seeing magenta

ask around the net for dye-transfer information. seek insights, perhaps advice, what you are provided by 2025 search-AI models is counter to insight — confusion is increasing. Dilution over diffusion flourishes. Clicks are the clique formers.

One simple example. Seeking specifics about Kodak’s magenta dye used in Dye Transfer printing.

NB: search used this tree [:: Photrio -> koraks ] getting to an answer about magenta dyes used in Kodak dye-transfer, imbibition printing. Photrio is large site with over a thousand posts related to dye transfer; koraks site is listed as sigline in posts by a moderator taking part in dye-transfer related threads over the past several years. I doubt that K~ has ever made a dye transfer, certainly hasn’t synthesized the dyes. Another example of dilution of knowledge.

The inference engine of AI cannot distinguish quality, meaning accuracy, applicability, from quantity, meaning the number of referral links made over time. [the specific information provided in this conversation is based on general knowledge and does not directly cite specific pages or sections from these references.] Different models often respond that the information on [dye-transfer] is collected from practitioners internet archives.

Kodak CIS-154 Magenta Dye in Imbibition Printing
example response: I want to be transparent that my previous responses were speculative and not directly based on the Kodak publication you mentioned. Providing more details will help me offer a precise and accurate interpretation of the source material.
[I used 5 different engines... none could provide useable, correct answers.. each required, in essence, that I give them direct references, which they then could summarize. ]

Provided that I correct enough, staying with the multiple AI engines, we get somewhere. However, I had to provide a page, a CAS number, then prompt the answer machine with guidance on selection criteria for synthesis. In other words, I had to know much more than any of the AI engines were able to source. I was provided patent references, incorrect, so taking additional time for me to read, and return to prompt for correction. The initial failure though, the one leading through the darkroom help forums sounded, to the untrained, inexperienced, like a correct answer. An answer which would be repeated by the novice.

Since the process is being used by mere handfuls who do gather and exchange information and support these aren’t significant practical matters. The failures keep the stalled busy, out of the way. The lesson is that small errors can be amplified sufficiently to distort information into a contorted arcade reflection of what was.

chemical photo: stuff

January 2025. GETTING STUFF. supplies in a ebb market.

NOTES:
too much… getting too much.
choice must be clearly known to be choice.

Shops selling items for the darkroom.
In Germany, Hans O. Mahn GmbH & Co. KG brings out the Rollei products through the website Macodirect which also sells Adox products. The website Fotoimpex seems closely related to – and sells all – Adox products –does not sell Rollei papers

Stores:
the wet lab is drying out; few places remain, but here are some online sources

Prior Posts:

D-76 Chickenbones

Have you heard Rumors of a perfect marriage between emulsion and chemistry producing the ideal silver image. Me too. The first time was in 1960.

It has been the goal of mothers of invention for a century. Taint gonna happen; that doesn’t mean you will reset your goals.
D-76 as D-76 becomes very old; 100+ rolls in a 5 gallon tank you might see bromide buildup and so therefore the slow down of the film. This is the result of metol ‘dropping’ –The chicken bones method was to replenish aged D76 with D-23.

Research Shows (its age): The research published was done prior to 1980, other than in patents, so the relevance to modern emulsions is limited, since it’s the contents of the emulsion that are aging the processing chemicals. The only company that could survive the dead ends of basic research is Fujifilm, and they have no reason, no motivation, to research the process in chemistry of black and white. Actually, not even for color– their riding on a profitable horse that is on its last legs.

color bibliography

patents in this century are the only source of research results and they are few– The age of research is over, for analog.

The final coaters of film Kodak Ilford foma, have to float on past research. So do you. Hearsay for a possible solution to your imaging.

My suggestion is to find a better imagination method, but that won’t satisfy your need to ride the Analog Bounce.

Extending the suggestion: DK-50 served me in my first years and jobs. It is also the developer I’ve used to teach the Baker’s Dozen of printers who have experienced the differences between PRE and POST masking. On the realway condition that you are part of the Film revival, you are using 35mm ASA
black-and-white film that you shoot and scan, then rodinal will meet your needs to produce a negative to digitize.
The simplest path to a silver negative is shoot at box speed using the box developer; in other words read the instructions of the emulsion maker; see what they designed the system to do. Fomapan is frequently maligned as carrying an “inflated” speed rating. Their 200 speed film “should be” 100, according to the kin of the internet. These people don’t need directions; they have opinions. Please, read this datasheet.

note the speed difference between D-76 and Microphen. Microphen giving much more speed to this film.