I just bought a case of this from Unique Photo. They had a great price, easy shipping (no hazmat) and were great to work with. They are my new go-to place for C41, I think.
thanks, Tom. That confirms my 45ml / 5L ratio. This is for the normal C41 flexicolor stabilizer III. There are -RA and probably -LORR versions as well, I'd guess. They may have different dilutions.
I just bought a case of this from Unique Photo. They had a great price, easy shipping (no hazmat) and were great to work with. They are my new go-to place for C41, I think.
I think it was about $50 for the case, but everything on their site is now call for pricing. It was a great price in any case, and they were excellent to work with (PDI).
So I've made the jump to Flexicolor, but I'm developing a lot of old film stock. Does anyone know where to get this stuff in 2020? Does it even exist now? I thought I'd found it here but the salesperson told me that the listing was actually outdated.
When you say old film, how old is it?
Modern film does not NEED stabilizer, you just use a final rinse in C41.
I have processed film from the 1970s & 1980s in the standard C41 with final rinse (no stabilizer) and had no problem.
Maybe you could try this.
I’m developong mostly Vericolor from the 80s and 90s but also some Fuji NPS and NPC from the 90s and early 2000s. My understanding is that the new final rinse became available in 2000 and replaced the Stabilizer III, which was necessary for Vericolor films and older (I don’t know about Fuji films though). From my reading, the issue is not so much the present - my negatives are coming out fine with the new final rinse - it’s the longevity of the dyes that degrade more rapidly without stabilization from the formalin that is only present in the Stabilizer III.
Those pills look interesting, though I don’t see that they contain formalin. Would they accomplish the same purpose more safely?
Obviously it would be nice not having to deal with formalin at all, but I’d like to know that my negatives are going to stick around for a while without going bad. Or maybe a raw file from a scanner is the really the only way to preserve these older films