Effect of hydroquinone-based monobath on optical density values of various panchromatic photographic emulsions

Abstract

Monobath or single step film developing formulations had existed in tandem with photography itself but gradually abandoned to the rapid user transition into color photography. The rapid commercialization & technological advancement of the latter drives the monobath technique into stagnation. In the past decade, the resurgence of film photography had driven back the interest in monobath development prompting a few monobath products to be commercially available. Most of the commercial developing chemical’s usage were calibrated towards the characteristic curves published by film manufacturers. However, these monobaths are without reference to the characteristic curves in comparison with other standard commercial developers. To justify the feasibility of this formulation, we must therefore construct the required characteristic curves, albeit qualitatively. Utilizing basic optical densitometry method, qualitative analysis was conducted toward a comparative study of multiple commercial black & white photographic film stocks. This study suggests ways in which to utilize the trend in characteristic curves to provide a preliminary assessment of monobath developer over several commercial photographic film stocks. All film emulsion tested have lower quality negatives results compared to conservative developers, but KODAK & Ilford shows usable results for normal photography uses.