Bleaching Instant Prints?

[Fragomeni]

Hi all. I'm curious about this and although I've found a few vague references to it I'm unable to find any examples or directly relevant accounts so I'm hoping some of you here might be able to clear things up for me.

I'm wondering if anyone is bleaching instant prints, i.e. Fuji FP100b or FP3000b. I am not talking about using bleach to reclaim negatives, thats a completely different subject. I'm speaking specifically of bleaching Fuji instant prints, perhaps using potassium ferricyanide, for the purpose of lightening print values and tones like you would a silver print. If anyone is doing this please discuss some of your experiences and if possible please show some examples of what you've done. Thank you!

 

[johnielvis]

looks like the previous response didn't take
the polaroids are silver, so bleach and chromium intensification should work---I'll give it a shot when I get time..right now I've got TONSof 8x10 to do.....I got lots of polaroids that can use some tweaking too!!!!! GREAT IDEA, HEY!

 

[johnielvis]

DUDE!!!!! just tried it while the 8x10's were rinsing....

it WORKS GREAT!!!!!! man--intensification will work too!!!!!!

I just fixed a dark one!!!!!! I saved the crappy ones to scan and fix...now I can fix them

YOU'RE a GENIUS

NOTE--it was 5g/ml ferri 50 50 with hypo....took like less than a minute...FAST...

OH...it was an old type 55 p/n print.....should work with any silver print though!!!

looks like there's a little color added..we'll see..it's rinsing now....

 

[johnielvis]

DEFINITE kind of ferricyanide yellow pee color to it now that it's drying...like a sepia "tone".......

 

[Fragomeni]

Great!! Thanks so much for testing it out! I can't wait to do some work with it! This has been on my mind for a while and I just never got around to it. Upload some scans when you're done if you can, I'd love to see the final result. Thanks again!!

 

[johnielvis]

here's the one I did last night...curl from drying...

this was way underexposed by more than one stop..very dark...very unpleasing, but still an image..this is after bleaching (no scanner here--it's at mom and dads)...I had to cover the face of the person...i don't post images of people usually...

NOTE--there is STILL ENOUGH DMAX to give black blacks where the blacks should be---this seems to nicely INCREASE CONTRAST...give you nice WEEGEE looking polaroids....NICE...so now you can PUSH the polaroids!!!!!! AND get NICE PUSH results!!!!!....VERy easy to do...

 

[Fragomeni]

This is great! Very exciting! I like the one eye peeking out behind the finger haha. Time to pull out all my old Polaroids and Fuji instants!

 

[johnielvis]

yeah..now this is starts ANOTHER project--go through all the old polaroids and "fix" them....

I gots YEARS of them....or maybe I just start playing with the new fuji stuff---find a decent "push processing" procedure---see how far I can push that 3000 speed stuff to!!!!!