Old C-41 Chemicals

I mixed some Kodak Flexicolor chemical about 5 years ago. The test strip is entirely orange clear. So the developer is gone. The bleach should be ok. Not sure about the fixer.

I can pour out the fixer and bleach and make new chemicals. I get plenty of both. Only developer is valuable to me.

I take it the question is: How can you know whether 5 year old fixer is still good? A good question to which I have no good answer I have some b&w fixer which is 5 years old and that's still good. I thought that separate C41 fixer was very similar to for b&w film. The test for b&w fixer is the simple fix test. Is there a similar test for C41 fixer? I'd have thought so

pentaxuser

pentaxuser said:

I take it the question is: How can you know whether 5 year old fixer is still good? A good question to which I have no good answer I have some b&w fixer which is 5 years old and that's still good. I thought that separate C41 fixer was very similar to for b&w film. The test for b&w fixer is the simple fix test. Is there a similar test for C41 fixer? I'd have thought so

pentaxuser

Click to expand...

Do not worry - he will work - I got a quantity of Fixer that expired 8 years ago and is still working - and to increase reassurance, increase the time of two minutes.

The color film is clear after the full C-41 processing. I figure the fixer probably is working. The same with bleach?

C41 bleach generally does not die. Fixer usually has a long life as well, but at 5 years for working strength fixer, it's less certain than the bleach. Developer as you correctly noted does not have such a long life.

I have successfully used C41 developer that was mixed and stored for just over 6 months. The original colour when mixed was a very pale yellow. After the intervening time it had darkened to a deeper level. I chanced it, an developed a film and it was perfectly normal. Another month and the contents another small glass bottle had gone dark brown so I dumped it.5 years old whether prepared or not I would suggest that the chemical was toast! So managing to use almost the full contents of the kit I think that makes good sense and economy. For this to work, the storage must be in glass and the screw tops must be neoprene plastic

How I managed to make the chemicals still useable after mixing 6 months before was to mix a 2.5ltr kit in one go and decant the working solution into 4 x 500cc glass bottles The remaining 500cc I split into 3 parts and filled smaller glass bottles. They were nominally 150cc, but the 500cc filled each bottle so that there was only a small air gap at the top. Then all the bottles were heated in a microwave to a temperature around 45-50c and the screw tops firmly applied. When the bottles cooled the contents shrunk and formed a partial vacuum inside.

Less air = less oxygen

I know the vacuum was intact because when the tops were opened there was a small inrush of air.

As for the life of bleach and fix, I am still using C41 bleach/fix made from Fuji chemicals and they work as well as new. They must be close on 4 yrs old and not even any sediment in the concentrates.

Here I did some testing with C-41 process. The developer is fresh, but the concentrate is several years old. Part C is just very light yellow and smells very strong. Both fixer and bleach were old and was used to process 3 rolls of film before. The tested film was exposed several years ago.

Directly from the scanner, the film strip looks light, or white-looking. After the scanner adjustment, the scan seems ok.

Just try to get some ideas if the chemicals are fine. I'll test with some fresh film.

RedSun said:

Directly from the scanner, the film strip looks light, or white-looking.

Click to expand...

That suggests the fixer is dead. Try re-fixing the film in fresh fixer, you might get a little better result.

koraks said:

That suggests the fixer is dead. Try re-fixing the film in fresh fixer, you might get a little better result.

Click to expand...

Yes, thanks.

This is what I did yesterday evening. The fixer working solution has quite a bit dark residual at the bottom. Now the film base is clear.

Now the only thing is that, the film has some kind of color tint. Cyan tint? I think that may be scanner tint, not film. Film scan is perfectly fine.

Can we see the film, rather than a scan?

RedSun said:

Now the only thing is that, the film has some kind of color tint. Cyan tint? I think that may be scanner tint, not film.

Click to expand...

Looking at that little film strip, I'd say your scanner/software is thrown off by the little bit in the lower left corner where there's no film between the lamp and the sensor, which throws the color balance out of whack. In the big scan there is an unevenness of the color balance across the frame (cyan at the edges, magenta in the center) which can be due to a variety of issues in the film itself (age), processing or scanning.

At this point, given what you stated before (using film that was exposed several years ago - is that also true for the medium format example?), we could be looking at any number of things really. I suppose the question gets down to if this is good enough for you as it is, or if you need further improvement. In case of the latter, the obvious first step would obviously be to use fresh film and fresh chemistry (particularly the developer) and then troubleshoot any issues that remain after that intervention.

The MF film is Fuji Pro 160S. It is not old. The actual film looks good to me. The one with the bad fixer is really dark.

Those look normal to me. Your "tint" most likely comes from the software trying to do things but not doing them well.

MattKing said:

Those look normal to me. Your "tint" most likely comes from the software trying to do things but not doing them well.

Click to expand...

I googled more about this, and I see a lot of original neg scans are cyan or blue tint color. I guess this is how scanners do it with the strips.

Thx for the help. Now I'll keep a good record and body the chemicals....