Tetenal's Developer Tablets
After over 170 years in the business, the photochemistry company, Tetenal, faced insolvency in 2019. The brand was saved by an employee buyout and became known as Tetenal 1847. Since this rebirth, the company has refocused on what it does best: chemistry, developer, photo paper and emulsions, all to provide customers with their products directly, by reopening their online shop with worldwide shipping. One of the products soon to be on offer is a newly created Developer Tablet - a dissolvable tablet that creates a liquid developer when dropped into water. The ingenious product saves space, is easy to ship and, unlike conventional liquid developer, which expires quickly after oxidation, they last much longer.
Tetenal is reported to be in the last stages of production and will hopefully release the Developer Tablets sometime this year. View their website to read more about the tablets (scroll to the bottom of the page) or to browse their international online shop here.
Homemade Paper Developer
The George Eastman Museum is considered the world’s oldest photography museum with one of the oldest film archives in the world. The New York state museum is housed in the former home of the late Eastman Kodak’s founder George Eastman and is a well-regarded centre for photography resources and education. One of the museum’s most recent educational videos explores how you can make your own paper developer ‘from scratch’, hosted by Historic Process Specialist Nick Brandreth. In the video Brandreth briefly explains how he and several friends ‘from photo land’ have discovered that paper developer has recently changed and that inspired him to create a solution and share it with viewers. The video is a little over three-minutes long and demonstrates the fairly simple process of producing your own formula for paper developer, though it requires several chemicals including hydroquinone, sodium sulphite and potassium bromide, to name three of the six elements. View the video here or browse the George Eastman Museum for more videos on analogue photography.
For more analogue photography news, tips and information, visit the RPS’ Analogue microsite or via the Analogue Group’s Facebook page or Instagram page.