History in photography - Titanic

[pentaxuser]

So it appears as if the strip goes into all 13/14 tanks so a bit more than straight dev stop and fix and wash. I suppose that there may be say 3 tanks associated with dev but even so the time in dev quite short. Washing time is very short also. From what I remember the time from flashes to pics was probably no more than 5 mins.

There appears to be no negative to positive printing as such. Is the paper a direct positive as in the equivalent of a paper transparency?Toner was mentioned. What did this do?

It raises a lot of questions. Anyone know exactly how these booths used to process the prints?

I am curious now

pentaxuser

[AgX]

I just learned that 11 analogue b&w photobooths are again in service in Germany alone.

[Ektagraphic]

I would love to have a buissness that I could have one of these in! I am still in awe!

[jnanian]

Thanks for pointing this out!

But now I am puzzled. The video there, says it is a B&W photobooth according to the text. But I see some colored liquids (Orange, Yellow, Green), what chemicals are in there

marko

according to an apug member who owns leases and sells photo booths
his booths have a process that uses toners and bleaches and things like that ...
maybe thats's what the curious liquids are ...

http://www.apug.org/forums/forum37/5...h-process.html

[Marco B]

marko

according to an apug member who owns leases and sells photo booths
his booths have a process that uses toners and bleaches and things like that ...
maybe thats's what the curious liquids are ...

http://www.apug.org/forums/forum37/5...h-process.html

Thanks,

But this still leaves me slightly puzzled. Looking at the "reversal" chemical list there, I think most of the listed chemicals are colorless, except the potassium dichromate, that I have never used. According to this page, potassium dichromate forms "bright yellowish-red crystals", so the orange/red solution might be it...

Maybe the yellow and greenish solutions are actually contaminated water baths???, with more dilution during washing of the excess dichromate, maybe a pH change causes a shift to a blue/green color of the solution???

OK, now seems there may be another reaction going on in the water baths (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_dichromate): if chromium ions are reduced, they shift color from orange to green. Since there will undoubtedly be some cross contamination between baths, the water bath probably contains enough stuff that can be oxidized, to facilitate this reduction reaction.

"When an aldehyde is present the chromium ions will be reduced from the +6 to the +3 oxidation state, changing color from orange to green."

Marco

[AmsterdamMartin]

In the Netherlands all is digital now indeed. The analog ones were in warehouses for a long time and all were sold to artists. Not the whole booth but stripped, the bottom is a fine developing, printing and drying machine. I am in the market for one, there must be some standing in a warehouse somewhere.
That is because even shortly after 2000, official documents like passports demanded analog photography. There was some paranoia about digital. They thought you couldn't mess with analog, hahahaha.

[guitstik]

My wife says we live in a photobooth.

[Akki14]

Potassium dichromate solution is bright neon orange (I've used it and mixed it when I was intending on doing gum prints but never quite got there as far as making decent looking prints). Blix/Bleach in C-41 is a deep blood-red.

I wonder if they put in a little non-reactive dye into the colourless chemicals so the people loading the chemicals don't mix them up and the whole system goes horribly horribly wrong and needs to be flushed out?

[2F/2F]

Thanks for the videos, and thank you, John, for the link.

We have some booths in L.A., but I do not know if they are analog, as I have not used them. (The last one I used was on the Santa Monica pier perhaps 15 to 20 years ago.) I assume that the ones I have seen recently are digital for the shooting, but they are possibly analog for the printing, as a few of them have the hexagonal surface pattern that I assume is not possible with inkjets unless it is applied after the ink is sprayed.

I have many photo booth strips in my family photo boxes. They are great fun to look at.

[Marco B]

Unfortunately, do to the APUG upgrade, the links in the first post are no longer valid. The correct links to the same videos are now:

History In Photography - Titanic

NYTimes.com - Weekend Explorer: History of the Photo Booth

Marco