Would it be incredibly difficult for an existing company to make Efke PL25M?

[Pere Casals]

that making your own film is absolutely possible.
http://deniseross.zenfolio.com/

It is possible, but what its clear is that to make a good quality film with precise specs and multiple layers requires a lot of work, precission, machinery, knowledge and capital, ...and a few specialist engineers.

...But making something that can be developed it's quite straight.

The easiest way is to make dry glass plates with suplied emulsion. Or collodion... Still some people do it... and once every photograph was doing it !!!

If can adhere a polyester base to the "glass plate", you operate as if you where making a glass plate, remove the glass and you have film... yes !!

[Pere Casals]

due to random dust in the emulsion.

I found this solution to get rid of darkroom dust:

https://www.amazon.com/Honeywell-162...well+hap+16200

I Start it 10 min before, and I use clothes that do not emit to much dust.

Also work for scanning !!

[dwross]

It is possible, but what its clear is that to make a good quality film with precise specs and multiple layers requires a lot of work, precission, machinery, knowledge and capital, ...and a few specialist engineers.

...But making something that can be developed it's quite straight.

The easiest way is to make dry glass plates with suplied emulsion. Or collodion... Still some people do it... and once every photograph was doing it !!!

If can adhere a polyester base to the "glass plate", you operate as if you where making a glass plate, remove the glass and you have film... yes !!

OR, you could/can coat an appropriate film base just like you'd coat paper. Actually, far easier than coating glass plates. Any old polyester won't do, however. Normal PET is hydrophobic, that is it repels water-based liquids, which describes silver gelatin emulsions. You need a film that has been "subbed" to accept wet media (hydrophilic) and Graphix makes a perfect one, https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_n...+for+wet+media

[Tin Can]

OR, you could/can coat an appropriate film base just like you'd coat paper. Actually, far easier than coating glass plates. Any old polyester won't do, however. Normal PET is hydrophilic, that is it repels water-based liquids, which describes silver gelatin emulsions. You need a film that has been "subbed" to accept wet media and Graphix makes a perfect one, https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_n...+for+wet+media

Very good suggestion Denise.

I put some on a wish list.

Yes, glass needs something. 20 years ago I took a watercolor painting glass and decided to shock my peers. I poured and brushed standard watercolor paint on a 2X6 ft wood window. Made my original painting very quickly. Actually well received. It was OK for 10 years, then the paint shrunk a bit.

But by then I had what I really wanted, the actual discarded window, as it was from a 100 year old school that was later demolished. I knew that desecration was just a matter of time.

I removed the 'painting' 5 years ago and now my windowless darkroom has a fake window and many memories.

[dwross]

[QUOTE=Randy Moe;1341171 ...

I removed the 'painting' 5 years ago and now my windowless darkroom has a fake window and many memories.[/QUOTE]

!!

[Pere Casals]

OR, you could/can coat an appropriate film base just like you'd coat paper. Actually, far easier than coating glass plates. Any old polyester won't do, however. Normal PET is hydrophilic, that is it repels water-based liquids, which describes silver gelatin emulsions. You need a film that has been "subbed" to accept wet media and Graphix makes a perfect one, https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_n...+for+wet+media

Hello Denise,

Thanks for the information... this is a very good option.

(I've searched a bit and I found how they convert hidrophobic to hidrophilic as industry needs to paint on PET http://www.nature.com/pj/journal/v43...pj201120a.html )

I'm to study you book word by word, I want to learn about emulsion handling in that way.

Perhaps in the future I'll ask you !!

Best Regards
Pere

[dwross]

I hope you do give it a go. I predict fun . I wish more photographers who still have a darkroom (or at least a dark’able corner they could set up in) would try their hand at emulsion making. At the very least, it would be educational. Silver gelatin is such a big part of the history of photography and there is nothing, literally (if I can use an overused word), like making a material to understand more about its basics, even if you still mostly buy the stuff or even if you mostly work with d-cams.

I’m old enough to remember when all of the “alternative” processes were just starting to be rediscovered. Arizona State University (Bill Jay was there then) called the classes “non-silver” even though albumen was on the list. Wet plate wasn’t, however, and carbon was a process no one thought possible to revive. One of my fellow students was the only one working with gum printing and most of us thought she was doomed to futile failure.

The trip down memory lane has a point (although there is something about this time of year, with summer fleeing by, that makes one realize how fast time flies). All of the alternative/traditional processes that are now so well worked out got there because a great number of people experimented with them and shared their work flow and/or their art with the world. Even though there are still (a few) silver gelatin materials left that we can buy, I hope that more people will lean into learning the process. If we don’t, a lot of photography will be become merely abstract history.

[Drew Wiley]

Pere - I'm afraid a little desktop dust or cigarette smoke remover like that isn't going to be of much use in a big industrial emulsion coating room. Efke's giant plant was inherited from cold war days when it was subsidized by the state, and they just couldn't afford to keep up with the necessary scale of maintenance anymore,
on their own income. Toward the end, they resorted to hanging sheets of ordinary black polyethylene over the ceiling and walls to limit dust and paint chips, but that is hardly a substitute for a true cleanroom environment. But for home darkrooms, those little desktop air cleaners can be quite handy.

[Pere Casals]

Pere - I'm afraid a little desktop dust or cigarette smoke remover.

Drew, I've tested it. I bought this one https://www.amazon.com/Honeywell-162...=honeywell+hap and it is not small at all, small ones have 1/20 of the power of this one.

It has two filters, air first pass throught a foam filter that can be washed, later it pass throught an HEPA filter. To qualify as HEPA by US government standards, an air filter must remove (from the air that passes through) 99.97% of particles that have a size of 0.3 µm.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HEPA

This is really beneficial for asthma and allergy sufferers.

I found that after working some 15 min that device left no visible dust in a small 6m2 room, where I operate, no particle in negatives or while scanning, tyndall illumination found nothing.

But... (and then comes the "but") a person is a source of particles, from skin and clothes, so to be completely dust free one must wear apropriate clothes, if I hit a jeans pants with the hand an incredible cloud of particles is seen with tyndall illumination.

The room has to have no hiding places for dust and working area has to be routinely blowed with compressed air to rise all dust, to be taken by the device.

If you manipulate and scan film I recommend it, really.

[Pere Casals]

If we don’t, a lot of photography will be become merely abstract history.

Your reply made me happy !!

Thanks for motivating me into it, I think I needed that little push.

First I want to do is to print over glass a photograph I love, as if it was a big slide, later I'll go further, I thing I've a lot to learn, but I'm eager to do it.

I'll ask you things in the future

Regards