Posted as-is from a drugstore scan (1500×1000 pixels) of cross-processed Ektachrome GX film. The scans were mostly blown out, but I liked the look.

They say that Kodak film works “best” at cross-processing. I have a lot of 120-format Provia lying around, so it might be time to test that hypothesis.

I shot this at a local park with the good ol’ Nikon F90 and 50mm f/1.8 lens. For all you Torontonians — I bought the film (expired 2006) for $1 at a camera fair last year, and had it developed and scanned at the Shoppers Drug Mart at Eglinton and Chaplin for $3. Talk about a cheap thrill!

Another picture from the one-roll project, taken with the Nikon FG and Sigma 18-35mm lens on Efke 25.

I’ve felt a bit uninspired lately, so I decided to kick-start what’s left of my artistic brain by giving myself a project.

For about a week, I carried around a deliberately limited rig (the Nikon FG loaded with a single roll of ultra-slow Efke 25, mounted with a slow and somewhat unsharp Sigma wide-angle zoom). Rather than rattling off pix at every opportunity, I tried to take just a few carefully chosen photographs each day.

I’m still going through the results of the One-Roll Project, but so far I like what I see.

This was 35mm Efke 25 film developed in Rodinal 1+50 for 5 mins at 18C.

• In the “of local interest” category, a Flickr discussion in the Toronto group looks at where to get medium-format film (with an emphasis on C-41) processed in Toronto these days. Some of the labs that used to be reliable no longer are, whereas others have just plain closed. It’s good to get the “hive” opinion on this once in a while.
• Aaron Muderick comments on doing E-6 at home — he has a more reliable setup than I did when I ran the process in my own bathroom, but his motivation for going the DIY route for colour slides is the same.

… and a question: Are any of my readers (I get 50-100 hits a day, so I know you’re out there!) using Ubuntu Linux for serious digital darkroom work — scanning film, dealing with digital photos, etc.? I like the idea of Ubuntu, but the lack of Photoshop is a killer for me. I am comfortable with GIMP for simple tasks, but find it to have half the features and a quarter of the speed of Photoshop when handling identical tasks. In addition, Picasa crashes all the time under Ubuntu, and I can’t get my scanners to work properly. Any ideas?

Here are some recent “Instant MYTOL” images:

My guess is that Paul Lewis, who came up with the formula for MYTOL, started with Kodak’s XTOL-related patents and MSDS and used the information in them to “back-formulate” something that resembles the original. Lewis didn’t include a metal-chelating agent like Calgon, EDTA or salicylate in his formula, though.

Deconstructing the ingredient list for MYTOL is telling. The developing agents are ascorbate and phenidone, just like in XTOL. However, MYTOL calls for an ascorbate salt directly (sodium ascorbate) rather than specifying the more easily obtained ascorbic acid. The formula also calls for sodium metaborate (an alkali) as well as both sodium sulfite and sodium metabisulfite. Both sulfite and metabisulfite are sources of “sulfite” ion in solution, but metabisulfite also produces a drop in pH in its solutions. I suspect it is in the MYTOL formula as an attempt to control the pH of the stock solution and bring it close to the target XTOL pH of 8.2.

It strikes me that a much easier way to mix MYTOL would be to start with a solution of ascorbic acid, phenidone, and sodium sulfite in water, then titrate to pH 8.2 with your base of choice (triethanolamine or metaborate would be good at this pH). The advantage here would be a shorter ingredient list with more easily obtained components.

Based on these considerations and my own experimentation, I propose the following formula for Instant MYTOL:

Instant MYTOL

Start with 700 ml of water
11.5 g ascorbic acid (same molar concentration of ascorbate as MYTOL)
0.15 g phenidone
60 g sodium sulfite (anhydrous)
13.4 ml triethanolamine or 7 g sodium metaborate (“Kodalk”)
Water to 1000 ml

Use as you would use XTOL. I suspect the triethanolamine version might be better behaved in dilute solution than the metaborate version, though metaborate is somewhat easier to handle.

Please e-mail me if you actually try this!

D-76H

Start with 500 ml distilled water at 50C
2.5 g metol
100 g sodium sulfite (anhydrous)
2.0 g borax
Make up to 1 L with distilled water

The best online information about D-76 can be found at Ryuji Suzuki’s wiki about it.

My results so far are best described as mixed. I’ve developed a couple of rolls of 35mm FP4 Plus and two rolls of 120-format Arista.EDU Ultra 200 (Fomapan 200), and while I was expecting thickly “coloured” negs, what I got was visually not too different from a regular B&W negative. Following Pat Gainer’s suggestions, I bleached one of my negs with Farmer’s Reducer (basically a dilute solution of K₃Fe(CN)₆ and thiosulfate) to remove the silver image, and got a very faint stained image as a result. The negs are very sharp, though, and scan nicely. The FP4 Plus (example here) was developed for 7 mins at 22C, while the Fomapan 200 (example here) was developed for 8 mins at the same temperature.