Re: Amidol (reply)

Hamish Stewart & Sophie Colmont (Hamish.Sophie@wanadoo.fr)
Sat, 11 Apr 1998 21:19:03 +0200

>Subject: Amidol
>Sent: 7/4/98 19:39
>Received: 7/4/98 23:24
>From: Hellaynea, Hellaynea@aol.com
>To: Alt-Photo, alt-photo-process-l@skyway.usask.ca
>
>Hello..
>
>I've just started using Amidol and I got some great results but I'm unsure as
>to how many prints a working solution can do? I am using a 1% solution of
>Amidol..Benz...and Sodium sulphite.......the dilution my professor told me (2
>oz amidol to 1000ml of water) to use is rather weak and i had to strengthen
>it. I went ahead and used a dilution of 50/50. Am i doing somehting wrong?
>My books don't say much just recipes and mixing instructions. If anyone can
>give me some advice i'd appreciate it! Oh and I read that Ilford makes an
>Amidol version? Does anyone know if this is true and if it is any better
>than
>the Formulary's Amidol?
>
>Thankx again..
>Astrid
>

Its been a long time since I've used Amidol, but what I can tell you is
that I used a formula from Arnold Gassan's book "The Handbook of
Contemporary Photography" which works well, (if I recall the proportion
of Amidol was very high in this solution, as I do not have the book handy
I can't send you the formula I'm sorry ) though when you mix it the
solution goes brown, like its oxidised, though its fine to work with. I
liked the results, though they weren't in my opinion any better than what
I was able to achieve with the Beers developer so I didn't pursue using
Amidol any further. As to the number of prints that you can put through a
solution, it is rather limited. After an hour or less you would need to
mix up a new batch of the developer. Less than 10 prints, probably closer
to 5 or 6. And because the developer starts as a brown colour, a colour
change doesn't tell you much.

These are my recollections, for what they are worth...

Cheers
Hamish