Fotospeed bleach

tim rudman said:

Re your last comment above, I use this kit often and don't have a problem so I don't believe the fault lies there. I have seen the problem with F'speed and many other products too, including home brews (v easy and cheap to make BTW) when solutions have been stored for re-use or with 1-step fixing w/ot HCA, hence I stopped both these practices a long time ago.

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Tim, I re-use my sepia toner without any issues, even after long periods of time... It seems to keep well in a fully stoppered bottle. Never had the issue naugastyle describes. And I only recently started using HCA and doing two bath fixing.

Or am I just less critical in terms of highlight retention during toning? I doubt it... Of course there is a change in color, and since the light tones in the prints will usually be completely toned, and hence turn brown, this will mean lighter colors in the highlights, but I have never witnessed a complete disappearance of that highlight detail, as naugastly describes.

Marco B said:

Tim, I re-use my sepia toner without any issues, even after long periods of time... It seems to keep well in a fully stoppered bottle. Never had the issue naugastyle describes. And I only recently started using HCA and doing two bath fixing.

Or am I just less critical in terms of highlight retention during toning? I doubt it... Of course there is a change in color, and since the light tones in the prints will usually be completely toned, and hence turn brown, this will mean lighter colors in the highlights, but I have never witnessed a complete disappearance of that highlight detail, as naugastly describes.

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What materials do you use Marco?

tim rudman said:

What materials do you use Marco?

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Hi Tim,

Just the regular stuff. As I wrote, I have sepia toned Agfa MCC FB paper, Ilford MGIV FB/RC, Ilford MG FB/RC Warmtone and Kentmere Fineprint and Select VC. All in glossy variants.

My sepia toner is just a regular two bath Ferricyanide bleach / Thiourea redeveloper, of the Dutch Amaloco brand that is now gone. I never witnessed real loss of detail.

I still think, like you suggested, that the problems OP naugastyle describe, are either remaining fix due to inadequate washing before bleaching (although I must admit I wasn't always that careful in my case on this point, still no real problems), or simply a misinterpretation or misconception of what the sepia toned highlights should look after toning.

A brown sepia tone simply WILL look much lighter than the original black tones, but that doesn't mean the detail isn't there and was lost, the converted silver just is much lighter due to the toning.

tim rudman said:

What materials do you use Marco?

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Oh, one last point: I do tend to stick with non-warmtone, regular multigrade developers.

You wrote that especially when using warmtone developers there might be loss of highlight detail or density. I don't use them.