Diffusion Transfer Printing ("Polaroid" peel-apart) recipes

[Don_ih]

I don't see why the presence of an extra redundant layer of emulsion would cause any problems.

It's also not going to get developed, so it is actually irrelevant.

 

[koraks]

It's also not going to get developed, so it is actually irrelevant.

It may be cumbersome if it gets wet or moist during processing, making the sheet stick to whatever surface it's on. That's about the only way I can imagine the backside emulsion would have any effect at all. Mind you, the same is true for regular sheet film, which has an anti-curl gelatin backing just the same. In this sense a material like RC paper really isn't such a bad idea.

I'm not sure whether RA4 film has sufficient silver in it to make this process work. It may be an option since it's relatively cheap and a bit faster than regular B&W RC paper. Still not as fast as most film, though. And it's panchromatic, of course.

 

[alecrmyers]

The reverse of the film stays completely dry during development. It may be possible to make two consecutive almost-identical prints from one x-ray film by flipping it over and printing using the second emulsion - it would depend on the relative exposures of the front vs. the back emulsions. I'm curious about how the plane of focus of the printed image will vary due to the thickness of the base material.

RA4: From a utility point of view, I want something that's a lot faster than b/w paper. Panchromatic would be a disadvantage for now, but it wouldn't be that hard to make up a developing jig that can be used in darkness. Motorize it, put a lid on it, and you'd have something a lot like a Polaroid 8x10 processor.

There's also lith film, which is relatively cheap. The contrast might be controllable by altering the developer.

 

[koraks]

Lith film is slow. Xray film for now sounds like just the ticket.

 

[Ethan Brossard]

I just came across this thread while researching the plausibility of making polaroid emulsions. I am definitely going to start experimenting with this in the new year. would you recommend starting with the palladium/silica reciever paper and developer 140?
Also, for cheap panchromatic film, I recommend getting a roll of Agfa Aviphot Pan 200. A bit over a year ago HAS images quoted me $300 for a 9.5" x 250' roll.

 

[alecrmyers]

Oh good! Company!

yes, I’d start with those two. Panchromatic has some practical difficulties (for me).

 

[Ethan Brossard]

Oh good! Company!

yes, I’d start with those two. Panchromatic has some practical difficulties (for me).

Thank you!
If you go for X-ray film, I've found that although it is technically orthochromatic, standard amber and red safelights will fog it. To work with it without fogging I found that I had to use deep red LEDs (around 660nm) as a safelight.

 

[koraks]

Thank you!
If you go for X-ray film, I've found that although it is technically orthochromatic, standard amber and red safelights will fog it. To work with it without fogging I found that I had to use deep red LEDs (around 660nm) as a safelight.

Yeah, my experience is similar. Additional filtering with rubylith also helps - and keep the light on the dim side, so far away, or dim to begin with.

 

[Qebs]

Many thanks to alecrmyers for their time to work out this process and sharing it with us all.

Thanks so much!

 

[Ethan Brossard]

I'm no expert, but the difference between this process and color polaroid will be as large if not larger than the difference between a standard black and white emulsion and a color negative emulsion. With color negative films, instead of one emulsion you use three, one for each band of red, green, and blue. development is also a lot trickier because of the dye couplers needed to make the emulsion layers the proper colors. The Impossible Project / Polaroid B.V. is working on making color peel apart film for the 8x10 polaroid camera systems, but it's a very complex task, partially because the original polaroid corporation kept a number of trade secrets, and also because parts of the chemistry used by original polaroid color film has been banned because of its environmental damage.

 

[alecrmyers]

>May I ask how does this work translate to the color peel a part film?

It doesn't. The peel apart colour film was a much more complicated product, both the receiver paper and film element had many coated layers of different chemicals (including halide emulsions adjusted to be sensitive to different wavelengths) and overall uses very different chemistry to the B&W. The chemistry required would need a full time staffed organic synthesis laboratory. There's no chance of anyone being able to make colour products in their basement.

>because the original polaroid corporation kept a number of trade secrets

There are dozens and dozens of public Polaroid patents giving details of different ways to achieve a colour peel-apart product. It would be a mistake to assume that what Polaroid sold (bits of which they may have kept secret) is the only way to do it.

>parts of the chemistry used by original polaroid color film has been banned

I see this often repeated by people who have read it on a webpage, but It's not clear which chemicals they mean, or who they have been banned by.

 

[Ethan Brossard]

>May I ask how does this work translate to the color peel a part film?

It doesn't. The peel apart colour film was a much more complicated product, both the receiver paper and film element had many coated layers of different chemicals (including halide emulsions adjusted to be sensitive to different wavelengths) and overall uses very different chemistry to the B&W. The chemistry required would need a full time staffed organic synthesis laboratory. There's no chance of anyone being able to make colour products in their basement.

>because the original polaroid corporation kept a number of trade secrets

There are dozens and dozens of public Polaroid patents giving details of different ways to achieve a colour peel-apart product. It would be a mistake to assume that what Polaroid sold (bits of which they may have kept secret) is the only way to do it.

>parts of the chemistry used by original polaroid color film has been banned

I see this often repeated by people who have read it on a webpage, but It's not clear which chemicals they mean, or who they have been banned by.

I was told about the banned chemistry by a friend who is part of the polaroid 20x24 studio. He's talked with the people at Polaroid B.V. in their quest to make new films, and that's where the info about banned chemistry came from I believe. Perhaps the chemicals in question are still available in north america but not in europe?

 

[alecrmyers]

>Perhaps the chemicals in question are still available in north america but not in europe?

One of the interesting things I've learned after reading hundreds of Polaroid patents is about the evolution of instant photography. Through the patents of the 40's and 50's it's mostly off-the-shelf chemistry. In the 60's and 70's there are some interesting and novel chemicals (mostly new developers, as you've seen above) that need some basic lab skills to create, and that's an area where I'm working at the moment.

But once you get to the colour stuff - the dye-developers and couplers - it's all invented, tested, produced and patented by a team of professional chemists and lab technicians, with extensive experience, expensive equipment, and then scaled up for production by chemical engineers who do that kind of thing for a living.

Those same skills are now commercially available across the globe - there are a bazillion small chemical synthesis companies who would be very keen to take your cash in return for making whatever you want to make. To a first approximation, everything is available everywhere, if you want to pay for it to be made, but nothing is available "off the shelf", anywhere.

>banned chemistry

Banned is such a strong word, without any context.

There are lots of things that are hard (but not illegal, depending on your jurisdiction) for amateur chemists to get hold of, but very few things that are unlawful (on a regulatory) basis for a commercial concern to produce or commission for a proper purpose, and the ones that are are typically in the fields of chemical weapons, "energetics", or psychoactive substances. I've not seen anything that Polaroid used that appears to fall into those categories, although obviously I'm not that skilled in this art.

Let me give you one example: I'd really like to get my hands on some 4,6-diamino-o-cresol, which is lauded in a Polaroid patent from 1962. The immediate precursor is something which used to be used as an insecticide and herbicide. It's so toxic it regularly used to kill people who applied it and was banned almost worldwide for those uses a couple of decades ago. Is it illegal to make? No. But you can't buy it from a commercial supply company any more, and I don't want to risk my health making some at home.

I do wonder about the chemical wastes produced by synthesizing commercial quantities of some of the things I read about, but if the effluent and discharge rules are tighter now than in the 1980's and 1990's then that's a simple matter of money to deal with.

Then there's a question of the toxicity of what's used in the products, especially the peel-apart ones where the print is covered in a layer of developer. Even when it's dry a print of that variety is not something I'd be comfortable giving to a two year old child to lick.

So perhaps when they say "banned" they mean that a product using that chemical wouldn't meet modern safety standards.

Maybe you could ask what exactly is meant by "banned" in the context in which you were given this information?

 

[Don_ih]

What I heard is that the supply of certain chemicals became too expensive and difficult to secure, mainly because they stopped being used in other industries for various reasons (environmental law being one of them).

But it's all rumour.

It is interesting that Polaroid reaped the reward of their massive lawsuit against Kodak and almost immediately went out of business.

 

[analogwisdom]

Extremely great work, @alecrmyers. I have only read the first post but I will work my way through the thread.

I am an extremely interested hobbyist, I have done countless hours of research, poring over patents, textbooks, and journal articles about how instant photography works, but still have only scratched a bit of the surface. I failed chemistry 2 times in college

Have you by any chance read "Organic Chemistry of Photography" by Shinsaku Fujita? It's an extremely comprehensive textbook, especially on the color instant film side, by an extremely talented chemist and core member of the team that created Fuji's first instant film Fotorama FI-10 in the '80s.

DM me if you'd like more info, I'd love to talk shop and compare notes.

edit: upon further reading and seeing your videos, you seem like a real deal chemist. I doubt I'd have anything helpful to add in that case. Still very fascinating stuff you're doing though!

 

[alecrmyers]

Interesting book. Does it have content relevant to monochrome instant imaging?

 

[analogwisdom]

Interesting book. Does it have content relevant to monochrome instant imaging?

I looked thru it a bit again. The section on B&W DTR processes is extremely short compared to the color section. In fact, the main cited source for the monochrome section is the book from 1972 you mentioned. Probably nothing you haven't seen already there, then.

Edited to add: for context, the section on instant B&W is about 12 pages, but the section on instant color is nearly 200 pages. Perhaps a testament to the difference in complexity of the two, as well.

 

[Qebs]

Hi, alecrmyers, Do you think it would be feasible to use a home made emulsion coated paper as the "film" and use your coating chemistry for the receiver on non photographic/light sensitive paper?
I would like to try out obscure formats and avoid spending copious amounts of money.
Perhaps a DIY enlarging paper/film black and white coating machine could be made.
Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts.

 

[alecrmyers]

Yes, you could create a home-made emulsion. What I observed when I looked into this is that it's technically challenging to make an emulsion that is anywhere close to as fast as film; most people who make photographic emulsion do so to make printing paper, which can be more or less as slow as you like. It's also hard to produce multiple batches of emulsion with a consistent sensitivity - to do so requires industrial level process control using sophisticated (and expensive) equipment. Again variability is not a problem for printing where you can take your time in the darkroom and make as many test strips as you need.

The guru of emulsion making was Ron Mowrey who contributed a lot to this forum (PhotoEngineer) but he died several years ago.

 

[alecrmyers]

I've been working with x-ray film for the last month or so. I have been getting images at around 800ASA (if you believe the shutter on my camera - which I haven't calibrated). Unfortunately I got sold a box of dud (already opened, one sheet missing, the rest fogged) film from an eBay seller, without having achieved results that can be published.

While waiting for more to arrive (from a different vendor!) I have gone back to Ilford Multigrade paper as the film, and have made several advances.

I now have a much better recipe for the printing paper, using only reasonably available chemicals, all of which are very cheap in the quantities used. I also have a new method of conducting the spreading of the developer paste which is automatic, repeatable, and - this is a really big win - produces prints that are instantly clean, dry, glossy and don't need washing. I don't think even Edwin Land found a way to produce dry prints, so I count that as a major find. I will publish some details and videos later. Here's a pic of two prints I produced this morning, just as they came out of the "machine".

We are still not in fine-art print territory, but the road ahead looks good.

 

[Qebs]

Alecmyers, thanks for the reply and thanks for sharing your ideas on a DIY emulsion route.

This, so far 4 page thread has really inspired me in ways I can't understand yet.
All I know is I'm very inclined to devote time to this process for a few series of projects, at the minimum.
I've been coping with a chronic illness and your documentation shared here is truly an invaluable resource to my on going rehabilitation and I confidently assume it will help many others in the Arts.
For privacy reasons, would it be okay if I Private Message you some questions?
I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week.
Be well

 

[alecrmyers]

Sure, that’s fine.

 

[Ethan Brossard]

I've been working with x-ray film for the last month or so. I have been getting images at around 800ASA (if you believe the shutter on my camera - which I haven't calibrated). Unfortunately I got sold a box of dud (already opened, one sheet missing, the rest fogged) film from an eBay seller, without having achieved results that can be published.

While waiting for more to arrive (from a different vendor!) I have gone back to Ilford Multigrade paper as the film, and have made several advances.

I now have a much better recipe for the printing paper, using only reasonably available chemicals, all of which are very cheap in the quantities used. I also have a new method of conducting the spreading of the developer paste which is automatic, repeatable, and - this is a really big win - produces prints that are instantly clean, dry, glossy and don't need washing. I don't think even Edwin Land found a way to produce dry prints, so I count that as a major find. I will publish some details and videos later. Here's a pic of two prints I produced this morning, just as they came out of the "machine".

We are still not in fine-art print territory, but the road ahead looks good.

Instantly dry prints is exciting! Looking forward to seeing how you managed it. The final bits of chemistry I need for this are out for delivery today, so hopefully next week I'll be able to begin experimenting.

 

[analogwisdom]

@alecrmyers out of curiosity, are your prints "coaterless" or will they fade with time if not coated with some kind of protectant?

 

[alecrmyers]

Short answer: (only) time will tell.

The prints I made last year (gelatin based coating) haven’t faded at all. The silica ones I haven’t had around long enough to know.

The latest developers I’ve been using avoid sulphur-containing (thiosulphate) silver solvent, which the literature records as a concern, so that’s a plus. Leaving a bunch of “fixer” unwashed in your print seems like a bad idea.