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Aarrrrggghhh! Dense and stupid

sly

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Just got back from a 3 day get-away. Developed a whack of 4x5 negs last night. The third batch I grabbed the wrong bottle of stock. Negs developed in chemistry that was 2ce as strrong as it should have been, and for 2/3rds longer than would have been appropriate if I'd had the dilution right. Oh, and the developer was at 24C, not 20C. Their density and blackness is only exceeded by mine.

Can I bleach them? Can I use pot ferri, or am I better off mixing up the sodium thiosulphate as well and using farmers reducer? I've got the bleach from the Ilford sepia toning kit as well, if that would be better.

I've never bleached negs before. Will they end up really contrasty, with the shadows bleaching back quicker than those black, black highlights? Can you bleach right out and redevelop with negs?

Any advice much appreciated. Chocolate will now be administered to treat my mood.
 

Ian Grant

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It is possible to bleach them in a re-halogenating bleach, wash well then re-expose them to light & re-develop them.

A re-halogenating bleach is typically

Potassium Ferricyanide 100 gms
Potassium Bromide 100 gms
Water to 1 litre
Use 1+9

You should redevelop in a fine grain developer, diluted more that normal as you are looking for softer less dense results. This is far more controllable than using Farmers reducer.

Ian
 

bill williams

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Do a yahoo/google search for Barry Thornton Bleach Bleach Monobath. I think this technique is a good way to go.
 
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sly

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Ian, thanks for your advice. I need some elucidation, however.
The sepia bleach I have (Kodak, not Ilford) has Potassium Ferricyanide and Potassium Bromide - would it be usuable?
If not - would I be likely to find Poassium Bromide at a drug store, or will I have to order it from a photo supply house like B&S?(nothing, but nothing, available here for photo supplies)
Do I bleach in the dark? How do I know how long to bleach for?
How much light, how long do I re-expose them?
Developers I have on hand include Rodinal, HC110, D76, Tmax(a little bit), Rollei high speed, and Rollei low speed. Would any of these do? If not, what would you recommend?
Would re-developing be in the dark? Would that be for as long as if I was developing just exposed film?
Sorry for all the questions - I've always just bought packages and bottles of ready-mixed chemicals and followed the directions on the label, with a little time tweaking.
 

Ian Grant

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Sly, that Kodak bleach is fine. Bleaching is to finality you can do it in daylight/artificial light, you'll see when it's complete all the Silver will be white -Silver Bromide, a minute or two, then wash well until all the yellow bleach colour disappears. Hold the tray / spiral with negatives about 2ft from a 100w bulb for about a minute rotate/move to ensure it gets re-exposed everywhere.

Then redevelop I'd use Rodinal at 1+50 or even 1+75, you can develop by inspection, so visually choose when you stop developing. Remember that the undeveloped silver bromide will be dissolved in the fixer and the negaive will look a little thinner once fixed.

Try it on an image thats least important first, I'd start with the Rodinal @ 1:75.

Ian
 
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sly

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Thanks Ian, and also thanks to Bill for the info on Barry Thornton - it's helped to clarify what I need to do. Also it looks like a good site to troll for other info on developing/printing.
I'll give it a try and let you know.
 

Paul Verizzo

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My recent Farmer's Reducer fiasco

keithwms said:
Farmer's reducer. Then you can decide whether to go proportional or not.
Click to expand...

Just last week I overdeveloped some Plus-X. Mostly some testing and joy-riding, nothing critical. Thank the goddess. So I did my homework and read up on Famers. So far, so good.

I put 8 grams in some water and immersed the film. Nothing happened in the recommended "4 to 7 minutes" except for an increasing yellow stain. I must have let it sit for 20 minutes, only more stain.

Oh, WTH, I'll just put it in the hypo.....Zap! Nothing, all gone.

I can only conclude that "4-7 minutes" is a total crapshoot, regardless. If I have to use Farmers again, I will do it for two minutes, hypo, wash. If needed, another two minutes, and so forth. Far more control.

Info on Farmers can also be found here:

http://www.digitaltruth.com/techdata/farmersreducer.php
 

Andrew O'Neill

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Why don't you contact print them first and then decide what to do...I've have negatives that could sub as solar eclipse viewers and printed better than I expected.
Reducing can be risky and the same goes for bleach/redevelopment. If you must go this route, and you feel this batch of negatives is precious, then practice first. If I were to choose a method, I would go with bleach/redevelopment (using a monobath developer). But seriously though, contact print at least one of them first.
 
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sly

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Well I tried to bleach a negative (one that I wasn't happy with). I left it in the sepia bleach for more than 10 minutes and it didn't change. I tried in straight potassium ferricyanide - left it while I did other things - more than 20 minutes, and it was still as black as pitch in the highlights. I stuck rejected silver prints in both soups, and they faded away quickly, so it wasn't the chemicals. I guess bleaching is not going to work.
I've tried enlarging - the negatives are very contrasty, as well as dense. Exposures were 3 plus minutes, and those dense highlights can take many minutes of burning, even with pre-flashing.
I've also managed to make palladium prints of a couple. Pure palladium worked best for dealing with the contrast. Exposures - in full summer sun - were running well over 10 minutes, with one test still being too pale at 30 minutes.
This is the one that turned out best so far:
(there was a url link here which no longer exists)
 
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Larry Bullis

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You didn't happen to develop them in pyro initially, did you? If you did, there may be another option.
 

Larry Bullis

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sly said:
This is the one that turned out best so far:
(there was a url link here which no longer exists)
Click to expand...

Sorry I can't see it. I'm one of those cheapskates who can't get into the gallery. When my ship comes in... but you can't wait.

What it sounds like to me is that you are probably pretty badly blocked in the highlights anyway. If you are, all detail in the image which has developed all the way through to the back will be featureless, flat, single toned; in short, really ugly.

I have from time to time intentionally overexposed very heavily, developed in pyro to get the stain, then bleached out the silver altogether. It is possible to print from the stain alone on graded paper. This is useful, if a bit risky in extreme indoor/outdoor situations where a lot of exposure is needed to get anything in the darkest places without burning out the highlights. I mean, like bars in old stone buildings with windows that open on spectacular outdoor views.

The tanning prevents development through to the base. Interestingly, the stain image has no visible grain.
 
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sly

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I've never used pyro, but as I can't seem to bleach these negs, the re-development is moot.
 

Larry Bullis

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bdial said:
Can you bleach and redevelop in pyro? Any advantages in doing so?
Click to expand...

I've thought a lot about this, and I think that for certain purposes there may be. In the present instance, though, I don't think there's anything to be gained, even if Sly could bleach the negs. I have no idea why they won't bleach.

There is another bleach that I'm sure would work. It's the same kind of bleach that used to be part of the chromium intensifier process; dichromate+sulphuric acid. Actually, it is pretty much identical to tray cleaner (TC 1). There is a process that uses it called "harmonizing" which can boost the shadows while controlling the highlights.

I'm pretty sure that chromium bleach would work. The question is, though, would anything be accomplished? I have my doubts.
 

gainer

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Bleaching and redeveloping in pyro is going to INCREASE contrast on graded paper, and to some extent even on VC paper. The stain, if the development is done properly, is proportional to the silver that is also redeveloped. IOW, you do not change the silver density, but add to it a proportional amount of yellow (some see it as yellow-green). I wrote an article for PT some time ago that showed that if you bleach out all the silver of a pyro negative with Farmer's, which eliminates the chance of redeveloping, the pyro stain image remains and can be printed on high contrast paper.
 

Ian Grant

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DON'T USE DICHROMATE/SULPHURIC ACID BLEACH


The Potassium Dichromate/Sulphuric acid bleach will totally destroy your negatives. It's used as the Reversal Bleach in B&W Reversal processing and as a stain remover. It dissolves silver and forms a soluble silver salt.

Potassium Dichromate/Hydrochoric acid is the re-halogenating bleach used in intensifiers and some toners. But as this increases contrast thats counter productive.

Ian
 

MattKing

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Lillian:

Consider it a great excuse to go back to Gabriola .

Matt
 

Larry Bullis

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gainer said:
...I wrote an article for PT some time ago that showed that if you bleach out all the silver of a pyro negative with Farmer's, which eliminates the chance of redeveloping, the pyro stain image remains and can be printed on high contrast paper.
Click to expand...

Well, I just had to find this. Unfortunately, the negatives are not available to me just now, but they are about five miles away, and I'll see if I can dig them up. It would be interesting to get a scan from one.

The attached image was scanned from a tear sheet from Sunset Magazine from I think 1977 or 78. The problem was to photograph the view from the interior of a very dark restaurant in Tacoma Washington's Old City Hall, showing the old Northern Pacific Railway Headquarters building across the street. It was a very bright sunny day (believe it or not, you who know Tacoma!), and the brightness range was really screaming. I am going to have to find the negative to know for sure what film I was using but suspect it was probably 2475 Recording film, which I processed in Windisch pyrocatechin. I exposed for the interior, and then bleached all of the silver out of the negative, printing it, as you suggest, on high contrast paper.

I had learned about this from Wall and Jordan's Photographic Facts and Formulas.

Now you have got me going, I'll have to retrieve the negative.

L
 

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Larry Bullis

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Ooops. Got the wrong bleach (wrong acid). The correct bleach has hydrochloric acid, not sulphuric.

HCl 30ml
Potassium bichromate 10g
Alum 50g
H2O 1000ml

redevelop in a slow acting developer such as metol at about 1/4 strength, watching the development through the back. shadows will develop completely prior to the highlights which will still show some of the white undeveloped silver salt. This is in that venerable tome, Wall and Jordan.

While I've found this a useful technique for some purposes, I really don't think it's going to help Sly very much. If there are any values left in the negatives other than dmax, they will be on such a steep slope that the balance in anything like a shadow will be way out of whack.

Don't you think, Ian, that even with the bleach using H2SO4, the contrast would be controlled not by the bleach, but by the redeveloper and how it is used? It would be something of a scary bleach, though. I use the same thing to clean copper and silver, as a pickling solution. As I believe we discussed in another thread some time back.
 

Ian Grant

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The Dichromate/Sulphuric acid bleach dissolves the silver, and so there's nothing left to re-develop.

In reversal processing it removes the silver leaving the unexposed & undeveloped silver halide which is then exposed to light and developed.

Ian
 

Larry Bullis

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Ian Grant said:
The Dichromate/Sulphuric acid bleach dissolves the silver, and so there's nothing left to re-develop.
Ian
Click to expand...

Back in the days of E3, before the era of "bleach-fix" this must have been something similar to the bleach they were using. As I recall, it was singularly nasty stuff. Is this correct?
 

Ian Grant

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bowzart said:
Back in the days of E3, before the era of "bleach-fix" this must have been something similar to the bleach they were using. As I recall, it was singularly nasty stuff. Is this correct?
Click to expand...

Most colour reversal processes used Ferricyanide/halide bleaches. They worked with E2/3 &4 and they will work with E6.

I have seen references to Dichromate/Sulphuric acid bleaches and colour processes in patents, I think for early Cibachrome but I can't be sure.

Ian
 

Frank Szabo

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I did the same thing this past weekend.

Went to a friends place and shot his '32 coupe. Got home, mixed up some hc-110 and associated stuff and got with it.

Figured out later that for some reason I mixed the 110 (after staring at the graduate and trying to blame it) 3x and developed normally, resulting in what all are describing here. Just ordered some Farmer's.

That was my allowable 15 minutes of dumba$$ for the week insofar as film is concerned.
 

gainer

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Ian Grant said:
The Dichromate/Sulphuric acid bleach dissolves the silver, and so there's nothing left to re-develop.

In reversal processing it removes the silver leaving the unexposed & undeveloped silver halide which is then exposed to light and developed.

Ian
Click to expand...
I don't think that's right. That dichromate bleach is the first step in chromium intensifier IIRC. It doesn't remove the silver, but essentially plates it with chromium. I'll have to look it up before I swear to it.

The ferricyanide bleach can be used in two ways. One is supposed to be subtractive, the other proportional. One is used to remove excess density, the other to reduce contrast.
 
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