C41 digibase - renew question

Dear community,

so after around 20 rolls of color 35mm film in 3 years time (digibase 1 liter), I got out perfectly empty film from the process. The developer got dark green and I think this means the developer is over. Right ?
So I ordered a 2.5 liter set - but my question :
Is it worth to keep the bleach or fixer? The developer can go to the special waste depot, right ?
For the next time, I thought to make one batch of 800 ml to be renewed two times when over and keep the batch and original flasks with Protectan gas covered. Would this be the right way to do it? I develop mostly 2 rolls of 35mm in a patterson tank, rarely 4x5" sheet film in a Jobo 2500 tank.

Thanks a lot for a still learning member in Burgundy, France

I would not use these working solutions for more than a year, and I would not dare to process as many rolls with one liter of working solution. The fixer is most certainly exhausted after 15 rolls. The bleach may still be fine, but you get fresh bleach anyway with the new kit, so there's no reason to be thrifty here.

And in case the question comes up: nope, you can not use the bleach for rehal bleaching of black&white materials. Color bleaches contain lots of Ammonium ions, which will likely irrervesibly remove some silver.

macrumpel said:

The developer got dark green and I think this means the developer is over.

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That developer should not have been used anymore for the last 2.5 years or so...

macrumpel said:

For the next time, I thought to make one batch of 800 ml to be renewed two times when over and keep the batch and original flasks with Protectan gas covered.

Click to expand...

I my experience, it works best to mix all the contents of the original bottles at the same time, and then store the mixed developer in full, tightly capped glass bottles. Do not overuse it if you want to maintain any consistent quality.

If you don't care about how your film comes out because "I'll scan it and fix the weird colors in photoshop anyway and it's vintage so who cares", then it doesn't matter much what you do; just improvise.
However, I assume that if you take the time to set up a view camera and correctly (try to) expose sheets of 4x5, you also want to develop them the way they should. In that case, I'd suggest NOT to try and 'save' € 25 per year on developer. If you think about it, it's a really silly way of economizing anyway, if you factor in all the effort you put into photography.

Thank you very much for your comments. I realize that I got it quite wrong in fact. Reading in this forum, and specially remarks from you, koraks, using fresh developer should be the way to go in the future.
You are right, that I plan to do paper development, with RA4. That is another story.

Fixer is the same as for b&w?

Finally, the kit solution seems too expensive to me. What I can find under Axel Color from Italy with sets of 2x10l solutions seems much more interesting regarding the price point. It should be standardized chemistry anyway, right?

Best wishes from France

Yeah, all C41 developers are quite comparable. I never tried Axel, but if it is what I could get easily, I wouldn't hesitate. I prefer Fuji if/as long as I can get it. Can't go wrong with it and it's cheap in the kind of quantities you listed.

PS: love to visit France Usually don't make it past Nord Pas-de-Calais though. And it's for work mostly. Best wishes

macrumpel said:

Fixer is the same as for b&w?

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There are two significant differences regarding fixer between B&W and C-41:

1. C-41 uses very strong restrainers, which are released during development. These improve picture quality, but create very hard to fix silver compounds. Therefore you need very strong fixer. Some Sodium Thiosulfate in water won't cut it, at least not, if you want to process more than one roll per batch.
2. The precise dye hue is pH dependent, therefore fixers for color materials all run at pH 6.5. Many B&W fixers run at pH 5.0-5.5, which is too low.

There are neutral B&W rapid fixers, and these will likely work well with C-41. You will certainly get results with other fixers, but they may be less archival and/or have some color deviations.
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macrumpel said:

Finally, the kit solution seems too expensive to me. What I can find under Axel Color from Italy with sets of 2x10l solutions seems much more interesting regarding the price point. It should be standardized chemistry anyway, right?

Click to expand...

Photo chemistry becomes incredibly cheap, once you buy larger quantities. No minilab would put up with the cost of these small kits geared towards amateurs. If it is possible and affordable, I would avoid powder kits, but all the liquid kits or chem sets should be roughly equivalent.