Fogged Insignia - yellowed after bleaching

1st of all a big thanks to all those who have made the archives of this site such a gold mine of information. I could not have gotten this far with-out them.

So a generous neighbor gave me a box of 8x10 Agfa Insignia Gr3. ( & 11x14 Gr1 & Efke 8x10 PL25M & a mess of Neutol WA I have great neighbors ) which is pretty badly fogged as you can see in the attachment.

So following the advice & found on site I added 25ml of 10% KBr to 1L of Neutol (1:7), which significantly reduced the fog, but did not eliminate it. So I printed down considerably and bleached in a ferri/bromide bleach. I probably should have added a few more steps, but this is what I did

90s Neutol WA w/ 25ml 10% KBr
30s rinse
5min Fix ( fresh fix )

wash/soak 2 hours ( about 8 manual water changes )

1min ferri/KBr bleach ( diluted haphazardly from 2-3 month old stock )
wash/soak 2 hours ( 4-6 water changes )

Would any or all of the following help:
1. 2nd fix prior to bleaching
2. HCA prior to wash
3. Use farmers reducer in lieu of ferri/KBr
4. Fix after bleaching
5. Most if not all of the above

I also attached a print, which for me is close to as good as I can do in the darkroom. I can live with the yellowing as it is a creamy sort of color, but it would be great to get closer to the base paper white.

Many thanks in advance

I don't know - I kind of like the built in toning effect!

Jeff Bannow said:

I don't know - I kind of like the built in toning effect!

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Your definitely a 'glass half full' kinda a guy. I like that.

I don't really know, I just have a hunch; I am into deep waters here, so somebody more experienced should chime in whether the following is reasonable: 1. a pre-exposure or 2. try another developer that is not warmtone?

The soaking times you are using sounds very long to me, but I am doing 45 minutes in a washer.

Jerevan said:

I don't really know, I just have a hunch; I am into deep waters here, so somebody more experienced should chime in whether the following is reasonable: 1. a pre-exposure or 2. try another developer that is not warmtone?

The soaking times you are using sounds very long to me, but I am doing 45 minutes in a washer.

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Thanks, but I have to ask about pre-exposure. That sounds completely counter-intuitive.

However, I could try a different developer. I have never used Neutol WA before and thought I would give it a go since it came with the paper. I have Ansco 130, although it is rather old.

As far as my long wash/soak, I don't have a print washer and have been bitten by insufficient wash. So I just let'em soak and change the water every 15min or so.

Looks like the pot-ferri effectively bleached the entire print surface - giving it it's characteristic straw color. This might be obvious, but have you tried refixing the print after you bleached it? This is normal procedure after bleaching a print.

A couple of things:

First, ferricyanide / bromide bleach is a rehalogenating bleach and you must fix again after bleaching to remove the silver bromide you just created! If you don't, it will yellow... (so maybe it's not the ferricyanide you are seeing...). Of course, you need to wash after the fix.

Second, ferricyanide will often discolor paper bases, emulsions, etc. If this is what is happening, there is not much you can do to get rid of the yellow stain. However, I'm not sure that's what your problem is. Do try 1) fixing and washing after your bleach step (BTW, you need to fix anytime you use a ferri bleach, be it Farmer's reducer, ferri / bromide or whatever).

If you do determine it is the ferri that is staining your prints, you might try an iodide bleach (search for some recipes here), or, you might just want to better use your time printing on fresh paper.

Best,

Doremus Scudder
www.DoremusScudder.com

Warm tone papers with no Cadmium are prone to going off like this and there's very little you can do to get a decent print from them.

It's possible to convert them to POP by treating them in Sodium or Potassium Nitrite (5% solution) or Sodium sulphite but you'd need to experiment.

Ian

Thanks Clayne & Doremus,

Into the fix it shall go. The yellow tone was evident as soon as the yellow ferri was washed off. I'll also take a look at iodide bleaches, but in the end it is probably very true that I should just use fresh paper. I was really hoping the paper would be good, but it has been an interesting & informative exercise none the less. When I saw how fogged it was I really did not think there would be much hope.

Ian Grant said:

Warm tone papers with no Cadmium are prone to going off like this and there's very little you can do to get a decent print from them.

It's possible to convert them to POP by treating them in Sodium or Potassium Nitrite (5% solution) or Sodium sulphite but you'd need to experiment.

Ian

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This certainly appeals to my alternative roots. I don't have any nitrites in my pantry, but I do have sodium sulphite.

Would I take the paper and soak it in a bath of sodium sulphite? I did a quick google search and did not come up with anything on converting silver gelatin paper to POP.

Thanks Ian

My bible says so LP Clerc

Give me 2-3 weeks and I'll give you better data, my darkroom etc is in the UK I'm still in Turkey until next week, and I have plenty of fogged Record Rapid (Insignia in the US).

Ian

I think that just a refix is necessary. If the entire print surface ended up bleached due to overall fog than I'd think fixer should clear it.

I'll second (or third?) the refix, but also make this suggestion: Have you tried sepia toning? I worked with Insignia exclusively for two years, and used sepia toner in various ways on it. If you bleach it only long enough to clear the fog then put it into the toning bath to completion (1 min) you might keep your color and eliminate the fog. I always used Dektol when using this very slight bleach/redevelop, and found Insignia reacted to different developers rather strongly- especially when toning. Often there will be a split tone effect, it will depend on how much bleaching is needed to eliminate the fog where your final print color lands.

I tried refixing one of the prints yesterday and while it looked encouraging at first, now that it has had a day to dry down it looks pretty much the same. I'm gonna give the paper another try this weekend with tighter processing controls, refixing promptly after bleach and with a couple of different developers, maybe a shot at toning. If that does not work out, then the paper will be used for carbon transfers, oil print experiments and hopefully a try at POP.

It won't go to waste, that's for sure. Thanks for all the good suggestions and advice.