Niklas Rühl posted a picture in our Facebook Group of a negative developed in Wineol, an alternate devolper that is made out of Red Wine, Washing Soda and Vitamin C. The whole process and some really nice pictures can be seen on his website. The site is in German,so here is a google translation. I knew already that it is possible to mix up other developers which are based on Washing Soda and Vitamin C, but never really had the interest to try it. But as I did some enlargements recently, why don’t try it as a paper developer. That said I took the cheapest Red Wine I have and mixed up some developer. As I always use plenty of Vitamin C in my recipes, I used the following formula:
- 400ml Red Wine (just any Red Wine will do)
- 40g of Washing Soda
- 10g of Vitamin C
The results are interesting. And there is plenty of room for experimenting and improvement. Here you can see a side by side print of a negative-scan and the Wineol developed printed paper: 
As you can see, it gives a nice brownish, violet toning to the paper, my print is way overexposed, it almost looks like a duotone picture. When I have a bit more time, I will go back and try to properly expose this and see how it looks like then. I have recorded the whole process on video, so if you ever wondered, how my darkroom looks like, or in which direction I stir my developer, here you have 10 minutes with me in the maybe smallest Full-Equiped Darkroom you have ever seen.
If you happen to be on Facebook, make sure you join the Caffenol Facebook group, it’s a nice community with people from all over the World. And if you have other suggestions, advices, or experiments you want to share on caffenol.org, just give me a shout through the contact form or leave a comment here.
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Really nice, you tried the paper developing with wineol and it looks encouraging. As i wrote on my blog and on http://kwerfeldein.de/2012/06/08/entwickeln-mit-wineol-optimale-bedingungen-viel-rotwein/ niklas used basically i did a a bit of research an tried diffrent kind of wines and films. As you can see there´s much potential to optimize recipes and diffrent kinds of developing.
It´s a challenge and it´s really funny, isn´t it?
Tobias,
yes it’s a lot of fun experimenting with this stuff. I really want to compare it with prints developed in caffenol and in Rollei RPR.
Hi there! Very amazing stuf… But the google-translation of my article is … let’s say – strange. If there are some more worldwide readers, I will try to translate it myself.
Many regards
Niklas
Great stuff! Love your darkroom 🙂 I’ll have to try this sometimes. And nice special effects when you show the last print near the end 😉
Have you tried developing film or paper with Vita Cola? Vita Cola has both caffeine and vitamin C, it might be worth a try.
I will try to get some and try it!
I would try it myself because it is my favourite cola, but it is very very expensive in Finland.
How much is ‘Very expensive?’
1L bottle for 3,5€
Hey,
where dit you get this “calculator scale” ?
lg
Buddy
Hi Buddy,
I got it from here:
http://www.porters.com/projection-print-calculator-scale-4×5.html
¿por qué se demora tanto en revelar la imagen con el vino?
Because there is not so much caffeic acid in Red wine, so development takes longer. (Question was: why does it take so long to reveal the image with the wine?)
what is washing soda, not a familiar term
Washing soda is Sodium carbonate. It can be found with the stain lifters and borax in most grocery stores where the clothes washing detergents and soaps are. It should say “washing soda” on the label. Check the back or side label to make sure that it is Sodium carbonate (should be under “Ingredients” or “active ingredients”).
If you can find one that specifies “Anhydrous” (meaning only 1 hydrogen molecule) it is better. Though I’ve never had an issue with ones that did not specify “anhydrous” and usually to get Sodium Carbonate that DOES specify anhydrous it’s usually the laboratory grade compounds that are really expensive. Here a 5lb box is about $3 which should be about 2.6 euros.
.
Washing soda is different from baking soda (Sodium Bi-Carbonate/bicarbonate) in that it only has one molecule of carbon attached to the sodium molecule. Baking soda will not work and will trash your mixture and films or papers. Some say you CAN heat baking soda in the oven on warm for 30 minutes to break off a carbon and hydrogen molecule and make washing soda if you need some in a pinch; say if you were to get set up and find that your washing soda had absorbed moisute from the air and was all clumpy. I have encountered this and have tried it. I had 1 success and 2 failures where there was almost no images on the negatives because they were so faint. I would not recommend trying this.
I hope this helps.
If you have any further questions feel free to ask away, I’m sure someone will be quite pleased to assist
really enjoyed watching this, and seeing the darkroom. I will try this for sure…….and drink the wine left over
Thank you, Dirk. I really enjoyed your video. I tried this this afternoon and got several nice prints. As with Caffenol I tend to use about 5-10% of depleted paper developer with slower papers. This seems to get things moving and overcomes the threshold of development.
Thanks again. I appreciate the time you took to make this video.
Hey there,
it is about the “calculator print scale” again. Do you think it would be possible to scann it so that we could print it out on transparent film at home.
Many regards
Niklas
Niklas,
the print scale can be bought here: http://www.macodirect.de/delta-print-calculator-p-2540.html?osCsid=a2897f6362d33746bc2e627e3b52803e
Dear all,
I am following your activities with great interest.
Still, I got some questions about substituting (instant) coffee as a source of caffeic acid.
Clearly, red wine seems to be doing the trick, but, it also tints the media. Has anyone experimented with white wine so far? It seems that white wine contains some caffeic acid too:
http://www.phenol-explorer.eu/contents/graph?compound_id=457&experimental_method_group_id=2&food_id=137&unit_type=weight
I figure that a developer using white wine, maybe with some additional ascorbic acid, could have an advantage over red wine developer, in terms of not introducing pigments.
Greetz, Joachim
For sure I will try this out.
Hi Dirk,
ich nochmal…
Did some additional research on caffeic acid, and it seems that white grapes are actually a major source for it:
http://www.skinandallergynews.com/views/cosmeceutical-critique-by-leslie-s-baumann/blog/caffeic-acid/5be431eb4418c47d008ed4d6a9534421.html
As soon as my ascorbic acid order to arrived, and will give it a try with cheap Chardonnay.
Beste Grüße,
Joachim
Did you do this with fiber paper or RC paper?
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