We Recreated CIA Technology, It Was Surprisingly Easy (Microdots) 

Trying to read the small print in any banking contract be like

As someone who used to be into the black and white photography in the 80s: yes, you can use the developer multiple times, but for each next film add some more development time (I've no idea how much exactly - I'm sure I used way different mixtures, in my case it was like +30 seconds for each next film).

0:56 two distinct neural pathways in my brain that have not been used in years have just been reinforced with the strength of titanium. you have committed a crime.

Hey! Just a head’s up, you aren’t even getting the best possible results here, you’re using film with much too course a grain. You do mention that however you also seem to maybe be under the impression that you can’t get film better suited for the job. You can, actually, look for repackaged microfilm. Adox CMS 20 II is a common one, however you can get an even more fine grain film called MZ-3 from a Ukrainian company called Astrum. It’s ISO 1-3, and has insane contrast. If developed properly it will probably out-resolve your microscope. If you’re interested in seeing how far you can take this, I suggest checking it out!

During WW2, The UK used around 250,000 pigeons for various tasks. Some of which were used to converse with spys behind enemy lines. 32 of these pigeons received medals of the highest level for their service.

> "film is cheap" > proceeds to show Ilford LMAO

I worked as a radiographer from 2006 to 2018. I developed film in 5 gallon tanks by hand every day. Never wore gloves, but if you have an exposed cuticle or hang nail. You'll know.

Old photography rule - f/8 and be there. Expand on this a bit: if you're in a hurry f/8 will usually be sharp enough if you focus well. Your glass may be its sharpest a bit more open or a bit more stopped down than this. Fast glass is typically at its best a stop or two down from max (largest, widest, smallest number) aperture. So like a f/2.8 lens might be happiest at f/4 or perhaps f/5.6. Kit glass, cheap glass, etc you'll usually end up around f/8. Much beyond that and diffraction becomes a problem quite fast.

2:07 I was bracing myself for the vpn sponsor EDIT: IT WAS FORESHADOWING!!

0:57 2 Years and of all places i lose the game while watching The Thought Emporium. Great video as always!

Pedantic correction: rolls of microform material are called microfilm and individual sheets are called microfiche.

11:00 I'm pretty sure that you are not supposed to use smallest aperture for things like this - lenses are usually sharpest somewhere at the middle of the aperture range. IIRC, smallest aperture get into the range of where diffraction becomes an issue - this is also why pinhole cameras have limited sharpness, as the light is always diffracted at their crazy small aperture sizes

technology connections has a video about 'at home' film development. iirc, he said you can reuse the developer a handful of times, but after so many uses the developer starts to work more slowly as the active ingredirnt becomes spent.

The intro makes it seem like this technology was primarily used for espionage but in reality it was in use many much more mundane sounding fields like archiving and eventually the photolithography that is the backbone of this digital age. Kudos for the creativity of the intro.

i knew what the qr code was going to be,,, yet i still scanned it

In fact, it's possible to create the microdots without a camera, as long as you have photographic film (which you can purchase at any shop). What they would do is create, essentially, a pinhole camera with normal household materials (carboard boxes etc) and use it in a dark room, flip the lights on for a second or two, and then cut the part of the film that had photographed the document and put it eg. under a stamp. All these materials for the pinhole camera are easily disposed of, and consist of materials that are not suspicious. No government officials would find anything suspicious in that apartment or on the spy himself, even if they searched.

These are very different to the microdots I messed with in the nineties.

For anyone wanting more tiny science like this, Applied Science has an excellent video on his lithography process using a large format camera on specialized but inexpensive litho film. The video is Antique 4x5 camera creates 20 micron photolithography masks. His process is even sharper

5:54 "film is cheap" :-D :-D :-D Film has become an expensive hobby.

0:57: Man.... That was uncalled for..

This video is absolutely fantastic! The way you briefly went from explaining film technology, to demonstrating how it gets used to shrink down images, and then incorporating Holographic Optical Elements! I actually didn't know you could do that at the scale where a standard negative film (and not a special microfilm, holographic film, etc) is able to capture. I love how you demonstrated so many examples of it, too! There seems to be not many videos going over this with so much to show, except for Huygens Optics incredible videos. Some things I would add is besides Fuji's HR microfilms, there are a lot of other silver-based materials you can use such as ADOX CMS 20 is still sold, their HR-50 seems like a good candidate as well, Rollei RPX 25, and you could probably investigate many holographic plates that are sold. Some of these microfilms can store up to 800 cycles/mm or more, but holographic materials can easily achieve 2000, 5000, and some close to 10000. The only problem is they're for the express purpose of recording interference patterns of coherent light, not normal optical images which start to become diffraction limited far before those figures (in Vis). Another fun thing was the Lippmann process where a special ultra-fine emulsion is used to photograph objects, but using a mirrored surface behind it the standing wave patterns of light interfering with itself _in the depth of the emulsion_ which effectively records the wavelengths of light; the color. It's a dyeless color process done through the light interfering with itself! And it was made in the 1890s and you can do it yourself as well! It's too cool! So, anyway, maybe I'm just "uhm ackshually"-ing the part about needing to immediately jump to something that isn't silver based lol. Especially with how difficult it might be to source a good photoresist. There's a lot of possibilities in silver halides! To get the sharpest image you need to balance your lens aberrations being curtailed by stopping the lens down to a smaller aperture versus diffraction which increases as the aperture gets smaller. Some well very well-corrected lenses can do this just a stop or two below wide-open, but for many lenses 5.6, 8, or 11 will be the sweet spots for reducing aberrations. Regarding your development setup, it's really nice! Glass seems to store the chemicals a lot better without needing to resort to crazy things like topping the bottle off with butane or something. And I just tried developing without gloves for the first time a few days ago... yeah I totally agree with you there, my fingers had such a weird smell on them the rest of the day. For developer, highly-diluted stuff is almost always considered "one-shot". You toss it after you use it. Like when people dilute Rodinal 100 times. But with dilutions that are a lot less you totally can, I just don't know the details about how to do replenishing "right". I might be overthinking it though, usually you just give it more time. I'm so excited to see what you do next!! This was so awesome!!

Never expected to lose “The Game” watching one of your videos 🤣

if you found a way to consistently mass produce these for absolutely no reason besides masochism... you could probably fit an entire public library within a single large table or a massive suit case.

Photon sieves are just plain awesome! You're making them on film, but one important advantage is where I thought you were going when you mentioned etch resists: You can etch the transparent holes as actual holes in a metal membrane and not have to worry about the transparency of the substrates, making them useful over a very broad range of wavelengths. Not sure if you are going to go into the randomization of dot patterns or over-sizing holes, but I'm going to love the upcoming vids!

Just a few pedantic comments. Daguerrotypes were indeed made on metal plates, but it was polished copper that was then coated with silver. Solid silver plates would be way too expensive. The halide in your film would be silver bromide, iodide and chloride were used back in the day when collodion emulsions and POP prints were widespread. The development process doesn't darken silver crystals, the photon of light creates what's known as development center within the structure of silver bromide crystal, developer reduces the bromide to metalic silver, the grains altered by light are converted first. If you'd left the film in the developer for long enough, all of the halide would turn into silver. Have fun! The traditional photography spawned literally hundreds of processes, it's a bottomless pit for both time and money 😅

Cool stuff, thanks! Do not use the smallest aperture if you want maximum sharpness, around F8 - F11 should give better sharpness on this objective. Use a roll of film and take the same image at different F-stops to find the sharpest one. You will find the sharpest to be in the middle somewhere, not the smallest for sure.

“Film is cheap” LMAO

I'm so happy your family found this video and uploaded it after your tragic accident!

The overall project planning in these is just top notch, I adore how you’ve been able to turn the hundreds of prerequisite infrastructure steps for larger projects into videos with other interesting bits - because every stage of the infrastructure is interesting and has consequences in its own right! Can’t wait to see what you do next

Photolab technician for over 10 years here. Yes the chemicals can be reused several, several, several times (the loss of its strength is minimal). But it will become saturated by silver at a point, and you'll start seeing a difference in contrast in the developed film as it does. For plain B&W with no shades of grey, you may want to overdevelop it (the 1st part of the process) for a little more time to get stronger blacks and whites. DO NOT THROW IT DOWN THE DRAIN. Sediment, decantation and reduction... And recover all that precious silver.

Totally doing this with the kids! This'll take their clubhouse messages to the next level 🎉

It sucks because im allergic to the developers, i couldn't even go into the dark room in my high school graphic design class, im really glad digital photography is a thing now lol

That lever pull to move the film... I remember not pulling enough because because i was scare to break it. The result was nightmare fuel overlapping pictures.

If you want something even finer-trained then PanF+, Adox CMS 20 II is as fine as consumer films come. The exact sharpness apparently exceeds testing equipment. Kodak 2383 is an internegative or interpositive, I forget which, that I shot at 1.5 ISO and it's the only stock I've ever used that I can't see grain clumps on with either a grain focuser or a high-res macro lens and live view enlargement. Also, the Series E 50mm is a very good lens, but if you want to go crazy with some even better options for this project, I could make a few suggestions.

Hi! I do a lot of black and white development. When it comes to development with Rodinal (blazinal is just another name for Rodinal) the easiest way is a 1:100 dilution, for an hour, with some slight agitation at the beginning and then at 30 minutes. This will develop near perfectly nearly every time. You also dont need to use stop bath, as a water wash is perfectly adequate if you fix immediately. Blazinal is a one shot developer and should not be reused, though at your dilutions you may get away with it. You can however reuse fixer basically until it stops working, to test if its good you can just through your film leader into the fixer and see how long it takes to go clear, if its too long just make a new batch. I hope some of this info helps

I worked for Lockheed and Rolls-Royce at Stennis Space Center from 2004-2012, and on my faculty was the same "resolving power test target" painted on the concrete. Except, it was about 200 feet wide. Used to calibrate satellite optics.

The famous "pen camera" was custom made for a Soviet general selling secrets for money back in the 1950s. The analysts studying blurry images of documents said to the case officer "Can't you get the man a better camera?" Hysterical laughter ensued

professor: you can make a cheat sheet if it fits on one piece of paper me:

10:58 this is actually a common beginner photography enthusiast pitfall. A given lens is not guaranteed to be sharpest when wide open - in almost all cases it's not. The rule of thumb is two stops above maximum aperture is sharpest. In your case it should be around F3.4. That being said, an ancient consumer lens is probably so imperfect that it doesn't make a huge difference in this case

We used LITHO FILM. Developer can be reused, but extend development based on a table. Developer can also be REPLENISHED which means adding clean developer to your mix. Also a fin thing. Save your FIXER. you can recover actual silver when it gets depleted. Drop a penny in your fixer and the silver will coat the copper.

Dude, developing the film brought me back to my community college days! I got extremely good at putting film onto a roll, and remember doing 7 rolls of B&W film at once, split between two canisters and that was a heck of a challenge but somehow I pulled it off. Film photography is absolutely incredible since it has the ability to capture things in a way that you can't get with digital in my opinion.

I should have used this technique to make my formula sheets in university. I could have fit all my assignments on it and everything!

Hello! I've done a lot of developing, mostly colour c41 though so the chemistry is a little different. A few tips I have : Make sure everything very dry before putting it into the dark bag. Humidity and water make the film super sticky and hard to wind onto the spools Developer is fine to reuse! Every two or three uses, just increase your development time, I've used mine up to 15 times before swapping it out. To avoid any splotches it's helpful to do a clean water rinse between each stage of development, this also helps the chemistry last a few more uses. Particularly with colour development, temperature control is very important! I do all my development in a water bath held at the appropriate temperatures, this varies for each stage of development. Lastly, make sure you squeegee your film after developing, it avoids any water spots and it's also super satisfying. Love the channel!

14:29 Since generally people do their film processing in the same area they do their photo processing they are going to have running water within a few feet and that's more than enough for the drop or two you are likely to deal with... Plus the smell of the sulphur complexes on your hands is how we identify our own.

I feel like you guys would love to see things like the microbumps used in silicon-to-silicon chip stacking. Intel Foveros, of which I have been a principal semiconductor physicist. We use a bump pitch of 36 microns and can fit 828 per square milimeter on a 22nm FFL process node. The next-gen one brings back the infamous Intel 14nm in an FFL version and fits more, but I can't say how many just yet.

Imagine if the agent was never told where to look on the object but only told that there were some microdots on it. Worse than finding a needle in a haystack 😰

Seriously? This is exactly the topic that I was digging into in the last months and my boy here simply recreates this awesome little technology. 👏👏

In the early 1970's I was employed by Microform Data Systems. The product was ultra-microfilm readers and media. This was on the cusp of the rise of digital information systems. The media was strips of 35mm film with six frames. Each frame held hundreds of pages of text reduced in size by a factor of 200 times. About ten strips fit into a cassette that allowed any strip to be fed into the reader. A large installation was purchased by General Telephone (LA) for their directory information operators. An array of readers was connected to a Digital Equipment Corporation PDP8 mini-computer. The computer held the programming to control the readers to select the correct strip, frame and exact page location on the frame for a given name input by the operator instead of thumbing through a mound of telephone directories. I worked there for three years but even then it was obvious to me that any such system would be replaced by entirely digital data systems. Even so. microfilm is still one of the most durable types of information storage.

0:57 bro.... why. you cant do this. that should be illegal..... i just lost the game

A couple notes: Nikon is OK but a sharper lens is Zeiss and they are on Leica cameras (rangefinder focus). The sharpest focus will be 2-3 stops down (smaller aperture) from wide open. Use a tripod and a shutter release. You can get more contrast by "pushing" the film from 1 to 8 stops by increasing the developer time and reducing the shutter speed. Experiment. Developer can be reused with diminishing results but each batch can develop 6 rolls. Sodium bicarbonate will help neutralize it for disposal. Fixer is reusable but is light sensitive, and you should be able to find replenisher to add to make it last longer. You can wash it out of the canister, a few flushes in the toilet will do. Soak 30 sec, flush, repeat. Foto-flo will decrease surface tension and make your film dry without spots. A few drops of Dawn will work, added to your rinse toilet. You might find a continuous tone film (a type of litho film) that has no grain. Also backlit film will be much less sharp than print with reflected light. Your copy lights should be aimed at the far side of the image at 45 degrees. Questions, feel free.

if you're doing black and white with blazinol, just stand develop them. using a 1/100 or higher ratio you can just let it sit for like an hour and you get really solid results with virtually no effort. many photographers, including myself use this technique.

This is like a Technology Connections and Huygens Optics crossover episode.

Dude is casually performing the double-slit experiment with an old camera.

As someone who works in manufacturing precision optics, this is super fascinating

It was fun to see my old test pattern from my own tests years ago. This is cool stuff.

1:04 were doing meme archaeology with this one. If anyone is interested, I think my gramps has an old dusty textbook that talks about "the game" somewhere

With black and white film, the silver halide Chrystals get reduced to metallic silver in the developing process. The fixing removes all the remaining halidechrytals that remain. What you are left with is basically little dots of silver that make up your image. The developer is in some cases reusable, check the manufacturer's data sheet (there's always a data sheet). There are special high resolution film / developer combinations. I would suggest to look into that. Adox CMS 20 pro and so on. (as others have already commended). Resolution on the film is a product of: Developer - Film - Optic - Steadiness When taking an image with your consumer photo optic, and you want to achieve maximum resolution, you should use f,5.6 - f8. An aperture smaller will decrease your resolution, and a more open one will also decrease the resolution. Reusing the developer could decrease image quality. The developer dilution will also affect your image resolution in many cases. Try to get dedicated "high resolution" films and developers, use your lens at its sweet spot and keep your camera very steady. All the best!

The highest resolving photographic film in the world is Adox CMS 20. As a 35mm film, it out resolves any lense ever made at 800 lines per millimeter, resulting in a theoretical resolution of 500MP. According to Adox you can print a 35mm piece of film up to 2.5m without rendering any grain. The trick is that it's a relatively slow film at around ISO 20 if using their dedicated developer. In the case of creating microdots, that's not an issue though. Whilst Ilford Pan F 50 is a great film and fine grained, there are definitely even finer grained films available. Regarding Blazenol, it's basically a rebranded Rodinal which is a very old recipe (130+ years old). Whilst it renders a sharp image by accuntuating the edge of the silver halide crystals, it has the downside of enhancing the grain. I'm not sure whether this results in more readable text, but two other developers which could be tried are Ilford ID 11 (or the equavalent Kodak D76) as well as Kodak XTOL. XTOL is a developer which disolves the grain somewhat, resulting in a smoother image than with Blazenol but might be a little less sharp around the edges of the text. ID 11 should be a middle ground between the two.

this brings me back to my photography class in high school lol, i felt like a spy or a detective developing film in a darkroom

To improve the clarity of the lorax, I would have shot the images at f/5.6-8

Applied science used a really old camera to do something like this few years ago.

I SPENT TWENTY MINUTES RECONSTRUCTING THE QR CODE FROM THE LETTER JUST FOR A RICKROLL. you got me in spectacular fashion.

I can vouch for contact-dermatitis being induced by photo chemistry. Gloves are highly recommended for photo chemical developing.

You could use Laser Lithography to achieve a similar result, and potentially also making it with a conductive layer to work as a circuit to store data on almost any object.

I think fruits and vegetables should have laser-engraved QR codes because I dislike removing stickers when composting.

0:58 Its been a long time since ive remembered that, I hope your channel gets reviewed by the fbi

Watched on Nebula, commenting for “engagement.”

Are you trying to build a flow cytometer? Is that why you need the diffraction grating?

"film is cheap" as a film photographer that hert like shit

10:53 to maximize the contrast, you can stack 4-5 printouts with the same content on top of each other. This way, you block more light with the black parts. I recommend blocking out everything else out with black paper, too. To avoid glow

I lost the game

1:59 I was SURE this would be a sponsor ad about something. 8:44 OK I was right, it was just a split ad. You got me on the first half.

Error at 4:15 . That’s not microfiche. It’s microfilm. Microfiche is a single sheet of film. Microfilm is, of course, a long reel of film.

My mother was a microfiche tech for a local township where I grew up and it truly is insane how much you can fit on one sheet! I believe her record was something like 2000 building blueprints on one 8.5x11 sheet or something around that!

Much more interesting that the neuron shit.

Thought Emporium is the perfect example of super-functional ADHD at work

Where in gods green hell did you find a working EM slr for $80?? Thats far more unbelievable than fitting the entire encyclopedia brittanica on your left butt cheek.

I would like to learn more about the CIA's actual process. For example, did the spies write it on a piece of paper and then shred it? where did they store development equipment? where did they store the film?

Wake up babe new thought emporium just dropped

OH! Centrifuge the used developer! - When I was younger in HS doing photography, I would often wonder... wait 'if I'm agitating it and there silver, I always wanted to see if centrifuging it down would yield and microscopic particles at all. Does the photographic/developer process loosen anything up? (I figured, you're a curious nerd like myself, AND you have the equipment - so the idea might have a chance at nerd sniping you and well... maybe I'd get an answer - Thanks for all your great videos!)

2:06 "No one" is a pretty strong word to use here :X 7:37 A PCB is NOT a computer chip. A PCB is a Printed Circuit Board, it will most likely have chips ON it but it is NOT a chip. It's just traces to connect everything together, and house it. Sorry to be a butt, but you're a channel about learning, you gotta get it right! :P

The channel Huygens Optics has quite a bit on diffraction/interference so when you mentioned that was the reason it was like worlds collided (my personal guess was something akin to micro-etching circuit patterns for the doom brain cells project, but I wasn't too sure of that. of course, now I am all the more intrigued by how you will use optical interference in your other projects)

How dare you. I'm supposed to be the one who makes others lose the game

If everyone starts to use it, then airports would check every surface of passengers by microscopes:-) hilarious!

11 seconds 65 views fell off bro

ngl when he started talking about film grain i was momentarily confused because everything looks like that but then i remembered that that's not how most people see things

Blazinal is a rebranded version of Rodinal (probably the oldest and most ubiquitous developer still used today) and its generally not a good developer to use more than once, its sometimes called a "one-shot" developer meaning you use it once and toss it. I personally use Kodak Xtol which is excellent for re-use and has a great price-per-roll especially when using the "replenishment" method. However, for your use I would not recomment Xtol because its a "solvent developer" meaning it dissolves the sharp edges of the silver-halide grains and generally smooths out the grain at the cost of some sharpness, rodinal is probably the right choice for what you're using it for because it has exceptionally high sharpness, but you do have the side effect of very strong grain, but like you said you can get finer grain with lower-iso films.

Oh man I hope there’s some microdot related merch coming soon

I’m so excited for the diffraction-video! I’ve worked with diffraction gratings for lasers a lot, but I’ve never understood how it actually works, and you explain these topics so fucking good, so I’m looking forward to learn more. I really hope you look into shooting light or lasers through your diffraction-filters as well, as that could make some really interesting patterns judging by your examples shown in this video.

@thethoughtemporium Film tip for this project: Adox CMS 20 II (800 linepairs / mm) - maybe get them as a sponsor? Also: Don't shoot at max aperture - most lenses are sharpest at F5.6 - F8..

12:37 I thought I'm done with work for the day, why are there Zernikes on my screen XD

About reusing developer: reusability depends on developer and usually you can reuse it if you add some time to usual development time. Main problem is that developers in working concentrations will oxidize and change their properties over time (not like in minutes or hours, but in course of weeks), so you will less predictable results, more you reuse developer and more you store it in its working concentration.

Brings a new meaning to remembering to read the fine print...

Few things to note, as scattered around the comments and comments of comments: - Use aperture F8 for sharper image as rule of thumb. Depends on the glass that you have. - You can reuse developer few time, but it affects the developing time, as some of the developer is already used, you might want to extend the time a bit - I didn't see comments nor video commenting anything on controlling the temperature, though on b/w I was taught "so that chemicals feels wet, not warm nor cool", so measuring by feel, not by some thermometer. On color chemistry it's waaaaay more important. Also on color you need to be a lot more exact with your clock than shown on video :D Thanks again!

I was wondering how people were making projection necklaces (more specifically, custom tiny transparent images) and boom voila the tech for doing so was fed straight to me in a well produced and researched video thank you for sharing!

I accidently started the video without sound and I was able to follow what was going on and being explained. A mark of a good narrative crafter/ editor. Was thinking it was a kind of artistic silent cold open.

Try Adox CMS 20 ii film, it has resolution of ~800 lines per mm. Can be developed in Adox's dedicated Adotech IV, or in POTA if Adotech is hard to get in North America. So basically with CMS 20 you can fit a readable microdot in a space comparable to the area of a single grain of a normal film.

wow, the nostalgia of the first message just got my feels in a bunch..

Another couple suggestions. Most commercial lenses are sharpest around f/8 or f/5.6. Opening up or stopping down from there will typically lose sharpness of edges. Also, you might want to track down a “process camera”, basically a specialized camera meant to copy things to microfilm or for use in printing. They’re fairly cheap because they aren’t useful for art photography, and lot of schools and libraries had them and are getting rid of them. Also, you should check out the Adox CMS films, which are basically high contrast copy film. The Film Photography Project also has “Hi-Fi” film, which was originally meant for optical sound recording and would do very well for your purposes. Also also, depending of what you’re photographing, use a red filter on the lens to boost contrast. It’ll knock off about three stops of exposure, but with panchromatic film it’ll render the image in almost pure black or white.

When your allowed to put as much information on a notecard for the final