Creating your own authentic vintage developer
Letters on Photography
The house is running a serial on authentic vintage photography. No not digital photography. It is photography where you create your own solutions to develop photographs from single frame film. This episode builds on last month's feature developer solutions for still camera film.
Introduction
The Journal of Crafts was a monthly publication that aimed to provide useful and practical information on hobbies such as photography. The journal also featured articles on the history, theory, and the aesthetics of arts and crafts movement. This article is is part of series of letters on photography that covered topics such as lenses, cameras, exposure, development, printing, and retouching. The eighth letter in this series, published in November 1902, focuses on the use of orthochromatic plates and filters to achieve more accurate color rendition in black-and-white photography.
Letters on Photography.—VIII.
Dear Ethel,
I want at the outset to correct a little error which appeared in the second paragraph of my last letter. As printed it reads: Doubtless you will have encountered the names of pyrogallic acid (commonly called pyro, hydrokinone, or quinol as it is sometimes named).
For some inexplicable reason, the printer, instead of placing the bracket after the word "pyro" placed it after the word "named." So please understand that hydrokinone or quinol are not alternative names for pyro. It is an entirely distinct chemical element.
Developing photographic negatives
Now, having made up your developer, the next thing you ought to know is about the dishes. At the very outset I would urge upon you the utmost importance of remembering that each process requires a separate dish. I do not mean that when you get a little more expert, and you desire to try various developers, you must use a separate dish for each new developer, but what I do mean is that you must not use a developing dish for the alum, clearing, fixing or intensifying baths.
Generally stated, the processes are as follows: Developing the negative in one dish; then, as certain kinds of plates have to be alumed in order to strengthen the film, especially in hot weather, this necessitates another dish. Next there is the fixing in a hypo-sulphite of soda bath. Here, again, another dish must be employed, and kept for that one operation only. After fixing it may be necessary to intensify the Negative—what this means I will explain later on—thus a fourth separate dish is needed.
Choosing Developing Dishes
Dishes are made in two sorts, one called deep, the other shallow. The shallow dishes will answer very well for most purposes, but for the fixing dish I would strongly recommend the deep pattern, because it prevents any splashing over which might happen with a shallow one.
Here let me say that you must on no account allow hypo-sulphite, or hypo, as it is called for short, to come into contact with any other process, unless it is specially intended to form part of a bath, as in combined toning and fixing. Hypo, like fire, is an excellent servant, but a most abominable master. Also, never forget to rinse your hands well before handling either a negative, a dish or chemicals after you have placed your fingers in a hypo or fixing bath. Many a good piece of work has been ruined by inattention to this simple but fundamental rule.
Developer Dish Sizes
Then as to the size of the dishes. These are made to suit the different sizes of plates. A quarter plate dish is slightly larger than a quarter plate film of the Kodak or other type, or an ordinary glass plate, which measures 4¼ by 3¼. The same remark applies to a 5 by 4, half plate, whole plate, and so on. This slight additional size enables you to get your fingers below the edge of the film or glass plate, so that the latter may be lifted out of the bath easily.
Apropos of lifting the film or plate out of the bath I will give you a little wrinkle which you will find works to a charm, and saves putting your fingers into the bath unnecessarily, and avoiding the risk of any slipping, which more often than not causes a scratch upon the sensitive film. Take a hairpin, the loose ends being uppermost, and slip it down one of the corners of the dish until it engages with the plate or him. You can then lift the plate out quite easily.
If you are using a quarter plate the size of the dish for developing will be about 4½ by 3½, if a 5 by 4 the dish will be 5½ by 4½ If a half plate 7 by 5, and if a whole plate the dish will be 9 by 7, and so on. These sizes apply dishes for developing or intensifying, but for a clearing and fixing bath you will do have a dish of double these dimensions, so that you can have two plates under treatment at the same time.
Developer Dishes Materials
Then as to the material. Enamelled steel dishes are now being made, but I am afraid I cannot recommend them, because that degree of perfection has not been reached by the manufacturers which will obviate the appearance of minute pin holes. There are also made papier-mâché, xylonite, and porcelain dishes. The papier-mâché and xylonite are very light and easy to handle, but I unhesitatingly prefer porcelain, for, although they may be a little heavier, they are white, and it can be seen at a glance whether they are clean or dirty. Moreover, they are easier to clean than papier-mâché or xylonite. You know the old saying, my dear, that cleanliness is next to godliness. However much that applies to ordinary life, it has a still more potent application to photography. you cannot be too clean or too particular where photographic chemicals are concerned
Summary
Another little thing I would point out is that you should get a good soft camel's hair brush, or, what I like better still, one of those plush arrangements made by Messrs. G. B. Kent & Sons, Ltd., 75, Farringdon Road, E.C., for dusting plates. You will find that dust is the greatest enemy you have to fight, and if you are not careful in this matter it will be your lot to experience, as hundreds have experienced before you, that an otherwise good plate will be marred by innumerable little holes or clear specks, which will cause you to wonder and speculate how they came there. These specks or pin holes somehow or other always happen to come in some awkward place, upon the tip of the nose oi some good soul who has made a martyr of him or herself to sit for their portrait with you at the camera, or they will come in the sky amongst a lot of foliage where it is most difficult to spot them out. So be very, very, careful of the dust. Brush the plate before you put it into the dark slide, and brush it again after you take it out of the slide, immediately before placing it in the developing dish.
Just one other word about that dreadful hypo, which I have already mentioned. Before you start to take your plates out of the slide and develop them, pour, say, a pint of water into the fixing dish, take out two small handfuls of hypo, which, by the way, you should store in a stone jar with a wide mouth, and put it into the water. It dissolves very quickly. You will find that if you weigh out a couple of small handfuls, the scale will turn approximately at three ounces. Then wash your hands with soap and water, and dry them well, keeping a towel in your dark room specially for hypo. Why this precaution, do you ask? Because hypo crystalises out, and if you dry your hands upon a towel that contains some crystals of hypo, you may be doing a good deal of mischief without knowing it.
You will think, perhaps, this month that my letter is a little dry, but then you see it is dry plate photography, notwithstanding that a lot of water has to be used.
Now, good-bye, with
best love, yours ever,
Phyllis.
J. L.—I should think the village chemist would have a Kodak developing machine. If not, make him write to 43, Clerkenwell Road, for one.