Developing my own photos 

Your description of making coffee is very scientific.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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 !

"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?

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.

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

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.

I think the underexposed ones looked pretty nice!

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

If you found the cyanotype process cool you should try the daguerreotype process (also called "wet plate")! Its mostly silver nitrate and a developer bath. You get really beautiful images on metal plates!

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

"The Gayest Person on Patreon", "I'm sorry mistress" and "I'm SURE I can fit them all in my mouth" are the best names on your Patreon :X

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.

I love how methodical your videos are. Much respect, sir!

More of this please! This perfectly ties up all of the videos you've done about dyes/pigments etc. Curious about other chemistry + photography connections, there isn't nearly enough good info out there like this video.

singapore represent babey!! i love the photo at 22:48 and all of the reactions/timelapses. this was so cool to watch i hope i get the time/opportunity to do this one day

alot of this i already learned from a black and white photography class, but its very interesting to see someone with no experience's take on it.

I wish my school chemistry lessons were this applicable.

That Photo from Singapore is really something like taken out of time. The development just amplified that. In my opinion this is nothing short of a work of art.

This is one of my favorite series you've done. As a photographer I love seeing the classic work you've done, as a nerd I love seeing how you're doing it. Bravo!

I would love to see a video on 6,6'-dibromoindigo, AKA Tyrian purple. A very historically significant dye, and one that was incredibly expensive before it could be synthesized, due to how many snails had to be collected to extract a useful amount of it.

As a primarily analog photographer who specializes in this sort of photography, I really love and appreciate your interest in cyanotype and hope you decide to explore the chemistry of other photo processes as well, there's a lot of very interesting stuff that can be done in a darkroom.

I been waiting for this one, it was worth it. I love the results, especially the non bleached and toned one, beautiful colour.

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

Would you mind uploading that photo from Singapore on imgur or something like that ? I really love photos like that with the rain and such

I'm an artist and this video inspired make some prints! I ordered everything I need and can't wait to see how everything will turn out!!!

I very much love these practical applications of chemistry. Would love to see you cover more of these, including toning, in future videos!

It’s important to note that the art paper is not only thicker and more durable but acid free which could likely help with the cyanotyping process

7:30 "it can be a disaster" I actually sincerely enjoyed the rougher outcome more than the higher quality prints you produced later in the video; it gave it a lot of character that you lose with a perfect print.

"Tanin solution" Straight up cup of coffee 😆

What I really like about your videos is that the quality is so constant. As far as I can remember, your videos have always delivered and it makes me happy even seeing there's a new one to watch. It's a rare feeling these days on youtube. Thanks!

even the overexposed shot looked really cool..i LOVE the effects you are getting with this method!!

This is very satisfying to watch (development)

S P A C E - D U S T E V E N - C R A Z I E R - S P A C E - D U S T

The one thing about Art is that even if these pictures aren't perfect, they're still beautiful. 😌

22:48 that is just amazing!!! , i would never think twice before hanging this in my room , so good !

Also, I'd like to see more videos on early photographic processes. You still have all that mercury, right? Daguerrotypes, perhaps? (I may even be convinced to build you a simple camera for it in exchange for a beaker, I got a couple of old lenses laying around.)

THANK YOU! i was going insane due to boredom this helps a ton.

I always enjoy your videos greatly, but this one is, as of yet, my favorite video of yours. Some years ago, I started out with digital photography but not long after moved into film photography and darkroom processes, then followed by historical photographic processes. To see you go through step-by-step the recreating of what was done in the 1860s and on is quite fantastic. Trying to get the chemistry of the process properly working, to compensate exposure, to test different exposures and times of the day right for UV light, the way you test exposures by exposing the image for different times to check the density... You even got to the basis of density (Dmax) and reciprocity charts. It's all exactly what was and still is done in the making of a photographic print. *THIS* is the basis behind all the research and standardization in the photographic industry, creating UV-exposure units and emulsion-coating. It's what Kodak and Fuji, among many other chemical/photographic industries, did up until quite recently in 2004 when digital started to take over the market. As I said before, this is a fantastic work and video. Congratulations.

My mouth dropped when you put it in the peroxide. I'm definitely making some of these!!!

Here are a couple tips that I think could help. The negative is one of the most important things so you can convert the color image into a halftone first before inverting to a negative. This will allow you to adjust your levels more equally for just a single color exposure like your doing here or even for the duo tone. Also place the emulsion side of your negative closest to the paper, this will allow for less uv light to "bleed" under the blacked out portions which is a result of the very minute thickness of the transparent layer and you can also buy thinner transparency to reduce the amount of uv light to bleed. The closer you can get your negative to lay to the paper the better your result will be. In the print shop we vacume the negative down to the paper to get it as close as possible. Makes a huge difference. Also you could try a lower dpi "dots per inch" on the printer when printing the negative. Sometimes higher dpi washes out even though it's better quality some paper just can't hold it so try lowering the dpi to like 300 or 200 or 150 and see the difference in results. These are all things you can do that I feel would really help. I think it would be awesome to get some blueprints with lots of linework to expose. Like the Eiffel tower or the colleseum.

The non-linear exposure response over time has been known for a very long time in the film world. A specific example is film-make star trail images. If an exposure is made over 2 hours, the stars move, making a trail for each visible star. However, on film, each trail begins to fade out, as the exposure time / effect begins to diminish. This effect is called reciprocity failure, and is exactly what you describe here. Charts are/were even distributed to help photographers deal with the phenomenon on long exposures. www.ilfordphoto.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Reciprocity-Failure-Compensation.pdf

Your videos are wonderful. Please keep making them!

I bought a kit. I fell in love with the process and can't wait to try it myself. Thank you!

The cover of the Elliott Smith album "Elliott Smith" was done in cyanotype. It was the first thing that I associated with the thumbnail of this video.

I am not gonna lie I nearly screamed when he said he took the photo in Singapore Singapore gang where y’all at

Best run through of the cyanotype process Ive seen so far!

You have an eye for photography too! Well done - I’ve really enjoyed this series.

SCIENCE

You should consider a video about photoresist!

This is outstanding. I'm getting ready to play with cyanotype (I got the premixed stuff), and all of your experimentation in this video got me all excited to get at it. Thank you for all this work.

Been waiting for this last video for over a month now FINALLY

13:45, This graph does not show exponential, it shows rational, just for these math purists.

Could you somehow mask part of the photo during the toning? Like block the sky so it stays blue while the subject turns brown?

Thank you very much for sharing your experiments with such a patience and attention to detail. Super helpful.

This video is truly awesome. I love the cool combination of chemistry and technology as well as your scientific approach to things. Brilliant!

This is a very useful video. I have started trying to replicate your process since the previous video and this one adds quite a few helpful details! I loved the extra bit on toning the prints at the end, beautiful results!

Great video! How do you recommend a lay person become competent in chemistry? I can’t afford to take a ton of classes outside my major, but I want to become knowledgeable at a high level in chemistry

As a person coming from the art side of this, I am quite impressed at what you accomplished in this series. It taught me more about the science of cyanotyping, and I really enjoyed seeing how you used the medium!

I love this. Particularly fascinating to me since I've recently gotten into developing my own film and making prints (old darkroom equipment is super cheap right now).

You could have used these strips as a dosimete- Oh.

1:32 Yeah sure, “ferric ammonium citrate”

After watching this video, the history of photography I learned about in my intro art class makes so much more sense!!

Wow, these just keep getting better. Bravo!

8:03 am I colour-blind? It looks greenish blue to me.

Will you be doing a video on making psychedelics from scratch for educational purposes (no, literally for educational purposes)

I did that in college: we made iron-based photosensitive pigment and coated paper, then used that in a 4x5 box camera. I recall one student had a photo of a clock and you could see the motion blur in the minute hand, showing how the exposure was so slow.

Your content is constantly high in quality and creativity. Looking forward to your next chemical exploration.

Hey nilered why don't you make iodoform?

Careful with NordVPN, i saw Louiss Rossmann read there contract, it was really bad.

The rapidly rising exposure time for doubling darkness (density) is called reciprocity error in analog photography. You don't usually notice it below exposures of 1 second. But starting at 1 second, you might have to expose a lot longer than usual. This is of a lot of importance of people who do night photography.

Loved learning about this. Ordered the transparency...will give it a try. Thank you so much.

Science is cool

Early

To work with watercolor paper the best way without getting it to wrinkle or expand is to presoak it in a low level of water for a few seconds and then lay it in a flat suface and fix it with kraft gummed paper tape and then allow it to dry. Once dry it's ready to be used and it won't shrink or expand

Those custom beakers look really cool.

Too much of 'though'. Just an observation.

1 view :O

really digging these photography themed videos!!!

This is the most artistic corner of chemistry 👍

The emulsion of the two solutions changed color just like if you were mixing paints, the FAC is a dark green, and the PFC is a lighter orange. It's a super fine dispersion of different colored particles that appear as a solid color from a distance

This is my favorite of your videos. I just started shooting large format, and you've inspired me to try this with film negs

That was an amazing print of Singapore. Brings back some good memories.

Hell yeah Nile! It’s good to see content from you :)

make more vids nile, i really like your channel bro, it's educational and absolutely fun to watch.

That Singapore photo was perfect for this! All the prints of that shot were beautiful imho!

thank you so much for all the hard work!

Prussian blue is so gorgeous, you did a fantastic job

PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD MAKE MORE VIDEOS ABOUT THIS ITS SO FN COOL

That street scene looks great as is. Makes it so unique.

I got completely hypnotized by all three videos because blue is my favorite color lol

I teach high school art. I love collaborating with our chemistry teacher to do cyanotypes with our classes. His classes prepare the solutions, mine prepare the negatives, everyone gets cool prints! They really enjoy the hydrogen peroxide trick. Another toning option is bleaching and then using the Van Dyke Brown method and re-exposing with the same negative. You get some really cool blue and brown color effects. One more thing to keep in mind is accounting for the thickness of the transparency film. I always flip the image horizontally so it is backwards so I can place the printed side down on the paper. It's a small detail, but light can get under the toner if the printed side is on top and can cause a tiny amount of fuzziness. Perhaps not a big deal to most, but i do like my prints to have the sharpest detail i can get!