Topic: Mythbusters film processing

[Francois]

Yesterday, I was watching this week-end's Mythbusters (their McGyver special).
They said you could process film in Orange juice... something possible since Xtol is a vitamin C based developer. But what caught my attention is when they talked about fixing in plain household ammonia... never heard of that before.

has anybody ever read something about this?

[Heather]

neither will work... Coffee & washing soda (sodium carbonate, not baking soda which is sodium bicarbonate) works to develop film and paper okay though. I don't see why just plain ammonia would fix film. you need ammonium thiosulphate or sodium thiosulphate to fix film... apparently you can get one of those two as pool pH balancers, though.

[david b]

I couldn't figure out how it was supposed to work either - although it was kind of academic as the "stick it in a bin bag" method for extracting the film they were using would have exposed the film anyway.

[Francois]

I too thought it was somewhat fishy...
On APUG, they say it will fix just long enough to look at it...
But still, I'm trying to see if there is something to it other than good TV.

[david b]

The moon hoax episode they did recently was quite good - they were recreating Apollo 11 photos using a Hasselblad to disprove the "all done in a TV studio" conspiracy theory.

[Francois]

Yeah, I saw it too. I was quite surprised they went for a Hassy! Loved that show (OK, I'm a sucker for space related shows).

Since I don't watch much TV, it's one of the rare shows I watch every week.