Developing my own photos

In this video, I'll be using the ferric ammonium citrate that I made to make "blueprints" of my own digital photos. Then, at the end, I'll try toning them with tea and coffee to change the color.

This process is called cyanotype or "blueprinting"

This video is the last in a series of 3:

Sorry the contest is over :(

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[dariusantonx]

NileRed is making chemistry both fun and educational at the same time, and it's so professional!

[jincyquones]

I'm a photographer and I definitely wouldn't consider 22:48 underexposed. Even the pre-toned one looked acceptable to me. You definitely lost plenty of contrast and thus some detail in the highlights, but if you'd exposed it any more, I think you'd have lost the detail in the storefronts and buildings (which comprises the majority of the composition). I think it looks quite nice.

[Qwerasd]

Your description of making coffee is very scientific.

[Gameboygenius]

Here's something I learned from making my own printed circuit boards. You should ideally actually mirror the image and put the toner side down. That way, light won't come in from the side and creep in under the toner through the transparency. This helps keep lines nice and sharp.

[bradydanfordtalented]

Is no one gonna talk about how cool the stuff looked when he opened the coffee grinder?

[bbrockert]

In chemistry-based photography there is the idea of reciprocity, where exposing film or paper for twice as long at half brightness will give the same exposure. ISO 200 film at 1/500th second is the same as ISO 100 at 1/250th.

But in really long exposures, on the order of above a minute, there is "reciprocity failure": a ten minute exposure isn't the same as a fie minute exposure one stop down. From your experiment it seems like that may apply to cyanotypes too.

[mikedrop]

I absolutely love watching Nile red videos although I have no intention of reproducing any of these reactions or the facilities to try. I'm living vicariously through him.

[MrQbee]

Hey. When you are done with the photo and just about to frame it, put 2-3 coats of transparent varnish with UV filter. From my experience it does help a lot to keep the picture protected.

[Seymour]

I really love the trial & error aspect of your videos, it feels a lot more organic and is much more entertaining to watch since it's more of an amateur experiment then it is a lecture ( and i use the word amateur really loosely cause clearly you know your science ).
That's why i love your channel and cody's so much, keep it up man !

[benbowland]

I love how NileRed independently discovered Reciprocity Failure just based on his own observations

[petermarshall]

"Prussian Blue"
"Oil painting"
This guy's the new Bob Ross

[michimelody]

Man this brings me back to highschool being in a dark room trying to figure out what the hell I did wrong. As a teenager this was pretty fun and we were dealing with the real chemicals back there....mostly unsupervised. Gotta love it.

[psygnsis]

"A Cyanotype of your choice".
Careful, NileRed... that's a dangerous slope. : P

[jcmilleker]

In the final scene, did you just expose FAC coated paper and then brush on PF? That's allegedly how Herschel did it though we haven't tried ourselves.

Very enjoyable series seeing you come at it from a different angle. If you try other recipes doing your first rinse in 1% Citric Acid lowers the contrast and helps other tones to the party. There are also a few published curves for Photoshop to adjust the tones for better representation. A Photoshop script called Chartthrob (Free) can be used to generate your own curves.

Lastly, we never have luck making laser digital negatives. Inkjet is much better but make a test to see which color ink in your printer blocks the most UV. Reddish orange Canon inks work much better than black for us.

[KowboyUSA]

It's not difficult to picture Nile Red as the wild West _photocopier_ dude with his horse drawn development lab travelling around amazing folks with his "magic" cyanotypes.

[Anonarchist]

"You don't have to be like me and make the chemicals yourself, and you can often just order them online"
Where's the fun in that?

[yuxin]

The experiment is in-depth and professional. It's hard to find videos on Youtube with such quality. As always, great video.

[weisu]

I think the underexposed ones looked pretty nice!

[davelowe]

You'll soon be doing old skool dodge and burn to adjust the exposure of individual parts of the image!

[JacobEllinger]

the one you let sit directly in the tea looked the best! you could actually see the wetness of the rain on the tents!