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Old Dektol
I just set up a temporary darkroom.
Boy, ho, boy ,oh boy is the Thomas sodium safelight nice to work with. As is the forty year old Beseler 23C. I found some dektol stock that I had mixed over four years ago with the intention of developing some prints and stored in a mylar wine bag. It had just a bit of discoloration so I mixed it 1:1 and tried it out. I got black blacks and white whites, no "muddy" prints and the image came out in about fifteen to twenty seconds. Three hours and twenty prints in the tray and it was starting to discolour (turn a bit brownish) One of the reasons I stopped darkroom activity was the resin coated paper that came out. It seemed to give slick and plastic looking prints. The AGFA resin paper I used today gave very nice prints. I'm going to mix up a new batch of dektol and see how much nicer the prints do get. The Tmax 400 I develped in 1:1 D76 gave a really nice negative to work with. I did over develop the film by about 5% It is a good start. It seems there have been some very nice advances in the B&W field since the 70's I hope there will be more spare time in the near future so I can play more. My 20 year old son is really impressed with the 7 x 10 glossies, I will have to wait a few days to see if I like any of them... |
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Old Dektol
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#3
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Old Dektol
wrote in message ... I just set up a temporary darkroom. Boy, ho, boy ,oh boy is the Thomas sodium safelight nice to work with. As is the forty year old Beseler 23C. I found some dektol stock that I had mixed over four years ago with the intention of developing some prints and stored in a mylar wine bag. It had just a bit of discoloration so I mixed it 1:1 and tried it out. I got black blacks and white whites, no "muddy" prints and the image came out in about fifteen to twenty seconds. Three hours and twenty prints in the tray and it was starting to discolour (turn a bit brownish) One of the reasons I stopped darkroom activity was the resin coated paper that came out. It seemed to give slick and plastic looking prints. The AGFA resin paper I used today gave very nice prints. I'm going to mix up a new batch of dektol and see how much nicer the prints do get. The Tmax 400 I develped in 1:1 D76 gave a really nice negative to work with. I did over develop the film by about 5% It is a good start. It seems there have been some very nice advances in the B&W field since the 70's I hope there will be more spare time in the near future so I can play more. My 20 year old son is really impressed with the 7 x 10 glossies, I will have to wait a few days to see if I like any of them... Pretty amazing. I've never stored a filled bottle of Dektol for very long. A partially filled bottle may last for six months but will start to get quite brown after that. Dektol is slightly straw colored when freshly mixed. Kodak's figures on lifetime of chemicals is quite conservative. They give worst case numbers to insure the products will work satisfactorilly. BTW, really badly oxidized Dektol will be black and smell like spoiled fish due to the hydroquinone. -- --- Richard Knoppow Los Angeles, CA, USA |
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Old Dektol
On Sun, 22 Feb 2004 01:10:48 GMT, "Richard Knoppow"
wrote: Pretty amazing. I've never stored a filled bottle of Dektol for very long. A partially filled bottle may last for six months but will start to get quite brown after that. Dektol is slightly straw colored when freshly mixed. Kodak's figures on lifetime of chemicals is quite conservative. They give worst case numbers to insure the products will work satisfactorilly. BTW, really badly oxidized Dektol will be black and smell like spoiled fish due to the hydroquinone. This stuff came out of the mylar bag straw coloured. I wanted to see if it would still work before I mixed a new batch. I did about 30 8x10 prints on one tray of dektol mixed 1:1 The last two prints came out "muddy", there was also a brown perciptate on the bottom of the tray at the end of the session. I do suspect this stuff was dying in the tray. |
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