My 1st attempt at changing Developing-out Paper to Printing-out Paper.

[Rlibersky]

Using US Patent April 27, 1926 No. 1,582,050 by James A. Johnson I made the print below.

I used Haloid Industro expired in 1946. This is a contact paper that I have not been able to print without some fog in other developers.

Here is the formula used

Soak paper in a 3% solution of Potassium Iodide for 2 minutes.
Washed in running water for 3 minutes.

Soaked in the following mixture for 5 minutes
2% solution of Metol
8% solution Sodium Sulfite

Hung to dry in a darkroom.

After the paper has been soaked in the Iodide it will become insensitive to light even when dry. The paper will be light sensitive after soaking in the developer solution when it is dry not before.

When dry I printed in a contact printer with a 85w light bulb 2” away from the paper. I exposed the print until the paper not covered by the negative looked to be at D-max. I then washed the print in water to stop exposure.

There is a lot more information in the patent. It is easily found though Google Patents.

I’ don’t know if this would work with papers that incorporate a developer in the emulsion. But it might be worth a try. I think this could be worked a little to get a better contrast out of it. It might be that this paper is this flat and a negative with more contrast should be used.

[David A. Goldfarb]

Neat trick, and it developed out with an incandescent bulb. Did you try fixing or toning?

[rwyoung]

You can use DOP as POP without the fuss too. Just set up your contact printer with some projection paper (say Ilford MGIV) and the negative. Place it in the sun or under a UV light source. 10 to 20 minutes you will get a relatively strong image. However it does bleach back somewhat in the fixer. I haven't tried TF4 as the fixer with this, just Kodak Fixer and plain hypo. The plain hypo had a bit less bleach back.

The color you end up with will NOT be that of the paper under normal use. I found that MGIV was kinda peachy-orange, some old kodabrome was brown and Foma (sold as Arista Edu.Ultra) was purple with a touch of peach.

Also, didn't try any toning in selenium or gold yet. Just did this as a lark a year or so ago and while it worked, I haven't made any plans to test further.

Hmmm... the post card exchange is coming up. Maybe I should do this for the exchange!

[Rlibersky]

Had a little time to experiment. Unfortunately I missed the part in the patent that said the paper becomes red sensitive. I had 10 sheets hanging to dry with the safe light on. all but one where exposed. the one that wasn't exposed was hiding in the shadows.

Although it printed well I found out that toning will wipe the print out. I used a .2% sol. of gold toner and the print went black. Fixing the print just washed away the silver and left me with a white sheet.

Will have to try again.

[Kirk Keyes]

Have you tried soaking the developing out paper with a silver nitrate solution and then exposing with a UV source? The paper should supply you with a source of silver halide and the excess silver nitrate from the soaking solution should make a real printing out paper, I would think.

[Rlibersky]

Interesting idea. Might be fun to try.

[Dwane]

The whole point of the patent you mentioned is to convert the silver salts to silver iodide with a developing agent, then expose the paper and fix. There are other, more simpler ways to do this.

I started with some Kodak Polycontrast paper which has an expiration date of 1967 and soaked the paper in a 10% solution of potassium nitrate for about 5 minutes with a safelight. Hung up to dry in the dark, then exposed like POP. The exposed paper was then fixed in a 5% solution of plain hypo for about 10 minutes, washed, and dried.

The exposed paper had a pinkish brown tone, but when I placed it in the fixer the color changed to a nice brown tone. The pinkish brown tone returned when the paper was dry. There was a slight loss in print density while in the fixer.

I also toned some of the prints with a 10% KRST. The color of the print first turned to a slate grey color after a couple of minutes, but this color slowly evolved into a nice brown color after about 10 minutes. The KRST improved the color of the print so much that, at least with this paper, this will be part of the procedure.

Some notes and observations -

1. Lars Mellberg suggested using the potassium nitrate bath for converting DOP to POP. He is a very knowledgeable person who is very happy to share what he knows. Thank you Lars.

2. I tried exposing just the plain paper with no prebath. This works, but you need a lot more exposure – the potassium nitrate seems to make the paper more sensitive.

3. There are a lot of variables when using old, out of date paper. The paper itself and how the paper was stored will both have an effect on the result you will get. Part of the fun is that you never know what you'll get until you try, and part of the fun is when you start out with old, out of date paper and you end up with prints worthy of putting up on the wall (or exchanging in an APUG print exchange)!