Recipe - A cup of PC-TEA

Four years ago, I drafted a post about PC-TEA, a pretty confidential developer created by Pat Gainier that I tried to reproduce from his website. Since then, I used it several times, mainly for contact sheets, and forgot about it.  Lately, I have been once again researching a cheap, reliable, and more eco-friendly developer than […]

Read More

Recipe - Soupe du jour: Pyrocat HD

For over ten years, my father has been exclusively using one type of photographic developer: PMK (Pyrogallol-Metol-Kodalk). The only thing I knew about it was that it was highly toxic and volatile. Even its name sounded dangerous to me. That is probably why I unconsciently decided never to use it. And that is what I did… until now. […]

Read More

Recipe - Blueprint factory – Cyanotype Part I

A few months ago, it was Anna Atkins’ 216th birthday. Do not pretend you know her, her name did not quite survive in notoriety all these years. She was a great scientist: at the London Botanic Society, as one of the first women ever admitted, she documented and illustrated biology research works and assembled herbariums that […]

Read More

Recipe - Caffenol, what else?

Caffenol is an homemade film developer made out from everyday household products, and mostly regular coffee. It was invented by Dr. Williams from the Rochester Institute of Technology. Technical Photography 1995 Class had to create a “non traditional” developer as an assignment. It resulted in what would become Caffenol. That was it. Around 2000, the internet adopted the formula […]

Read More