off. Best of luck with your trials. Ps, you should be able to find plastic mirrors for this. I absolutely would not want to use a glass mirror above the subject if there is any chance of it getting broken, fwiw.

I've never actually seen this book, but it's had some good reviews for the sort of thing you seem to be interested in. https://www.amazon.com/Primitive-Photography-Cameras-Calotypes-Alternative/dp/0240804619/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=primitive+cameras&qid=1603909460&sr=8-1

Can you elaborate more? I've been involved with a couple of specialized studio cameras with, let's say, "shop-built" shutters. These were really only suited to indoor studio flash work such that perfectly even shutter action was not needed, only the ability to be fully open for the flash. Is this something you want to actually build? As opposed to just having a sense of how they work.

A good alternative might be to put that strip light flat against the ceiling with an angled mirror at the end. If that's not enough headroom you might consider using a couple of high-mounted kicker lights, one on each side, in place of an actual hair light. Or if you're willing to do a bit more work you might consider cutting into the ceiling and mount your hair light inside. Another possibility, if you understand how to do it, is to put a flat mirror on the ceiling (in the appropriate place) then "project" light into it such that it acts like a hair light. As an example, you might use a parabolic reflector on a studio light head to get a good "throw" on the light, then baffle it to get rid of unwanted spill. If you need a better description of any of these just say so. Best of luck.

I'm really doubtful, but don't know for sure. All of the industry research was for "proper" handling of the wastes, and meeting regulatory standards. But I don't recall ever hearing about such a problem, for what that's worth. Still, I would never recommend letting any measurable silver get into your septic tank, mainly because of the regulatory issues. In the US the law known as RCRA sets 5 mg/L silver, as I recall, as the point for determining if something is a "hazardous waste" or not (don't go by my word, though; verify by the actual law). Imagine if you wanted to sell some property, and a regulatory body decides that an environmental audit is called for... it's just not a position you want to let yourself get into. I gotta emphasize, though, no one should make decisions based on the opinions I'm giving here. They gotta research all the appropriate laws themselves.

Yep, I spent quite a lot of hours in that book, many years back. As well as the myriad of studies published in the SPSE (later IS&T) journals; by researchers like Austin Cooley and Rami Mina of Kodak, followed up with actual equipment designed and built by CPAC, etc., based on their research. I oversaw the purchase, install, and operation of a CPAC developer regeneration system back when EP 2/3 was the standard paper process. While my boss did similar with an ion-exchange system to recover silver from wash water (he knew I wasn't a fan of that system, but I, or at least my department, had to oversee the operation). Rohm and Haas IRA 400 ion-exchange resin in the developer system, and IRA 68 for the wash water, as I recall. Running 50 gallons per minute through the wash water system all day long when our paper processors were near capacity. The wash water columns were stripped with a thiosulfate solution, then run through an electrolytic silver recovery unit. Back in the good ole days... Here's a little blurb out of the "bible" from a couple years back. Fixer and the Environment

...silver sulfite sulfide... And to add a bit to this... the immediate form of silver in photoprocessing is as silver thiosulfate. According to data first published by the US EPA somewhere around 40 years ago silver thiosulfate is on the order of 10,000 to 30,000 times LESS TOXIC to aquatic organisms, etc., than silver nitrate is. (No one doing photoprocessing handles silver nitrate.) But as Alan suggests, more recent studies (perhaps 20+ years ago) have confirmed that any photographic silver getting into a sewage stream very quickly is converted to silver sulfide, which for all practical purposes is insoluble. This conversion happens even in the air as anyone who uses sterling silver eating utensils or wears silver jewelry knows; it "tarnishes."