BnW reversal attempts

[Donald Qualls]

I've seen lots of edge markings that aren't fully exposed, so having some density left in them isn't necessarily definitive. I'd go by the exposed leader, assuming you're using 35mm.

 

[YoIaMoNwater]

A bit update on what I tried today. I tried rodinal at 1:6 for for the 1st developer with varying amount of sodium thiocyanate (0, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8% w/v), permanganate bleach (0.12% w/v KMnO4 in 2% sulfuric acid), sodium metabisulphite clear bath. The process was 1st dev for 15 min, wash 3x, bleach for 10 min, wash 3x, clear for 2 min, wash 3x, did NOT do re-exposure (I forgot), 2nd dev for 15 min. This was tested on TMax 400 to see whether thiocyanate could clear the film leader.

Last time I tried with 1:6 rodinal on Rollei Superpan 200 and TMax 400, the emulsion fell off at the 2nd development step. I thought maybe it was a pH issue since rodinal is very high whereas the clearing bath is at a low pH. Since the previous trial didn't use extensive washing, maybe going from the clearing step to the 2nd developer the jump in pH triggered swelling of the emulsion that basically makes it slides off the film base.

This time, the bleach cleared the strip that was in 0.8% sodium thiocyanate at 5 min while the rest of them cleared at 7.5 min. After washing, yellow staining was seen, which was then cleared by the metabisulphite bath. I have to mention that I completely forgot to do the re-exposure step, but the emulsion all looked good at this point. The film leader strip was then cut into 2 parts for 1:6 rodinal (pH 12) and 1.3x microphen (pH 8.8) for second development. When the 2nd developers were added, no emulsion fell off after 5 min and this stayed the same for 15 min. Previously, the emulsion slid of after 2 min so this was a relief. The film strip without sodium thiocyanate was just a bit darker than 0.8% sodium thiocyanate, but this was hard to tell and I thought it could perhaps be from the lack of re-exposure to light.

I then tried again but with different films: Fomapan 400, Rollei Retro 80s, TMax 400, TMax 100, HP5+, Tri-X, Washi F.

I tested on just 1:6 rodinal with or without 0.8% sodium thiocyanate, but this time with re-exposure to light. Everything else was the same.

Bleaching this time actually took longer with most of the leader strips being cleared at 10 min; however, Tri-X without sodium thiocyanate took considerably longer and even at 12 min there were still black silver spots along the edges. After clearing and washing the emulsion for all the films seemed good.

When the 2nd developer of 1:6 rodinal was added, the emulsion started to peel off along the film edges at around the 5 min mark. At 7 min, the emulsion for Rollei Retro 80s, TMax 400, TMax 100, Tri-X, and Washi F all had pieces around the edges "floating" around. When I tried to wash the films, the whole emulsion of TMax 100 without sodium thiocyanate completely fell off.

Only Fomapan 400 and HP5+ seemed to be fine.

I'm gonna have to assume that the high pH of rodinal is definitely the culprit here. I think 1:6 rodinal as first developer is ok but the second developer needs to be at a lower pH. I just ordered some HC-110 (pH 9), so will test this as a second developer when it arrives.

One thing to note is that the first development gave good blacks for all films without thiocyanate, in comparison those with thiocyanate had a more greyish look for some films. So next time I'll try less thiocyanate.

 

[Raghu Kuvempunagar]

I think 1:6 rodinal as first developer is ok but the second developer needs to be at a lower pH.

Quoting Haist: "permanganate bleaching causes a graded sensitivity of the remaining silver halide, requiring a greater light reexposure and a more vigorous second developer."

Amidol developers aside what is a good example of a vigorous developer at low(er) pH?

BTW the original Scala process employed a permanganate bleach but had no emulsion damage problem even though the second developer had a pH of 11.0.

 

[Raghu Kuvempunagar]

This post by the great Photo Engineer should be helpful to those who are debugging their reversal process.

 

[Lachlan Young]

BTW the original Scala process employed a permanganate bleach but had no emulsion damage problem even though the second developer had a pH of 11.0.

And to add to this, the disclosed 'commercially available' Agfa FD (with the PEG-1500) appears to contain the components for making sodium sulfate in-situ (solubility issues with using sulfate itself?) as an anti-swell agent - and sulphuric acid in the bleach also acts against swell too - the modulation/ exploitation of emulsion swell seems to be very important in B&W reversal - you need just enough swell to access the silver in order to develop it, but not so much that the emulsion gets blistered off the support. The more effective the hardener, the greater amount of swell the emulsion can withstand - the very aggressive Bis(vinylsulfomethyl) ether hardening used on colour materials and a lot of B&W materials from Ilford/ Kodak etc being the most effective of the lot - Ron wrote a long post here that outlines the aspects that have to be considered when dealing with swell. He also posted a graph of swell/ pH here. Worth noting that most of the reversal first developers seem to hover around a pH of 10.

 

[YoIaMoNwater]

Quoting Haist: "permanganate bleaching causes a graded sensitivity of the remaining silver halide, requiring a greater light reexposure and a more vigorous second developer."

Amidol developers aside what is a good example of a vigorous developer at low(er) pH?

BTW the original Scala process employed a permanganate bleach but had no emulsion damage problem even though the second developer had a pH of 11.0.

Raghu, the link for the original Scala process used dichromate bleach rather than permanganate bleach. Perhaps that's why a high pH second developer can be used.

And to add to this, the disclosed 'commercially available' Agfa FD (with the PEG-1500) appears to contain the components for making sodium sulfate in-situ (solubility issues with using sulfate itself?) as an anti-swell agent - and sulphuric acid in the bleach also acts against swell too - the modulation/ exploitation of emulsion swell seems to be very important in B&W reversal - you need just enough swell to access the silver in order to develop it, but not so much that the emulsion gets blistered off the support. The more effective the hardener, the greater amount of swell the emulsion can withstand - the very aggressive Bis(vinylsulfomethyl) ether hardening used on colour materials and a lot of B&W materials from Ilford/ Kodak etc being the most effective of the lot - Ron wrote a long post here that outlines the aspects that have to be considered when dealing with swell. He also posted a graph of swell/ pH here. Worth noting that most of the reversal first developers seem to hover around a pH of 10.

Thanks for that Lachlan. I wasn't aware that at both low and pH the emulsion will swell and this definitely seems like the problem here. It seems that a high pH for first developer is fine since the 1:6 rodinal is about pH 12 with the rodinal stock being closer to 13-13.5 (both were tested with pH papers).

One thing I read from PE (what @Raghu Kuvempunagar posted) is that a silver solvent is required to access all the silvers (even unreacted "dead ones") within the emulsion. However, PE said that the first developer should give rich blacks but my experience with thiocyanate differs. Rather than rich blacks they are more greyish. I don't know if this is what PE said as fogging from the first developer and I'm curious on whether or not this has an effect in the final product (i.e. whether or not the final slide after 2nd developer will produce rich blacks or more greyish since the overall Dmax is lowered)? I think it becomes a issue where one has to choose from high Dmax or clearer highlights. I don't know but will keep on experimenting with less thiocyanate.

 

[Raghu Kuvempunagar]

Raghu, the link for the original Scala process used dichromate bleach rather than permanganate bleach. Perhaps that's why a high pH second developer can be used.

Yes, the patent on reversal first developer uses dichromate bleach but @Lachlan Young's post that I linked gives details of the permanganate bleach used subsequently in the Scala process.

PE said that the first developer should give rich blacks but my experience with thiocyanate differs. Rather than rich blacks they are more greyish.

It depends on the amount of thiocyanate used. Unfortunately, one needs to tune the amount of thiocyanate for every developer-film combination without which an excess of thiocyanate can eat up the midtones and the blacks producing a pale slide. For TMax 400, 8g/l is on the higher side for a development time of 15 minutes with a high pH developer like Rodinal 1:6 IMO. Also note that thiocyanate softens the gelatin and thereby contributing to the emulsion damage. Try 2-3 g/l.

Ron wrote a long post here that outlines the aspects that have to be considered when dealing with swell. He also posted a graph of swell/ pH here. Worth noting that most of the reversal first developers seem to hover around a pH of 10.

Thank you! This is very interesting stuff.

 

[Lachlan Young]

I wasn't aware that at both low and pH the emulsion will swell and this definitely seems like the problem here. It seems that a high pH for first developer is fine since the 1:6 rodinal is about pH 12 with the rodinal stock being closer to 13-13.5 (both were tested with pH papers).

I think that what's happening is that the reversal FD's are sat around pH of 10 because the accelerator/ solvent effectively subjects the emulsion to the same degree of swell as a higher pH.

One thing I read from PE (what @Raghu Kuvempunagar posted) is that a silver solvent is required to access all the silvers (even unreacted "dead ones") within the emulsion. However, PE said that the first developer should give rich blacks but my experience with thiocyanate differs. Rather than rich blacks they are more greyish. I don't know if this is what PE said as fogging from the first developer and I'm curious on whether or not this has an effect in the final product (i.e. whether or not the final slide after 2nd developer will produce rich blacks or more greyish since the overall Dmax is lowered)? I think it becomes a issue where one has to choose from high Dmax or clearer highlights. I don't know but will keep on experimenting with less thiocyanate.

I think the issue with thiocyanate is that too much will start to turn the developer into a monobath - E-6 FD uses 1g/l of thiocyanate, and even that may be too much for BW reversal.

 

[YoIaMoNwater]

It depends on the amount of thiocyanate used. Unfortunately, one needs to tune the amount of thiocyanate for every developer-film combination without which an excess of thiocyanate can eat up the midtones and the blacks producing a pale slide. For TMax 400, 8g/l is on the higher side for a development time of 15 minutes with a high pH developer like Rodinal 1:6 IMO. Also note that thiocyanate softens the gelatin and thereby contributing to the emulsion damage. Try 2-3 g/l.

That definitely appeared to be the case. TMax 100 emulsion damage with thiocyanate was worse without it, though both were quite bad. It's worthy to note that the film leaders without thiocyanate were definitely darker, with exception to Fomapan 400 and Rollei Retro 80s. HP5+ was by far the most obvious, followed by Tri-X and Washi F. I will try 0.2% thiocyanate next time and hopefully this will yield a good compromise between Dmax and clearer highlights.

I think the issue with thiocyanate is that too much will start to turn the developer into a monobath - E-6 FD uses 1g/l of thiocyanate, and even that may be too much for BW reversal.

PE said that E6 film appears to be fogged after the first developer. Do you know if anyone has an idea of what that looks like? I kinda want to know how much fogging will affect the final image and if you can get away with while still producing enough Dmax to get a good slide.

 

[Raghu Kuvempunagar]

The fog that PE is talking about is the redeposition of the silver removed by thiocyanate on the negative image produced by the first developer. It goes away with the negative image after bleaching. Haist volume 2 has a detailed explanation of the role played by thiocyanate in the first developer.

As @Lachlan Young pointed out, you need to employ just enough thiocyanate to clear the highlights so that the blacks and the midtones aren't affected. For this to work, you need to use a strong first developer which produces good contrast. If the first developer is not strong enough, you will need more thiocyanate to clear the highlights and that'll kill the blacks.

 

[YoIaMoNwater]

I tried with the film leader of TMAax 400 again. The first developer 1:6 rodinal has either 0% or 0.2% w/v sodium thiocyanate and everything else was the same except for the second developer, which was replaced with 1:6 HC-110.

After all the steps (1st dev, bleach, clear, reexposure, 2nd dev) the emulsion appeared to be fine for both 0% and 0.2% thiocyanate film leaders. However, they appeared to be a bit dark but became lighter after fixing. After placing them in the fixer (Ilford Rapid Fix 1+4), the emulsion started to peel off from the edges. I suspect that the pH of the second developer was the culprit of emulsion peeling and this somewhat confirms that, since the emulsion appeared to be fine after the second developer and only started to peel when it's in an acidic environment of the fixer. Also, I would like to mention that Jens Osbahr's protocol uses a hardener in the fixer and I highly recommend doing that (previous whole film tests used the hardener but this film leader test did not).

Here are what they look like.

I then tried this process again but with Rollei Superpan 200 since I had gotten decent result last time. Everything again was the same but I used the fixer/hardener mixture.

One thing I noticed after the whole process was that there appeared to be a gelatin layer on the film base side that was peeling off. I thought this was due to the ethylene glycol from HC-110

I thought this was from inadequate mixing of the 1:6 HC-110 and the ethylene glycol had deposited on the film. However, after further rinsing, this gelatin layer would not come off. I had to manually remove this by hand under the sink. When the film dried it curled up a lot and even after days of attempting to flatten it under lots of photobooks, it's still very curly.

Next, I tried it again but with Rollei Retro 400S (which is supposedly the same thing as Superpan 200) kept everything the same but reduced bleaching from 10 min to 8 min.

This definitely made the emulsion happy; however, at the end of the roll there was one frame where the "gelatin" layer on the film base side was present. I tried to remove it by hand but this just exacerbated the issue further. It seems like this is either the anti-halation layer or something else. I suspect the peeling of this gelatin layer is from over bleaching so future trials will use a shorter bleaching time (6-7 min, as I find that 5 min is generally not enough).

The good news is this system of rodinal and HC-110 works by solving the pH issue. Care must be taken when using permanganate bleach as this is pretty abrasive to the film emulsion and the "gelatin" film base layer.

I read that @Alessandro Serrao talked about getting rid of this "gelatin" layer here and it seems like this is the same thing I'm seeing. Here's what the gelatin layer look like.

 

[relistan]

I tried with the film leader of TMAax 400 again. The first developer 1:6 rodinal has either 0% or 0.2% w/v sodium thiocyanate and everything else was the same except for the second developer, which was replaced with 1:6 HC-110.

After all the steps (1st dev, bleach, clear, reexposure, 2nd dev) the emulsion appeared to be fine for both 0% and 0.2% thiocyanate film leaders. However, they appeared to be a bit dark but became lighter after fixing. After placing them in the fixer (Ilford Rapid Fix 1+4), the emulsion started to peel off from the edges. I suspect that the pH of the second developer was the culprit of emulsion peeling and this somewhat confirms that, since the emulsion appeared to be fine after the second developer and only started to peel when it's in an acidic environment of the fixer. Also, I would like to mention that Jens Oshbor's protocol uses a hardener in the fixer and I highly recommend doing that (previous whole film tests used the hardener but this film leader test did not).

Here are what they look like.

View attachment 266971

I then tried this process again but with Rollei Superpan 200 since I had gotten decent result last time. Everything again was the same but I used the fixer/hardener mixture.

View attachment 266972

One thing I noticed after the whole process was that there appeared to be a gelatin layer on the film base side that was peeling off. I thought this was due to the ethylene glycol from HC-110

I thought this was from inadequate mixing of the 1:6 HC-110 and the ethylene glycol had deposited on the film. However, after further rinsing, this gelatin layer would not come off. I had to manually remove this by hand under the sink. When the film dried it curled up a lot and even after days of attempting to flatten it under lots of photobooks, it's still very curly.

Next, I tried it again but with Rollei Retro 400S (which is supposedly the same thing as Superpan 200) kept everything the same but reduced bleaching from 10 min to 8 min.

View attachment 266977

This definitely made the emulsion happy; however, at the end of the roll there was one frame where the "gelatin" layer on the film base side was present. I tried to remove it by hand but this just exacerbated the issue further. It seems like this is either the anti-halation layer or something else. I suspect the peeling of this gelatin layer is from over bleaching so future trials will use a shorter bleaching time (6-7 min, as I find that 5 min is generally not enough).

The good news is this system of rodinal and HC-110 works by solving the pH issue. Care must be taken when using permanganate bleach as this is pretty abrasive to the film emulsion and the "gelatin" film base layer.

I read that @Alessandro Serrao talked about getting rid of this "gelatin" layer here and it seems like this is the same thing I'm seeing. Here's what the gelatin layer look like.

View attachment 266979

Well the slides look good! Seems like they are working out ok with the new protocol. That's interesting about the reverse side gelatin layer. I had not ever seen that before. I suppose the solution to that may be hardener as well? It won't remove it but it might make it not break down and therefore might leave a clean image.

 

[YoIaMoNwater]

Well the slides look good! Seems like they are working out ok with the new protocol. That's interesting about the reverse side gelatin layer. I had not ever seen that before. I suppose the solution to that may be hardener as well? It won't remove it but it might make it not break down and therefore might leave a clean image.

Thanks Karl! Yea I never seen the gelatin layer at the film base side before until these attempts, it was just unexpected. As for the hardener, I did end up using it for both of the Rollei films but it didn't end up resolving the gelatin issue. I'm pretty sure long bleaching causes the blistering of the gelatin layer but it was weird since the first time I did reversal with Rollei Superpan 200, I didn't encounter this issue. Although it's worth to mention that the first time with Superpan 200 I used a bleach that was sitting there for 4 hours, perhaps it wasn't as strong as a fresh solution so that's why I didn't see any blistering then.

 

[YoIaMoNwater]

I tried a roll of TMax400 with my process. Everything was kept the same but the bleaching time was done in parallel with a strip of the film leader. Bleaching actually took a bit longer for TMax400 (11 min) than Superpan 200/Retro 400S (8 min). After the whole procedures I did not notice any emulsion damages, so it seems like the rodinal and HC-110 combo works with this film as well.

Here's the result of a reversed TMax400 shot at 400:

This was scanned on a Epson Perfection 4490 with a level range of 0-255 in the SilverFast 9 software. The scanner was calibrated with IT8 color slides from SilverFast. This was done with the above Rollei films as well.

One thing I noticed is that this film when reversed is way less contrasty than the Rollei film; the grey film base also doesn't help either. I was afraid that the longer bleaching time might have damaged the emulsion but this doesn't seem like an issue. Moreover, I have opted out the sodium thiocyanate from my reversal attempts and won't use it in future experiments.

I'm planning to shoot rolls of TMax100, Tri-X, HP5+, and Washi F then process all of them this way (probably need to adjust bleaching time for each film). After these experiments are done, hopefully I can send them to @iandvaag so they can be analyzed with a densitometer. Also, I managed to get some Scala 200 online so will try to development them as well to be used as a control.

 

[relistan]

I tried a roll of TMax400 with my process. Everything was kept the same but the bleaching time was done in parallel with a strip of the film leader. Bleaching actually took a bit longer for TMax400 (11 min) than Superpan 200/Retro 400S (8 min). After the whole procedures I did not notice any emulsion damages, so it seems like the rodinal and HC-110 combo works with this film as well.

Here's the result of a reversed TMax400 shot at 400:

View attachment 267829

This was scanned on a Epson Perfection 4490 with a level range of 0-255 in the SilverFast 9 software. The scanner was calibrated with IT8 color slides from SilverFast. This was done with the above Rollei films as well.

One thing I noticed is that this film when reversed is way less contrasty than the Rollei film; the grey film base also doesn't help either. I was afraid that the longer bleaching time might have damaged the emulsion but this doesn't seem like an issue. Moreover, I have opted out the sodium thiocyanate from my reversal attempts and won't use it in future experiments.

I'm planning to shoot rolls of TMax100, Tri-X, HP5+, and Washi F then process all of them this way (probably need to adjust bleaching time for each film). After these experiments are done, hopefully I can send them to @iandvaag so they can be analyzed with a densitometer. Also, I managed to get some Scala 200 online so will try to development them as well to be used as a control.

Hey, you got some decent results from the TMax 400! That's very good news. Looks like you managed to get a very good DMax from just eyeballing the scan. Which exposure seems to look right to you? 0 or +1 maybe from the scans, but can't quite tell.

 

[YoIaMoNwater]

Hey, you got some decent results from the TMax 400! That's very good news. Looks like you managed to get a very good DMax from just eyeballing the scan. Which exposure seems to look right to you? 0 or +1 maybe from the scans, but can't quite tell.

Thanks man! Honestly I think exposure at 0 is fine since this was shot through the KFC window with the neon sign inside. I feel like for reversal slides, just like E6 slides, you need to shoot +1 for night scenes.

 

[YoIaMoNwater]

Some updates on my film tests.

TMax100 @ 100: bleach cleared film leader for 5 min but I extended to 8 min for the whole roll. Emulsion damage around the sprocket holes is pretty bad, which is mostly likely from over bleaching. Next trial with this film will reduce it down to 5 min. I also suspect that the fixer/hardener mix had gone bad.

Tri-X @ 400: bleach cleared film leader in 10 min; however this wasn't sufficient enough as solarization occurred and the blacks are not deep black. This is visible from from -1 to +3. Next trial with this film will need to extend bleaching time to around 15 min or longer. I used a fresh fixer/hardener here which probably helped to minimize emulsion damage.

Scala 200X @ 200: bleach cleared film leader in 8 min but wasn't long enough to clear the film border edges. Next trial will need to extend bleaching to 10 min.

Most important take away here is that TMax100 is pretty fragile to the permanganate bleach and fresh fixer/harderner must be mixed before each reversal process. I used Ilford Rapid Fixer and Tetenal hardener, even though they aren't suppose to be used together I found that the mixture is stable enough for 2 days. During the 2nd day you must aggressively agitate to make sure the precipitated aluminum on the bottom of your bottle is well mixed together in the solution.

I've shot rolls HP5+, Foma 400, Washi F and will try to process these when I have time.

 

[relistan]

Interesting result with the TMax and the emulsion damage. That does look pretty serious. However, the Scala is looking quite good though and with the additional bleach time I think you’re going to have some nice results.

 

[Lachlan Young]

I used Ilford Rapid Fixer and Tetenal hardener, even though they aren't suppose to be used together I found that the mixture is stable enough for 2 days. During the 2nd day you must aggressively agitate to make sure the precipitated aluminum on the bottom of your bottle is well mixed together in the solution.

Just a quick note, in case you were worrying that you might need to buy 5L of Hypam for hardener compatibility - you can buy Tetenal Super Fix Plus in 250ml quantities which should be fully compatible with Tetenal hardener.

 

[Raghu Kuvempunagar]

Did you give the Scala reversal kit a try, at least with Scala 200? Lina Bessanova's slides looked so good in her video and the kit seemed to be a truly painless way to get consistently good results.

 

[relistan]

Did you give the Scala reversal kit a try, at least with Scala 200? Lina Bessanova's slides looked so good in her video and the kit seemed to be a truly painless way to get consistently good results.

They results look very good from that kit. Very good. But I wouldn’t say it’s trivial. Look at the emulsion damage he got here.

 

[Raghu Kuvempunagar]

Look at the emulsion damage he got here.

There was some emulsion damage in Lina's slides themselves as I noticed from her video. I guess permanganate bleach is very sensitive to temperature variations and agitation even when it's very dilute. Emulsion damage aside, the tint in the slides in the recent video is ugly for my tastes.

It's nice that someone not associated with the manufacturer of the reversal kit tested the kit and shared their results. Looking forward to seeing more such reviews.

 

[YoIaMoNwater]

Interesting result with the TMax and the emulsion damage. That does look pretty serious. However, the Scala is looking quite good though and with the additional bleach time I think you’re going to have some nice results.

Thanks Karl! I gotta try TMax100 again with fresh fixer/hardener, but the blacks are deep black!

Just a quick note, in case you were worrying that you might need to buy 5L of Hypam for hardener compatibility - you can buy Tetenal Super Fix Plus in 250ml quantities which should be fully compatible with Tetenal hardener.

Thanks for the info Lachlan. I just got a bottle for Ilford Rapid Fixer so will just use the combo as a one shot. Didn't know about Hypam or Super Fix Plus fixers, good to know they exist and for anyone else wanting to test my process.

Did you give the Scala reversal kit a try, at least with Scala 200? Lina Bessanova's slides looked so good in her video and the kit seemed to be a truly painless way to get consistently good results.

Nope. I don't really want to spend money on a kit where the bleach is permanganate based. I've found that you can't make stock solution then store them in foil because they turn into a solid chunk of manganese dioxide in a month. The best way to store the bleach is just to just buy a bottle of potassium permanganate itself.

They results look very good from that kit. Very good. But I wouldn’t say it’s trivial. Look at the emulsion damage he got here.

Actually saw that yesterday and surprised by the emulsion damage. Does anyone know how many rolls you can process with the kit?

 

[Raghu Kuvempunagar]

I don't really want to spend money on a kit where the bleach is permanganate based.

I hear you. For my own work, I've settled down to dichromate bleach and in the rare occasions, copper sulphate bleach. No emulsion damage to worry about, long shelf-life and good capacity.

 

[YoIaMoNwater]

I hear you. For my own work, I've settled down to dichromate bleach and in the rare occasions, copper sulphate bleach. No emulsion damage to worry about, long shelf-life and good capacity.

What’s the advantage of copper sulphate bleach? Btw the video @relistan posted showed the guy didn’t scan correctly. The video thumbnail of the slide looks more like what it is.