True sepia, make it simple

The photo above was a normal B&W photo, a little too dark. So, I wondered what could it turn in sepia. To do so, I used a bleach bath made of copper sulfate and sodium chloride for a few minutes, enough to vanish the image. I washed tho photo to remove vestiges of the bleach and soak it in a solution of Sodium Sulfide. The image reappeared but now in sepia.

Bleach:

100 g Copper Sulfate
100 g Sodium Chloride
1 liter water

Sepia bath:

10 g Sodium Sulfide
1 liter water

Salt print

Bridge over Lis, Leiria, Portugal

Salt print is one of the easiest (and earliest) print processes from a transparent negative. But there are a number of slight different recipes and some toning methods.

I did the simplest recipe I could find to produce the A4 picture above:

First I printed the negative on a A4 acetate transparency. Then I prepared the paper using a sheet of A4 Canson paper of 300g/m2. The paper was first floated on a 2% salt solution (20g of salt for 1 liter water) and put the paper to dry. After this, under a red light I painted the paper with a 12% solution of silver nitrate (12g of silver nitrate for 100 mililiter) using a smooth brush and let the paper dry.

Using a photo frame I putted the transparency and paper in contact, with the transparency over the paper when the glass is looking up.

Following this preparation, I exposed the sandwich to bright sun for some minutes, until the sensitized paper looked brown enough.

Finally the paper was taken of the frame and subject to a water shower until the water came clear out.

Then I brought the paper to a tray containing a 10% solution of Sodium Thiosulfate (100g for 1 liter). This step took 20 minutes, The paper was left in water for 1 hour and put to dry.

Wannabe Photographer

Thank you for waiting

Since quite a long time, I found no time to go on with my experiments on color photography. But I have been busy taken pictures and developing and scanning and publishing at Flickr.

After trying Dignan 2-bath method for more than one year, tweaking here and there, developing at room temperature, I may now say that it is a very good idea but it also has disadvantages. The bath A doesn't last that long as the author desired and you have to live with some color shift to green in negatives, magenta in positive.

Last October I came to another approach by Bill Williams, that I tried to simplify creating a 2-solutions color developer, like used in commercial color kits. But I was not so sure whether this would not conduct me at the end to a standard color developer, like many other fans of color film photography do.

So, I prepared 500 ml of a standard color developer that I am using since more than a month (six rolls and still going). I am using the developer with a start temperature of 42ºC (I don't have a JOBO device) and until now the results are very good for me. The recipe may be found here, for instance.

Some results of using the standard color developer:

Happy New Year

Turning it easier

In the last post, I spoke about Bill Williams color developer, as he proposed it.

To mix all components, one by one, each time you want to develop a film, is not that practical. Besides, with those 10% or 1% solutions you have to measure different amounts of each. I thought it would be easier to have only two prepared stock solutions and use equal amounts of them, just like a commercial developer.

So, here is my proposal for an easier usage of Bill Williams developer:

Stock solution A, for 500 ml

25g Sodium Sulfite
20g CD4 *

Stock solution B, for 500 ml

12,5g Potassium Bromide
0,1g Potassium Iodide
200g Potassium Carbonate

* The resulting amount in the work solution is slightly higher, 0,4g against 0,35g

Usage:

Put 10ml of each solutions A and B in 500ml hot water from tap (+/- 50ºC), mix and let it cool to 45ºC (112ºF). Pour the solution into the tank, where the film was previously loaded. Gently and constant agitation during 8 minutes. Then rinse, followed by bleach, rinse, fix and wash, as usual.

Bill Williams CD4 Color Film Developer

Published in May 21, 2008 by Bill Williams at APUG, here is his recipe:

«Water 500ml @ approx 112 degrees
Sodium Sulfite (A) .5 grams (approx 1/8 tsp)
CD4 .35 grams (approx 1/8 tsp)
Potassium Iodide 1.8 milligrams
Potassium Bromide .25 grams
Potassium Carbonate (A) 4 grams (approx 2/3 tsp)»

The recipe is very minimal and precise about the amounts in grams and apparently  not accurate with fractions of tsp. But reading above the recipe, one can understand what he means. He used graduated inox recipients to measure exact solutions of Potassium Carbonate, Sodium Sulfite and Potassium Bromide. I only don't understand how he measured Potassium Iodide from a 1% solution.

I prepared following separate 500 ml each solutions:

• 50 grams CD4 and 1,5 grams Sulfite as preservative only
• 50 grams Sodium Sulfite
• 50 grams Potassium Bromide
• 50 grams Potassium Carbonate

I already had a 2% solution of Potassium Iodide. So I took 5 ml (that contains 100 mg) and add water to make 100 ml, so I ended with a 0,1% solution. To use 1.8 mg, I need 1,8 ml of this solution.

With a 5 ml syringe, I measure following amounts to prepare 500 ml of this developer:

• 5 ml Sulfite 10% solution
• 3.5 ml CD4 10% solution
• 1.8 ml of Iodide 0,1% solution
• 2,5 ml Bromide 10% solution
• 40 ml Carbonate 10% solution

One of the last results