Response to Vitamin enriched D-23??

You can use borax in a phenidone-C developer If you use ascorbic acid, you will have to neutralize it first with about 1/2 gram of baking soda per gram of ascorbic acid. The first oxidation product of ascorbic acid (or sodium ascorbate) is desoxyascorbic acid and is biologically active, according to my encyclopedia. Whether that means it continues to act as a developer, I do not know. It's a matter for experiment anyway. Even the Kodak Research Laboratories had to experiment and were quite surprised to find how superadditive the isomers of ascorbic acid were with phenidone. This was in the early 70's, so it's nothing new. Ordinary Vitamin C requires pH around 12 to do any developing, and a lot of bromide to keep it from generating mostly fog. You can make a fairly good lith developer with 1/2 tbs sodium ascorbate, 1 tsp potassium bromide and 10 grams of lye in 500 ml of water. It doesn't last long, but neither does the hydroquinone version with sulfite. All these things are instructive, whether you ever want to use them for real pictures or not. I do. Suit yourself. That's what we're supposed to do. But when you find out something photographic, even if it's just an interesting fact, go ahead and share it. Maybe someone else can add to it and really get somewhere.

[ Previous | Next ]