Antonio Mendonca Posted July 8, 2010 Share Posted July 8, 2010 Hi Gents! How would i go about getting most silver out of neg? Processing virgin neg gets me nothing/very little...would fogging the film entirely give me max silver? Or should i flash the neg? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Gray Posted July 8, 2010 Share Posted July 8, 2010 I would think just throwing your negatives straight into the fixer would do it. Then extract the silver from the fixer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Site Sponsor Robert Houllahan Posted July 8, 2010 Site Sponsor Share Posted July 8, 2010 I would think just throwing your negatives straight into the fixer would do it. Then extract the silver from the fixer. ECN will lose all of it's silver into the bleach/fix and then you can extract with a electroplating silver collector i don't think it matters if the film is exposed or not for ecn. -Rob- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dominic Case Posted July 9, 2010 Share Posted July 9, 2010 Rob is right, assuming it's colour neg. You'll need to bleach and fix, and the silver will come out into the fixer. But if the silver level builds up in the fixer, then it won't be as effective and you may get some silver reatined in the emulsion. Electroplating will get you pure metallic silver. Once again, if you overdo the plating current you'll get silver sulphide and other impurities that will devalue the silver. Doesn't matter if the neg is exposed or not. You get all the silver anyway. If it's black and white negative it is a different story. You only need fixer, but if you develop the film too, it mustn't be exposed. When you say that processing virgin neg gets you very little silver, what do you mean? How much do you expect? how are you recovering it? how are you measuring it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Site Sponsor Robert Houllahan Posted July 9, 2010 Site Sponsor Share Posted July 9, 2010 Hi Gents! Processing virgin neg gets me nothing/very little Well run several hundred thousand feet of 35mm ECN with the automatic silver collector running (we have a Degenkolb attached to our Treise ECN machine) and you will get pounds of silver a few hundred feet is not going to do it... volume volume volume... -Rob- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dominic Case Posted July 11, 2010 Share Posted July 11, 2010 My recollection might be a bit hazy, but I think you might expect to get a couple of grams of silver for every thousand feet of 35mm negative. More for some types of emulsion, less for others. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member John Sprung Posted July 15, 2010 Premium Member Share Posted July 15, 2010 Back when Laser-Pacific opened their film lab, Emory had some medallions made from the recovered silver and gave them to the customers that Christmas. They were getting enough silver back that it was a significant line item on their books. -- J.S. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now