Heavy Arts

Back in January I posted about this and entirely screwed it up, confusing sodium sulfite with washing soda…Well, I’m up at my dad’s for the weekend and figured I’d give it another go.

It has to stand for a few days, so I wont use it until next week. I’ve still got a bundle of expired Pan F+ in 35mm, which is always a lovely combination with Rodinal. Anyway, on with the post.

PaRodinal is the homemade version of Rodinal, a classic developer that’s probably been around for longer than you have. Used in various dilutions it has a variety of applications – it’s great for fine grain in slow speed films and great for high grain in high speed films. Possibly not your cup of tea, but if you’re into traditional photography I highly urge you pick some up just for the sake of experimentation. It’s fun, I promise.
The thing is that Rodinal can be hard to come by in Australia as of current, it’s a hazardous material so it cant be ordered in from America.

You can find the original PaRodinal recipe here, by Donald Qualls.

Water – 250ml
Paracetamol – 30x 500mg tablets
Sodium Sulfite – 50g
Sodium Hydroxide – 20g

Paracetamol is just Panadol, your standard 500mg tablets. However, there are perfectly good generic brand alternatives, I’ve seen Panamax at $2 for 100 tablets. You’ll pay a lot more for name brand Panadol that’s exactly the same thing. You’ll need 30 standard 500mg tablets.

Sodium Sulfite can be a bit harder to come by, I ordered mine from Vanbar in Melbourne – however sadly, I cant recommend them. It took them more than a month to call me after I’d made my order via credit card, only to tell me half of what I’d ordered wasn’t in stock. I’m still looking for alternatives in Australia. Still, I’ve got 500mg of Sodium Sulfite for now. (It isn’t washing or baking soda, either )

Sodium Hydroxide, also known as Caustic Soda, is easily available from the hardware store. It’s pure enough, by my understanding…I found 97%, in granules. This stuff is dangerous. Wear gloves and safety glasses.

The process goes like this – Add the 20g of sodium Hydroxide to the 250ml of water. It will heat the water noticeably and give off gas – do this outside to be safe. Wait until it’s dissolved. Add the Sodium Sulfite and continue to stir. Add in all the Paracetamol, stir it for a while, and let it stand for a while.

After a few days (2 minimum), you should have a roughly Rodinal-looking mixture. Don’t worry, brown isn’t a bad thing. Dilute and use the same as Rodinal, be sure to stir it before you measure it out for dilution, there’ll be sediment settled at the bottom – I recommend using a syringe.

We’ll see if any of this worked next week.

Science!