Base Fog with Flexicolor Developer

[koraks]

You're right, no firm answers, but my suspicion of problems associated with the bleach and/or fix remain in place. What I think I see mostly in your negatives are clear signs of fogging patterns and the likely culprit is downstream of the developing step in the process.

For the very cyan base of the Portra, I still lean towards xray problems since the fog is so dense and the problem is reminiscent of e.g. Chinese parallel import Portra film that we saw a little over a year ago.

 

[brbo]

Call me crazy.

Yes, but the polite way ("it's definitely not the agitation") is more up the Photrio alley...

 

[Samu]

How old is your Flexicolor developer? It was ,more than 5 years ago when I remember anything branded Kodak Flexicolor (or Ektacolor for RA-4) was sold in Europe. Even the Kodak USA product for C-41 is now called "Kodak C-41 Developer", etc. for the other baths. Using very old concentrates might be the reason for your problems.

 

[Aidan Sciortino]

This is mostly over my head, but one thought that occurred to me;

Are you using the LORR with starter?

I’ve not used the LORR chemistry, just the standard stuff, but it’s my understanding that the starter is especially important for the LORR since it’s super concentrated. Might be worth trying if it’s available.

 

[originalwinslow]

It's been a while but I figured I'd give this thread a satisfying conclusion in case another person runs into this same problem.

The issue was lack of restrainer, specifically KBr.

LORR is much more concentrated and the starter is more necessary than I had understood from other threads that were only referencing the "standard" Flexicolor replenisher. Essentially this all could have been avoided by just following the designated workflow, but in my stubborness I didn't want to spend the money on more starter than I would ever use. As an added bonus I got a "fun" project to work on for a month and learned more about color negative chemistry. Net positive?

I spent a long time going back and forth with Photo Systems before they even mentioned that overactive developer could be the issue instead of my use of ferri bleach. Starter contains only KBr and pH adjust, so by simply adding 1.5g/L of KBr and adjusting the pH to 10.1 I was able to get correct base density. Density is identical to fresh CS powder developer, and that is after running 32 rolls through 1.5L of solution and replenishing at 20ml/roll. Colors all look good and I am satisfied with the results. PS said that replenishment rate should be more like 35-40ml/roll to compensate for higher oxidization in tank development, but I am running test strips and monitoring how 20ml/roll goes. Seems fine so far.

As a side note: I have also learned that CS powder developer is chemically almost identical to the Kodak liquid developer, albeit supposedly tuned to behave better with Blix. How CS managed to get EK to share/sell their patented formula I have no idea, but it is probably all part of their "strategic partnership" to revitilize the film business using Cinestill's hype machine.

TL;DR - To mix working developer solution using LORR without starter you must use 763ml of replenisher + 237ml H2O + 1.5g/L KBr + pH adjust to 10.1

 

[MattKing]

If CS refers to Cinestill, they are the distributor and Customer Support agent for Photo Systems, who are of course the licensee of the technology.
So you can draw whatever conclusion you might from that.

 

[koraks]

TL;DR - To mix working developer solution using LORR without starter you must use 763ml of replenisher + 237ml H2O + 1.5g/L KBr + pH adjust to 10.1

That's good info, thanks for posting back.