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

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

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!

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.

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).

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

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.

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!!

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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!!