Doing everything wrong with PMK Pyro

I just develpped some film, did just about
everything wrong, and if the results look this
good, doing it right should be a thing of
beauty.

Over the weekend I bought a Photographer's
Formulary package of PMK Pyro developer. Read
the instructions, figured I should try it on the
next roll of film I developed.

That next roll proved to be a roll of (new) TMax 100,
some pictures of Multnomah Falls. The only fixer I
had available was Ilford's hardening fixer that
smells like vinegar. This is not what you want for
pyro staining, but being me (and having nothing else
available) I used it anyway.

The results? Except for the yellowish stain, the
results remind me of TMax 100 developed in Xtol,
one of my favourite combinations. I'll have to pick
up some non-acid fixer over the weekend and try this
PMK Pyro stuff on some old-fashioned film, like HP5.
This should be fun.

Laura Halliday VE7LDH "Que les nuages soient notre
Grid: CN89mg pied a terre..."
ICBM: 49 16.05 N 122 56.92 W - Hospital/Shafte

 

Laura,

Using the acid fixer (and stop bath for that matter) will strip the stain
off the negatives, thus losing most of the Pyro benefit. Also, you should
use the alkaline after bath (the spent developer works fine) to increase the
stain. Washing increases it as well. Then see how they print of VC papers,
the surprise is yet to come...

Jim

 

"Laura Halliday" <> schreef in bericht

[snip]

I'll tell you - that IS fun!

Cheers, Paul.

 

Opinions vary on the utility of afterbath in the used developer -- from
what I've read, it's a) unnecessary if you use a water stop and alkaline
fixer, and b) unhelpful anyway, because it promotes primarily general
stain (aka fog) rather than imagewise stain.

BTW, if you like staining developers (and after printing good PMK
negatives, you probably will) you should investigate Caffenol. It
stains much like pyro or pyrocat, a brownish rather than greenish stain.
Though you should use a water stop to prevent pinholes (the developer
has carbonate for alkali, and can produce gas on contact with acid
stop), it doesn't seem bothered by acid fixer, and it's far less toxic
than PMK -- enough so that, were it not for the smell (and presumably
taste) of the alkalized coffee, you could probably drink a small
quantity without harm.

--
I may be a scwewy wabbit, but I'm not going to Alcatwaz!
-- E. J. Fudd, 1954

Donald Qualls, aka The Silent Observer
Lathe Building Pages http://silent1.home.netcom.com/HomebuiltLathe.htm
Speedway 7x12 Lathe Pages http://silent1.home.netcom.com/my7x12.htm

Opinions expressed are my own -- take them for what they're worth
and don't expect them to be perfect.

 

Don, I've had good luck with short afterbaths. Increasing the stain
without increasing the level of general stain. Maybe I've been lucky or
some other variable (ph of wash water?) has given me the good fortune.

Saw the thread on Photo.net (who's nipple?). May give it a shot. Do you
have a better formula other than by teaspoons?

Thanks,

Jim

 

My understanding is that Pyro doesn't work well with T-grained
films. Have you ordered the Book of Pyro yet??


: I just develpped some film, did just about
: everything wrong, and if the results look this
: good, doing it right should be a thing of
: beauty.

: Over the weekend I bought a Photographer's
: Formulary package of PMK Pyro developer. Read
: the instructions, figured I should try it on the
: next roll of film I developed.

: That next roll proved to be a roll of (new) TMax 100,
: some pictures of Multnomah Falls. The only fixer I
: had available was Ilford's hardening fixer that
: smells like vinegar. This is not what you want for
: pyro staining, but being me (and having nothing else
: available) I used it anyway.

: The results? Except for the yellowish stain, the
: results remind me of TMax 100 developed in Xtol,
: one of my favourite combinations. I'll have to pick
: up some non-acid fixer over the weekend and try this
: PMK Pyro stuff on some old-fashioned film, like HP5.
: This should be fun.

: Laura Halliday VE7LDH "Que les nuages soient notre
: Grid: CN89mg pied a terre..."
: ICBM: 49 16.05 N 122 56.92 W - Hospital/Shafte

--




Keep working millions on welfare depend on you

 

That's not quite right. PMK doesn't give quite as much stain with TMX
as, say, with HP5+, but it still stains significantly. TMY stains more
than TMX. There's no reason to think that more stain is always better.
To see this, get a negative with a strong pyro stain. Bleach out the
silver and print the negative. Is the print better than that from a
normal negative? If you want to get really fancy, do film speed and
development tests on the pure stain image.

-Peter De Smidt

 

I have some prints from a friend of mine. They were made from TMX
negatives developed with PMK. They are some of the most beautiful prints
that I have in my collection.

-Peter De Smidt

 

I have some prints from a friend of mine. They were made from TMX
negatives developed with PMK. They are some of the most beautiful prints
that I have in my collection.

-Peter De Smidt[/QUOTE]

Delta 100 works well with PMK & Especially Rollo Pyro
although not truely a "T" grained film the "Core Shell"
technology is close enough. I have lots of Delta 400 and some
Delta 100 4x5 images that are fine examples of the virtues
of Pyro,....stain included

 

: > Frank Pittel wrote:
: >
: >> My understanding is that Pyro doesn't work well with T-grained
: >> films. Have you ordered the Book of Pyro yet??
: >>
: >

: I have some prints from a friend of mine. They were made from TMX
: negatives developed with PMK. They are some of the most beautiful prints
: that I have in my collection.

Hearing this is good news to me. I always understood that Pyro didn't work well
with T-grain films. It looks like I will be getting the book of Pyro and will
be giving it a try one of these days with TMX.
--




Keep working millions on welfare depend on you

 

It does work with any film as it's simply a developer. The
staining is more pronounced on non-T-grain films such as TXP, PXP and
others. Note that this may have changed since the reformulation due to
moving the production of the films to a new coater. I'm wondering if
TX is now hardened ?

Regards,

John S. Douglas, Photographer - http://www.puresilver.org
Please remove the "_" when replying via email

 

That's the way it came to me. The end result is the coffee is four
times "normal" drinking strength, and in fact it's been verified, last
time this went around, that you can use espresso to replace the water
and coffee crystals -- that is, simply alkalize espresso straight from
the machine (after suitable cooling, of course). I didn't find my
reloading scale while packing for this last move (it's probably in a box
that hadn't been unpacked from the previous move, and I likely won't see
it for several more months), and the only other almost suitable scale I
own measures in 5 gram increments, so I can't measure how much coffee
and soda that is by mass, but I've used this with both coffee and
washing soda taken from the tops of newly opened packages, so you should
a) find it easy to reproduce, and b) find it fairly simple to weigh the
ingredients after measuring. You might be able to get the mass from the
"serving size" on the nutritional information panel on the coffee, at
least; the "slightly rounded" teaspoons I use are approximately 1.5
level teaspoons (so you could say I'm using 6 level teaspoons). The
washing soda, as packaged, seems to be very similar in density, but the
water content is unknown and probably varies depending how long the
stuff has been in the cardboard box; it probably starts as anhydrous,
but converts to monohydrate in storage, and there's no simple test
(other than to heat some to constant weight and determine how much water
was driven off) to determine how far it's gone along that path.

Complicating matters still more is that different brands of instant
coffee have different levels of activity, likely corresponding to
different levels of the caffeic acid (a pyrocatechin variant) and its
glycoside precursor, chlorogenic acid, that are the most likely
developing agents -- which, in turn, likely stem from beans grown in
different conditions, and/or cofee roasted or brewed differently and/or
converted to instant by a different method. Folger's is freeze-dried,
made from Columbian Arabica beans grown in mountain conditions, and
roasted relatively light -- the only other data point I have on this is
that a German instant coffee (I've forgotten the brand), which I'm
assured is 100% coffee and 100% arabica beans, required 50% more of the
powder to do the same job. If you want to make something really
consistent here, you'd do well to chase down industrial sources of pure
chlorogenic and/or caffeic acids (if there are such sources), or find an
analytical method of extracting and purifying one or both, and test with
known quantities. If you could do it economically, you could probably
sell the resulting developer as a low-toxicity competitor to pyro and
pyrocat formulae...

Fortunately, the carbonate, at least, isn't very critical; I've seen no
difference at all from increasing it 50% (I was hoping I might speed up
the working, but I'd have to have a stronger alkali to increase pH --
next time, perhaps I'll try adding a tiny bit of lye), and I'm
reasonably sure the amount given has at least a little excess. It seems
less dense than sugar, so the spoons likely contain less than 5 grams;
since more doesn't hurt, you should be safe assuming 10 g of sodium
carbonate anhydrous in 8 ounces, or roughly 40 g/L.

Ah. The photo you're referring to (in which Tri-X masquerades as color
film due to interaction of the stain with scanner corrections) is one my
wife would prefer no one saw, so I haven't told her...

--
I may be a scwewy wabbit, but I'm not going to Alcatwaz!
-- E. J. Fudd, 1954

Donald Qualls, aka The Silent Observer
Lathe Building Pages http://silent1.home.netcom.com/HomebuiltLathe.htm
Speedway 7x12 Lathe Pages http://silent1.home.netcom.com/my7x12.htm

Opinions expressed are my own -- take them for what they're worth
and don't expect them to be perfect.

 

Heavens to Starbucks !! The next thing is they'll be using tea
or soda !!


Regards,

John S. Douglas, Photographer - http://www.puresilver.org
Please remove the "_" when replying via email

 

In fact, green tea and mint have been used; green tea contains
chlorogenic acid, though in much lower concentration than coffee, and
tannates that might be distantly related to pyrocat, while mint seems to
develop via thymosin (possibly along with chlorogenic acid, which is
present in all green plant parts, but tends to concentrate in green
fruits) -- oddly, since thymosin is oil soluble, mint has a tendency to
develop more strongly in the top 25% of the tank, because the mint oils
float on water; recommendation is to put one film in the bottom half of
a two-reel tank with 2x the liquid needed to cover the film.

Soda (at least ordinary cola) doesn't seem to work -- caffeine itself
doesn't appear to be a developing agent, and sugar is a restrainer; diet
soda would be a better choice, if caffeine were in fact a developing
agent -- but a brew made with straight caffeine obtained from OTC
stimulants (No-Doz etc.) has been reported not to develop film.

--
I may be a scwewy wabbit, but I'm not going to Alcatwaz!
-- E. J. Fudd, 1954

Donald Qualls, aka The Silent Observer
Lathe Building Pages http://silent1.home.netcom.com/HomebuiltLathe.htm
Speedway 7x12 Lathe Pages http://silent1.home.netcom.com/my7x12.htm

Opinions expressed are my own -- take them for what they're worth
and don't expect them to be perfect.

 

I'll bet the writes of that old TV program Mcguyver are kicking themselves
for overlooking Caffenol.

 

Nah, they did it, or nearly so -- or did you miss the episode in which
MacGyver developed film from an aerial camera in orange juice
(presumably the ascrobic acid was to have done the job, though they
glossed over preservation and alkalization, even while they got it right
about the negs, straight out of the dev without stop or fix, being milky
and turning black as they were viewed, from residual developer action).
If he'd used coffee, he could have used the orange juice for stop bath
and been able to look at the pictures for hours, if need be...

--
I may be a scwewy wabbit, but I'm not going to Alcatwaz!
-- E. J. Fudd, 1954

Donald Qualls, aka The Silent Observer
Lathe Building Pages http://silent1.home.netcom.com/HomebuiltLathe.htm
Speedway 7x12 Lathe Pages http://silent1.home.netcom.com/my7x12.htm

Opinions expressed are my own -- take them for what they're worth
and don't expect them to be perfect.

 

Personally I have better things to do with my coffee !

And also my tea.


Regards,

John S. Douglas, Photographer - http://www.puresilver.org
Please remove the "_" when replying via email

 

No, John, don't think of it as "coffee." This is instant we're talking
about, after all. Think of it as a very inexpensive photographic
chemical that's sold in the coffee aisle of the supermarket -- it's
certainly not fit for drinking! And while you're in the market, be sure
to grab a box each of Arm & Hammer Photographic, er, Washing Soda and 20
Mule Team Photographic Borax -- they'll be in the laundry aisle.

--
I may be a scwewy wabbit, but I'm not going to Alcatwaz!
-- E. J. Fudd, 1954

Donald Qualls, aka The Silent Observer
Lathe Building Pages http://silent1.home.netcom.com/HomebuiltLathe.htm
Speedway 7x12 Lathe Pages http://silent1.home.netcom.com/my7x12.htm

Opinions expressed are my own -- take them for what they're worth
and don't expect them to be perfect.

 

Have you ever noticed that Guinness and old Rodinal have exactly the same
appearance? Clue: don't drink Guinness from a lab beaker.

 

: On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 19:35:05 -0500, Frank Pittel

: >: I have some prints from a friend of mine. They were made from TMX
: >: negatives developed with PMK. They are some of the most beautiful prints
: >: that I have in my collection.
: >
: >Hearing this is good news to me. I always understood that Pyro didn't work well
: >with T-grain films. It looks like I will be getting the book of Pyro and will
: >be giving it a try one of these days with TMX.

: It does work with any film as it's simply a developer. The
: staining is more pronounced on non-T-grain films such as TXP, PXP and
: others. Note that this may have changed since the reformulation due to
: moving the production of the films to a new coater. I'm wondering if
: TX is now hardened ?

I've always assumed that the reason for using pyro is for the staining effect.
Having never used pyro I don't know about it's effectivness on TMX first hand but
have heard that it doesn't work well with it. I'm glad to hear that what I've
heard about pyro and TMX isn't true.

It could be that the rumor was started not long after TMX came out and people didn't
understand how to properly develop it. I still believe that most people that don't like
TMX don't like it because they're not developing it properly and have thought so for a
long time. I proved this to myself this spring when I started working with Delta-100.
After spending the time to run the development tests which included the expansion and
contraction time tests for N+ and N-. I went out with both TMX and Delta-100 and made
duplicate exposures with both films. After developing both films I went into the darkroom
with the negatives and made the best prints I could from them. After the first couple of
negatives I started noting on the back of the paper which film was used because after the
prints were dry and next to each other I couldn't tell the difference!!! I point this out
becuase the many detractors of TMX like Delta-100. It's interesting to note that the
expansion and contraction times match those of "conventional" B&W films while they are
very different with TMX!!
--




Keep working millions on welfare depend on you