E6 kit Shelf Life?

[John Galt]

I have a Unicolor Rapid E6 kit I acquired that has the original purchase receipt showing a date in 2015. AFAIK it has been stored in a cabinet at room temp. Is it still good?

Thanks

 

[Rudeofus]

This kit contains several bottles, of which a few should provide some insight whether the kit still works:

1. First Developer is usually shipped as single bottle concentrate. It should be pale amber to yellow. If it turns medium brown, it will have lost significant activity and your slides will come out darker than they should.
2. One of the Color Developer concentrates contains the actual development agent (CD-3). This concentrate will turn dark as it ages. If it is too dark, the color developer has gone bad, which translates into color casts or weak shadows
3. One of the BLIX concentrates contains Ammonium Thiosulfate (smell test). If this concentrate shows a yellow precipitate, then it has gone bad.

These three criteria listed above would be deal breakers, i.e. you'd have to toss out this kit. From there it mainly depends on what you plan on doing with these slides. If results are critical, get a new kit. If you scan your slides and have no plans to project them, some color cast and weak blacks may be acceptable. Whatever you do, don't run your ireplacable Pulitzer price winning films through this old kit first.

 

[John Galt]

This kit contains several bottles, of which a few should provide some insight whether the kit still works:

1. First Developer is usually shipped as single bottle concentrate. It should be pale amber to yellow. If it turns medium brown, it will have lost significant activity and your slides will come out darker than they should.
2. One of the Color Developer concentrates contains the actual development agent (CD-3). This concentrate will turn dark as it ages. If it is too dark, the color developer has gone bad, which translates into color casts or weak shadows
3. One of the BLIX concentrates contains Ammonium Thiosulfate (smell test). If this concentrate shows a yellow precipitate, then it has gone bad.

These three criteria listed above would be deal breakers, i.e. you'd have to toss out this kit. From there it mainly depends on what you plan on doing with these slides. If results are critical, get a new kit. If you scan your slides and have no plans to project them, some color cast and weak blacks may be acceptable. Whatever you do, don't run your ireplacable Pulitzer price winning films through this old kit first.

Thank you Rudeofus. I will take a look at it today.

 

[John Galt]

This kit contains several bottles, of which a few should provide some insight whether the kit still works:

1. First Developer is usually shipped as single bottle concentrate. It should be pale amber to yellow. If it turns medium brown, it will have lost significant activity and your slides will come out darker than they should.
2. One of the Color Developer concentrates contains the actual development agent (CD-3). This concentrate will turn dark as it ages. If it is too dark, the color developer has gone bad, which translates into color casts or weak shadows
3. One of the BLIX concentrates contains Ammonium Thiosulfate (smell test). If this concentrate shows a yellow precipitate, then it has gone bad.

These three criteria listed above would be deal breakers, i.e. you'd have to toss out this kit. From there it mainly depends on what you plan on doing with these slides. If results are critical, get a new kit. If you scan your slides and have no plans to project them, some color cast and weak blacks may be acceptable. Whatever you do, don't run your ireplacable Pulitzer price winning films through this old kit first.

After looking at the kit, each of the three (1st dev, Color dev and Blix) has two components to be mixed. 1st Dev and Color Dev are a very pale yellow and their 2nd parts are clear. However, there is a very thin layer of precipitate on the bottom of the 1st Dev Part A bottle.

Blix part A is clear, Blix part B is Purple. No observable precipitates.

So, what are your thoughts?

 

[Rudeofus]

Precipitate in FD is ok, colors of all these concentrates sound good to me. There's a chance, that FD will have lost some activity, which you can counteract by increasing FD time. I recommend you process a short test strip first and see, whether and to which extent you have to adjust FD times. If you scan anyway, you can process a not-so-important roll and see what happens.

 

[John Galt]

Precipitate in FD is ok, colors of all these concentrates sound good to me. There's a chance, that FD will have lost some activity, which you can counteract by increasing FD time. I recommend you process a short test strip first and see, whether and to which extent you have to adjust FD times. If you scan anyway, you can process a not-so-important roll and see what happens.

Thanks Rudeofus! Hopefully I can process some 120 Velvia in a few days.

 

[Tony-S]

Be sure to let us know how it turned out!