JibbyDee
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Registered: 25-11-2011
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Analogue photography - a declining but immortal practice
It makes me sad that digital cameras pretty much phased analogue photography out of existence by the time I got into chemistry. I find photochemistry
fascinating so I've been learning about it lately and I'm now aware of the plethora of exotic (exotic to me at least) compounds used in the dark room.
What an excellent OTC source of reagents photography supply shops would have been back when there was no alternative analogue photography. There are
photography supply shops online but its not the same thing as a nice, convenient, walk in the door shop. However, many photography enthusiasts still
practice analogue photography for numerous reasons, especially when it comes to alternative (alternative to the conventional argyrotype methods)
methods. I personally like the idea of controlling the chemical composition of a photograph I made and find dark room chemistry fascinating. For
example to intensify a latent image you can add different heavy metals such as mercury which form a complex with the elemental silver so you end up
with a photograph containing particles of silver-mercury complex. I'm sure photography enthusiasts who run supply shops want to keep analogue
photography alive too so they would probably be happy to stock darkroom chemicals.
The biggest photography supply shop in my city supposedly stocks supplies for alternative photography process so I'm going to see if they'll order
various compounds in for me. I really want to see the photoreduction of silver bromide for myself so I'm going to ask them to order in some silver
nitrate and potassium bromide for me. Have any of you here asked your local photography supply shop to order in dark room chemicals for you?
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JibbyDee
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I emailed the photography supply shop and they said they can get these compounds for me.
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zoombafu
Hazard to Others
Posts: 255
Registered: 21-11-2011
Location: U.S.
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Mood: sciencey
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I have tinkered with darkroom photography in the past, and it is very fun. The only problem is that sometimes getting a certain compound can be hard
or expensive because the government continues to restrict and regulate chemicals to 'decrease' the amount of illicit drug use.
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woelen
Super Administrator
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Registered: 20-8-2005
Location: Netherlands
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Mood: interested
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There still are very nice photography supply shops. I myself also have done a lot of dark room processing and still sometimes do some experimenting.
Have a look at the following shop (which ships worldwide):
http://www.artcraftchemicals.com
This company has a good range of nice chemicals. Besides the chemicals they also have some films and printing papers. In the past they had a much
wider range of papers and lots of well-designed complete developers, but due to the rise of digital photography that kind of material has become much
less common. People nowadays are more on their own, needing to mix raw chemicals and needing to do some more experimenting before satisfactory results
can be obtained.
[Edited on 8-12-11 by woelen]
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Magpie
lab constructor
Posts: 5939
Registered: 1-11-2003
Location: USA
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Mood: Chemistry: the subtle science.
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There is a photo supply business that used to sell KCN as a reducer. But they don't list it anymore.
The single most important condition for a successful synthesis is good mixing - Nicodem
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