Hi everyone and happy new year! The last email was… (checks notes) almost 2 years ago, but I figured it’s time to break the silence on the newsletter front. There’s been a great number of things done and written about since the previous email, so I’ll only cover the most interesting and the most recent.
Double-X pushed to 500 in GVM1.2
GVM1 - Super compensating phenidone-glycin film developer
GVM1 is a very unique film developer which uses the rare combination of phenidone and glycin as its only developing agents. The results are a vague call out to the ultra low contrast developer POTA, except it keeps well, increases speed, and produces a good density for darkroom printing from every film tested. If you try just one formulation this year, I’d highly recommend this be the one.
GVM1 produces a very peculiar contrast curve and on many films produces “variable speed” results. It is excellent for the photographer that primarily captures things on film in order to darkroom print them. GVM1 will not blow out the cloud detail in the sky nor will it fail at capturing both the highlights and shadows in a contrasty night street scene in a way that can be transferred to darkroom paper. GVM1 also produces a unique grain structure, with a fair amount of sharpness and without excessive grain etching, but presents the contrast between grains in such a way that it would often appear that you are shooting a film 1-2 stops slower than what it is. This developer is a great all around developer, but is especially recommended for capturing high contrast scenes and/or pushing film. Tests with HP5+ revealed excellent contrast structure even up to ISO 3200, in a way I’ve not seen matched by any other developer.
FP4+ pushed to 400 in GVM1, printed on Fomabrom FB using GVL1
GVL1 - warmtone long lasting phenidone-hydroquinone print developer
GVL1 was a print developer made literally with the goal of “I need a print developer, I wonder what a dilute PQ developer with low sulfite and without carbonate would do”. The result apparently is an excellent warmtone print developer with excellent tray and shelf life properties. I successfully used the first batch 4 months after mixing, though it did not survive beyond that. It has a very high capacity that is greater than 50 8x10 prints per liter, and lasts for over 3 months after mixing as long as you keep the solution in a closed bottle in between printing sessions. It is reminiscent of Ansco 130 but much warmer toned with modern papers and also sometimes gives a slight decrease in shadow contrast. I’ve also recently been researching “GVL2” which is just GVL1 at double the dilution, it appears to behave exactly like GVL1 but with slightly more contrast and much faster. It is likely more stable as well.
Fomabrom FB in 30+30+800 BasicLith
BasicLith - Minimal lith printing developer for modern papers
BasicLith is a lith printing developer formula designed to be as simple as possible and to be used as a base on which to run further experiments. It can be mixed without any heating of solvents and uses fairly easy to acquire ingredients. I have been using the part A of this formula in order to run many other experiments, because the part A has been observed to have excellent shelf life and has a good ratio of hydroquinone to sulfite for lith printing. The part B is as simple as possible, but I’m working on tuning it to incorporate other easy to source ingredients which will benefit the speed, stability, and other properties of the developer
Other Research Ventures
Other interesting research ventures underway are as follows:
GVCP-1/2 — This is the creation of a CD-2 based color positive process in order to use Kodak 2383 film as a color positive slide film. Early testing reveals significant difficulty lies ahead. The film is very easily fogged and has emulsion layers which developer at insanely different speeds. However, some color positive slides have been made in testing already. GVCP-1 was doing all testing using a metol-hydroquinone first developer and GVCP-2 is using a dimezone/phenidone based design instead. If this can be done, then the final result would be an extremely cheap color slide film capable of speeds of around 6 ISO in warm tungsten light, “impossibly” fine grain, and moderately high contrast. This is a very long term project due to its great complexity. You can see some progress updates about it on my twitter, @grainyvision as well as on photrio
“GVXB2”, Amidol+ascorbic acid — I’ve been doing testing on this peculiar combo of developing agents. Thus far the pair seems to have superadditivity and the ascorbic acid makes it so that amidol can be more easily used without the easily staining properties. I am primarily focusing on figuring out a way to make a mildly acidic developer which is of sufficient stability to not require mixing just before usage.
GVW1 — Special warmtone print developer, a unique hydroquinone only non-lith developer which produces extremely warm brown tones and is sufficiently stable to last for a few weeks. This is an interesting formula and aim, but I found the results to be pretty difficult to keep consistent. It also doesn’t work well with all papers and is rather cumbersome.
Lith printing densitometry — I’ve done a series of measurements using BasicLith in order to judge what each potential component I can add to a lith developer actually does. Although I still have a few things to test, this has already revealed a lot of very useful information. The real end result of this research will be “The Next Lith Developer” which will incorporate the design principles of BasicLith along with knowledge gained from component research in order to make an ideal lith printing developer which is also simple to mix and use.
GVK* series of developers — The GVK* series of developers are of metol-glycin formulation, and are designed for moderate to high contrast, sharp grain, is suitable for pushing, and can be used to create longer scale negatives. I’ve published the formula for GVK1, though this had poor shelf life, a tendency for highlights to become too dense, and was a cumbersome 2 part formula. GVK3 was a developer which I made and greatly enjoyed which had a shelf life of around 5 months. However, when I tried to mix the formula I had written down for it, not all of the chemicals would dissolve or stay dissolved. The formula for GVK3 is considered effectively lost. GVK3 was for the most part identical to GVK1 in results. GVK6 is an iteration to try to recreate what GVK3 excelled at, but thus far does not have enough testing to be too sure about. I plan to eventually make a GVK7 which is more methodically created to achieve the goals I had for the GVK* series… Or maybe I’ll just make a GVK1.2 which solves the shelf life issues by increasing concentration as much as possible.
ECN-2 Film Processing — This is an article I didn’t expect to blow up but somehow did. Don’t tell anyone, but I actually screwed up the last batch of ECN-2 film I processed. I think this article needs to be updated still with clearer instructions, but I just haven’t bothered much with C-41 and ECN-2 color film processing lately.
Digital Negatives — I’ve just lately been messing with digital negatives. I’ve found a significant lack of published info for using my popular Pixma Pro 100 printer for the purpose of printing digital negatives. Maybe I’ll try to remedy that issue.
Kallitype research — I’ve messed around with a few alt process things, and kallitypes are probably my favorite thing thus far. However, they have quite a learning curve and are difficult to process for archival lifespan without toning. I plan on researching this more in the future regardless though, especially with usage of a triethanolamine developer which appears to have distinct advantages over typical kallitype developers such as acetate or citrate based ones. I did most of my Kallitype research in early 2021 but never ended up publishing anything on it. I do have an old draft that can be touched on though.
Cyanotypes — I recently got Annette Golaz’s excellent book, Cyanotype Toning, which presents an extremely informative and thorough account of how to make cyanotypes and to tone them using natural botanicals. I will definitely be testing this out as things begin to bloom this spring and am currently working on perfecting my own personal methods for coating and processing untoned cyanotypes.
Lith Printing Video Series — It’s still going to happen, I promise! But it’s kind of on pause until I get into a bigger darkroom because it is extremely annoying to deal with a video camera in my current space. I also am making a companion article which discusses how lith printing works in text form
A self portrait test on Kodak 2383 film using a GVCP-1 positive prototype process
On a personal note, I don’t see a need to go into detail here, but my name is Ashley and my pronouns are she/her! I know this has probably caught a few people off guard wondering what happened to the previous names I used, but don’t worry about it! The important thing is that I know who I am now, Ashley Houston.
I will be moving to a dedicated darkroom space in around May or June and will have a lot more room to work on all of this research and creative ventures. I’m extremely excited to get into this new space as I’ll actually have ample space for doing many things like printing BIG and doing emulsion coating and other things which I’ve previously avoided because of how painful it is to do in my current small darkroom.
Also, both new and old followers of mine, I want to say thank you all for your support, interest, and respect.
— Ashley <3
Cyanotype test from a digital picture.