E6 three bath kit - forgot to rinse between steps

[WJO1911]

I'm using a 3-bath E6 Arista kit. I must have started daydreaming a bit, and forgot to rinse with water in between the first developer and color developer, then again between the color developer and blix. Oops. The Provia 100 slides came out with a bit of a greenish cast and low contrast.

Did I contaminate my color developer and blix? Would it be safe to keep using this batch of chemicals or should I dump them and mix up a new batch?

Thanks.

 

[Rudeofus]

If you carry FD into CD, you have a competing developer in your CD, which means silver will be developed without dye formation. This can lead to reduced density and contrast, depending, of course, on the degree of carry over. Since CD-3 is a rather weak development agent and the CD runs at very high pH, there's a good chance that all FD carried over into CD has already done its dirty work on the roll you had in there and won't hurt rolls in future process runs.

If you go from CD directly into BLIX, there is a chance that BLIX will oxidize the color development agent, and that oxidized color development agent will form dye. This would show up as higher than normal minimum density, and possible unevenness. People frequently report this kind of effect with Tetenal's C-41 kit, because for this kit the instructions specifically prescribe going from CD to BLIX directly. Again, whatever carryover CD-3 did to your BLIX, it probably did this to the roll you already processed.

My recommendation is you chose a "not all that important" roll for your next process run and inspect it carefully afterward before you use these process liquids for important stuff. Chances are they will work just fine, but I would not place a US$ 100 bet on this.

 

[WJO1911]

Thank you for the suggestion and detailed explanation! I'll give it a try tonight.