The creative photo chemist (was rodinol & rev)

Richard Sullivan (richsul@roadrunner.com)
Sat, 29 Jun 1996 14:50:17 -0600

>Dick, I used Rodinal because I had it on the shelf. I wanted to do a
>quick check on how this film performed. I started with Rodinal 1:100
>knowing that I needed to greatly reduce the contrast curve of lith to give
>continuous tone. This was too flat so I increased the strength until I got
>what I wanted........

Good thinking and it gives me the incentive to jump in on this project when
the construction crew finishes the partitioning of the B&S factory. Gads
what a mess. I will have a darkroom for the first time in almost a year though.

I liked your thinking, there is lot of science and good deal of serendipity
in new process development. It is always hard to get past the part where you
think you have to know everything before you start. When I used to teach
darkroom 101 one of the first things I did was to put water in a tray and
then eyeball measure out some metol, hydroquinone, pot bromide, sulfite and
sodium carbonate. I did this by just dumping some out of each bottle, of
course I tried to hit a reasonable proportion for each, then to top it off
we developed a print and it always came out real nice. Most of the students
were dumbfounded. Of course everyone has met a member of the "sterile tray
club." You know the kind, the ones with each tray marked for fix, developer,
etc (ok, I won't argue there too much) but then they have to scrub and scrub
with hot water so as not to contaminate the chemistry on the next use. A
cold water rinse won't do, heavens no!

A book that is good for laughs is "Champlain On Fine Grain", published in
the late 30's or early 40's, when the 35mm was coming in and grain was a
real big issue. This guy has a bunch of "eye of newt" formulas that are
astounding, and as I recall, he some had 20 or more ingredientsin some of
his formulas, things like nickel nitrate. he must have just kept dumping
stuff into his formula until luck would have it, he got what he thought was
"fine grain". At least he tried.

I hope that more people on the list will start to experiment. The
opportunity to tap into the group mind of the list is extremely valuable. In
the past we were lucky to be able to tap the knowledge of two or three
friends when we got in trouble with our experiments, and then it was iffy
whether they would have the requisite knowledge to help. Now we have
hundreds all over the world. It makes me shivver.

Dick S.

Bostick & Sullivan
Platinum and Palladium
Photographic Chemistry
Santa Fe, New mexico