More searching on the Caffenol organic film developing process. So, comments?
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First of all, a lot of people prefer the developing process because you don’t have to work with smelly chemicals. Or, chemicals that smell bad.
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Second, how do you remove the tannin for better results? Well, my search results weren’t very informative, but preliminary evidence suggests that you should use some sort of filter system to remove it. Perhaps one designed to extract the tannin would be most useful for getting all the other chemicals on one side.
20170816/DuckDuckGo remove tannin from coffee
20170816/http://www.waterdoctorjcgalloway.com/tannins-in-water.html
20170816/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tannin
20170816/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffenol
20170816/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeic_acid
Ah yes! This link has some example photos. Remember, this is a black-and-white development process only. If you use color film, you will get black-and-white results.
20170816/https://web.archive.org/web/20120426041955/http://filmphotographyproject.com/content/2011/01/coffee-break-–-develop-film-home-caffenol
20170816/http://www.caffenol.org/
That Caffenol site has a lot of information. You can even develop photographic film using beer. So, maybe it does have the answer for better results. But sure, remember that you won’t get the sharpest and best photographic results using these alternative development processes, but they sure are a good choice for a toy camera!
So where is a comprehensive list of photosenitive materials that can be used for photographic film? Well, I hadn’t had much luck on searching for this, so I’ll have to pick this up later. But, an important point on film and developing. If you take super-long exposures, you don’t need to develop film. The image will be visible without developing if it is exposed for a very long time. However, creating a latent image that is not visible and then using a developing agent to make it visible enables much faster photography. Color film is made in several layers using filters to adjust the sensitivity of each layer. In other words, it is more complicated than what you might want for hobbyist DIY photography.
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So there you go. Now you know what a developing agent is really used for.
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And the fixing agent? It is used to remove the silver halide from the film and leave behind only the dying agent.
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As far as this Wikipedia article goes, it seems that silver halide is really the only practical photosensitive material for consumer photography. No wonder why film is so expensive. So I guess the only other place to go is the alternative photography Wikipedia article.
** All the non-silver processes are called alternative process. There you go.
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However, it looks like the silver halide can be reused after it is removed from the film, if you have your own film coating machine.
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The typical film stock back is plastic (cellulose acetate).
20170816/DuckDuckGo photo film coating materials
20170816/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photographic_film
Is fixing required for black and white film development? Yes.
20170816/DuckDuckGo black and white film development
20170816/http://www.wikihow.com/Develop-Black-and-White-Film
Infrared film? Is that about as easy to develop as black-and-white film? Yes. However, buying it, handling it, and setting up the camera to shoot with it is more difficult. You need a filter to shoot in infrared, and you might need to load and unload the film in complete darkness. Oh, and many historic commercial production sources have discontinued their lines.
20170816/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_photography
More on alternative processes? Unfortunately, it seems that most alternative processes that do not require silver halide rely on an ultraviolet light source, which is an inconvenience.
20170816/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gum_bichromate
20170816/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumi_(company)
But wait! There are those links to the external sites for learning more about alternative processes. Alas, they don’t look very promising.
But this Wikipedia article does. This provides a much more complete listing.
20170816/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_photographic_processes
20170816/DuckDuckGo non-silver photosensitive coating
20170816/https://www.google.com/patents/US3578456
20170816/https://www.google.com/patents/US3904419
20170816/https://www.google.com/patents/US3775123
So, there were actually a lot of interesting patents filed for non-silver photosensitive materials. Unfortunately, none of them really came to fruitition on the commercial mass market. I’m suspecting that the failure happened due to lack of marketing and difficulty in getting the produced films onto physical store shelves.
20170816/DuckDuckGo black and white film non-silver
20160816/DuckDuckGo naturally occurring photographic film
20160816/http://www.silver-refiner.com/photographic-film-recycling.html
This is interesting. Silver doesn’t have many negative effects on humans, and in fact the human body is designed to filter out silver that comes in one’s diet naturally. However, the most severe negative effect on humans is permanent bluing of the skin from long-term exposure to silver dust.
Nearly half of all artificial silver emissions into the environment come from the photographic industry. The availability of small developing machines inside of retail outlets has increased the amount of silver released into the environment.
20160816/http://www.dartmouth.edu/~toxmetal/toxic-metals/more-metals/silver-faq.html
Silver nitrate is an early photographic film material, but it is not as photosensitive as silver halide.
20160816/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_nitrate
So is this where I can find a more comprehensive list of photosensitive chemicals? Maybe.
20160816/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Photographic_chemicals
Maybe this is it? No.
20170816/
Almost every imaginable historic photographic process uses silver. Why, I might as well say that the daguerreotype photographic process was merely discovered as a freak accident in mirror manufacturing.
20160816/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kallitype
20160816/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calotype
20160816/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintype
Failed search.
20170816/DuckDuckGo photo sensitive material change
20170816/DuckDuckGo selective dye fading photography
Anyways, good idea, use some sort of dye fading at a small scale to create your latent image, then use a developing agent to amplify that effect.