"French inert gelatin"

Joe Farina · Post by **Joe Farina** » Tue Sep 15, 2009 9:53 pm

I have encountered this perplexing phrase in the Chinese papers by Zhu et al. regarding panchromatic DCG. Supposedly that's what they use. No comment other than the above, which is irritating. They could at least give a manufacturer, and say what it is. I emailed Dr. Zhu, and so far, no response.

But I do know from my reading on DCG that Rousselot gelatin has been used somewhat for DCG holograms. I assume this is French due to the name. Here in the US, the early researchers used gelatin sold by Baker, and later workers often used Knox. I was wondering if any of the European forum members are familiar with Rousselot gelatin, and if there's a chance or probability that this might be the "French" gelatin noted above. For example, there is a paper in Photographic Science and Engineering called "The Mechanism of Volume Hologram Formation in Dichromated Gelatin" by Samoilovich, Zeichner, and Friesem (1980) where they mention that "Rousselot photographic gelatin type CN18/1795 was selected for all our experiments because of its extended use in the photographic industry."

Martin · Post by **Martin** » Wed Sep 16, 2009 7:43 am

I think Rousselot is well known for their photographic gelatins.
By the way, they're busy in the US also: http://www.rousselot.com/north-america.html

Joe Farina · Post by **Joe Farina** » Wed Sep 16, 2009 9:45 am

Thanks, Martin, I especially appreciate the link.

Joe Farina · Post by **Joe Farina** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 9:54 am

I received a response from Jianhua Zhu:

question: "I was wondering what kind of French inert gelatin you used, or if this was a significant factor in your results."

answer: "According to our experiments, high-quality gelatin (research grade) is OK."

I would take this to mean that the choice of gelatin is a relatively non-critical factor.