Silver Recovery from Exhausted Photographic Fixer

I've been saving my spent fixer for the past 2 years, after learning how much silver it contains. Rather than sending valuable silver to the hazardous waste facility and gaining nothing from it, I decided to make an attempt at extracting the silver myself.

Whereas there are several methods for precipitating solid silver from the solution of silver thiosulfate, I opted for the cheapest method, the iron reduction reaction. I used 0000 steel wool in a flask of fixer solution on a magnetic stirrer to precipitate the silver.

Left: the flask of fixer with steel wool being added under stirring. Right: the flask after 2 minutes of stirring, with a noticeable amount of silver already having precipitated.

This is approx. how much steel wool I used for
1 L solution. The piece had a mass of ~1.5 g.

After allowing the flask to stir overnight, I placed a magnet onto the side of the flask to collect any remaining iron filings that didn't react. Luckily there were very few, and I was able to decant the silver precipitate into a beaker for washing. I didn't take photos during this process, but I washed the silver several times until the water remained clear between rinses. At first the water was turning yellow during washing, but the yellow color went away after 3-4 rinses. I suspect there were still iron salts in solution.

I collected the dry powder and melted it in a crucible with a little borax for flux. My oxy-propane torch made quick work of it! The silver piece weighed in at 3.17 g.

I'm quite happy with this yield; it seems as though I extracted nearly all the silver from the exhausted fixer. I'm still curious what the theoretical yield is for a 1 L fixer solution, so I think I will make another post in the near future with some calculations to figure out those numbers.

Photoshoot Breakdown #1

 

I recently edited this photo together as a promotional pic for one of my musical ensembles. I'm extremely happy with how it turned out and I wanted to break down how I set up the shot and how I edited the photos together for the final photo.

My original vision was to have the bassoons set out in front of the subjects, larger in scale but still reasonably in focus. A fully black background would allow for blending the four photos together in post, and a single key light would illuminate the subjects with dramatic Rembrandt shadows. Here's a sketch of the setup I used:

The foamcore board was specifically used to ensure that no part of the subject would appear on the left side of the bassoon, and to black out the left edge of the photos to facilitate the final edit. I used a parabolic umbrella to reduce light spill, and with an already black background it was very easy to keep only the subjects illuminated.

A little airbrushing was used between the shots to blend each portrait into the background, but overall the digital edits were not too time-consuming. I like to do as much work in-camera as possible, and save myself the trouble in post!

Bleach Bypass Development with Expired Vericolor III VPS

I recently purchased a couple expired rolls of Kodak Vericolor III VPS 6006 from my local film store, with a couple experiments in mind but low expectations. For this roll I wanted to attempt bleach bypass processing to boost the contrast of this ~30 year old film and to see if my normal B&W fixer is compatible with the C-41 process. I didn't expect the results of my first test to be so good, so I have very little in the way of photos throughout the process. But I did write down my processing steps so I will be able to share how I shot and developed this film.

The Shoot

I loaded the roll into my handy Holga 120N, with the 645 mask in place. The weather was overcast but dry on the day I went out to shoot, but since I was overexposing the film by a stop (80-100ASA) I brought my tripod, light meter, and shutter release cable along to be as accurate as possible with my exposures.

The Development

All development steps were carried out at 38C, the normal temp for C-41. I used the ADOX C-TEC developing kit, having mixed up half a batch and this roll being the last of the 8-roll capacity for half the kit. The fixer I used is the EcoPro Neutral Fixer. Based on what I've read, it is important for the fixer to be neutral and non-hardening so that it is compatible with color negative film.

Here is my bleach bypass process:

1. Film pre-rinse (two rinses in this case)
2. Normal first step C-41 Developer (using instructions from C-41 kit)
3. Water wash to stop development
4. B&W Fixer (5 minutes 1+4 dilution)
5. Water wash several minutes
6. Stabilizer (1 minute, included in my ADOX kit)
7. Final water rinse and hang to dry

The Results

The film base was a little bit dark to the eye, but the negatives appeared well-exposed. I scanned the negs on my flatbed scanner and here are the results. Click the images to view them full-sized.

Conclusions

For a roll of film roughly 30 years old, I think these results are spectacular. I anticipated that some speed would be lost over time, hence my decision to overexpose by a stop. Bleach bypass development adds approximately a stop of speed as well so in effect I have overexposed this film by 2 stops, which appears to have been the perfect exposure. I hope to try this again on unexpired films, which I will probably underexpose by a stop to see if that speed gain is accurate. Since I use the EcoPro Fixer for developing B&W films and papers anyway, I didn't need to purchase a different product for this test. I'm sure other fixers exist that would work with the process too; I'm eager to see if anyone reading this has success with others and if so, please leave a comment.

Thanks for reading, and I hope to see others try this out as well!

Bi-Color Cyanotype Experiments

I was recently inspired by bi-color cyanotypes I saw online, and wanted to take a crack at the process myself. I started simply with solid colors rather than printing with negatives, as the testing process would probably be very long for the latter. I first wanted to see what this process is capable of.

Since I'm sure everyone is familiar with how cyanotypes are made, I won't describe the process in detail. The yellow layer in bi-color cyanotypes come from bleaching a blue cyanotype with sodium carbonate (washing soda). I use 1 tsp sodium carbonate to 1 L hot water, and bleach the cyanotype to completion. My first tests were to determine how much exposure was needed to achieve a satisfactorily yellow layer.

I expose my cyanotypes using a DIY exposure box, lined with UV LED strips. The UV intensity in this box is rather low, so my exposure times tend to be longer. However, I can achieve much greater consistency using my exposure box than relying on sunlight.

From left to right, the exposure times are 30m, 60m, and 90m. Not a huge difference between the three prints at this stage.

The same prints, but fully bleached with sodium carbonate. Despite the initial prints having very similar values of blue, here it's apparent that the overall exposure during the blue step makes a big difference in the yellow value.

On each bleached print I coated another cyanotype layer and exposed all three for 30 minutes. I reduced this exposure time for later prints, but it's still easy to see that the darkest yellow combines best with the blue layer to make green. The fact that the blue and green aren't too different in value makes the prints feel a little flat.

Here is a later print that I'm happy with, with the blue layer receiving less exposure than the prints above. The exposure may have been on the light side, but the color separation is much cleaner:

I have more experiments I'd like to attempt with this technique, so stay tuned for more soon.

Rule of Thirds Gauge

We're all familiar with the rule of thirds, and how we can use it when composing a shot or in the darkroom to elevate a photograph to a masterpiece. I've been finding it very tedious having to measure thirds in the darkroom with a ruler, or cutting appropriately-sized pieces of paper with lines drawn to mark the thirds. I've found an elegant solution to this problem that is both easy to DIY and is adaptable to all sizes of paper.

Inspired by the golden ratio gauges often constructed and used by woodworkers, I took pen to paper to conceptualize what a similar gauge would look like when constructed to give three equal sections. Here are my initial scribblings:

A quick sketch lays out the unit lengths for each arm of
the gauge. Three units for each long arm, two units for
the short arms.

The idea was simple enough, and to my surprise, it was even easier to construct a functional prototype. I sort of brute-forced the solution with super simple math, working with a unit length of 9cm. I'm sure there is a mathematical proof that shows why this device works, but I'm happy enough having sorted it out so simply. The two long arms are 27mm from the pivot point to the tip, and the two short arms are 18mm from their pivots to the tip. All pivot points are 9cm apart. These lengths can of course be adjusted for any sized gauge you wish to construct, as long as the ratios stay the same. Here is a photo of my prototype, made of cardboard and complete with toothpicks to hold everything together:

The gauge functions by first adjusting the two outer points to the desired dimension. When set, the two inner points will show the exact lines that divide the paper into three sections. Easy thirds, without a ruler!

For the final product, I took some black matboard and cut it into 1" strips. I drilled holes with the four pieces clamped together so the holes would be exactly the same on all pieces. The ends were cut to points, and brass brads were used to hold the whole contraption together.

Simplicity, ease of construction, and versatility, this gauge has it all. So far it's proven to be extremely valuable in the darkroom, and I hope to see others start using this tool as well!