PMK - how does it work?

[Michael R]

I strongly suggest you invest in some new ingredients. The contents of that Kodak box (originally actually a mixture of bisulfite and metabisulfite) probably went bad a long, long time ago. These are not the most stable compounds to begin with.

Alternatively you can simply purchase pre-mixed liquid PMK concentrates.

Michael R....now *that* is what I was looking for. Thank you.

BTW, here's what I used. I may have typed it wrong, but I believe the contents of the metal box are correct.

Attachment 130319

[Kimberly Anderson]

Thanks for the suggestion Michael, but I won't argue with how the negatives turned out last night. The film looks great.

[CropDusterMan]

Wow...that Sodium bisulfite can has to be older than I am. Would look cool on a shelf next to an old
Graflex.

[IanG]

By now that Bisulphite will be almost total Sulphite. Your part A will have very poor keeping properties but it won't have made any noticeable difference as bas soom as you make up the working developer the Metaborate causes the Bisulphite to decompose to Sulphite anyway.

Ian

[tuco]

If you have not experimented with highlight compression and PMK, I would recommend it. The "Minus-X" development per Gordon's instructions work. You may need to tweak it with a little more time or little more exposure but: Place your low values, add 3 stops of exposure and cut your normal development time by 1/2. It perhaps works better with a figital work flow than wet printing one though.

With the films I've tried, it works best with the tabular grain films such as 100ACR and 400TMY. You wouldn't want to do this on a heavy overcast day but on a sunny/partly cloudy day you don't even need a light meter anymore. That simple rule breaks down to the Sunny 11 rule for my geographic location and placing my shadows 3 or 4 stops below the middle gray. I seem to capture pretty much all the highlights mother nature can throw out and my shadows as placed.

I've interpolate the time of that rule for two stops and now shoot 400TMY at EI100 for daylight conditions as my go-to film and get the benefit of more dynamic range, grain of 400 film about as fine as 100 film and using a waist level finder with no light meter. The more I do it the more I've learned when to tweak my exposure as I've gained experience.