Non-staining Finol?

[Kvistgaard]

Hi all,
I just developed two rolls of 35mm FP4+ in Finol - and they came out without any stain whatsoever. They look nicely developed, good contrast, but as said, with clear base.

Any idea what might have caused this? Could it be the fixer - in this case Calbe A300 for 8 minutes?

Thanks!
Søren

 

[trexx]

I am not familiar with Finol, but in general staining developers need an alkaline environment. The Fixer you used is purported to by in neutral. Looking up the MDS for Finol show it to be Catechol based. I have found Catechol to be subtle in it's stain on some films.

Also did you use a water stop or an acid stop?

You can take a short portion of the leader from a roll of film, or just a few frames. develop, stop in running water, fix. Judge the stain, return to the developer and check ever few minutes to see if and how the stain improves.

 

[Uhner]

Hi Søren

The film base should be clear – to my knowledge Finol gives very little general stain (as opposed to image forming stain).

 

[gainer]

I second what Uhner said. The less base dye the better. All it does it reduce contrast with VC papers and increase exposure with all papers. It is especially undesirable for printing with UV sensitive processes like platinum or palladium. When the stain is properly proportional to the silver image, it will not be apparent. To test whether it is really there, make a test negative and use ferricyanide-bromide solution to bleach the silver and fixer to remove the silver halide, leaving the dye image. Now, if you don't see a yellow image, you know something went wrong.

 

[Kvistgaard]

Thanks Gents - I think I had the wrong expectations as to what a staining developer does - I've worked with Finol on a couple of occasions previously, and I recall getting green-yellow died negatives. Perhaps something went wrong then?