Overdeveloped negs! Re-develop or reduction?

I took my 4 and 5 year old grandsons on vacation with us to Chama NM to ride the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic RR. As a result of reduced room the only "play" camera that got to come along with me was my little Autocord 120 format and a hodge podge of film I had laying around. I shot Agfa APX 100, Ilford FP4, and some Ilford Delta 100. My normal film and format is Efke 100 and 8X10 so I was hanging out in the breeze with a camera and films I hadn't done a lot of work with. Worse yet, I abandoned my usual PCat HD and used times from the massive development chart and HC 110.

Long story short I pretty well cooked the negs. I could send them to Iraq for the troops to use as extra bulletproof padding.

Is reduction possible? I've never done it before. Actually the exposures ie. shadow details look fine, it's just massive overdevelopment that's killing them. Naturally I'm hoping to reduce proportionally. What say ye experts?

Chastise me if you see fit, I did do some searches before posting, and this may be a useful help to others in any case even if there are other similar posts. Or direct me to some of the posts I didn't find and that would be great too.

Massive Overdevelopment Chart? Sorry, couldn't resist.
I won't be able to help you, but I'm very interested in the results.

I'm toying with the idea of using the technique Dave Miller used for one of his prints, where instead of selenium toning the print as it is, it was bleached and re-developed. I wonder if you could do that with film too?
Might be worth to overexpose yet another roll and try individual frames before playing with the vacation stuff.

- Thomas

There is another post here that describes bleach and redevelopment in a staining developer to increase contrast. It is certainly possible to bleach and redevelop in a more ordinary developer to whatever contrast you desire as long as it is less than the original. The same admonitions about thorough fixing and washing before attempting the process are in order. Any fixer remaining after the initial development will convert the rehalogenating bleach into a Farmer's reducer, which may be what you are looking for, but not the local reducer that you might get. Incomplete fixing might not be easily visible before redevelopment, but surely will be seen after especially if it is uneven.

from the late Barry Thorntons website under bleach and monobath;

http://www.barrythornton.com/

""
Monobath developers are developers with incorporated fixer. The powerful developer works so quickly that it builds up density before the fixer can work properly. It produces very fine grain, excellent sharpness through edge effects, and outstanding evenness. Unfortunately, for ordinary use, the weak shadow areas are fixed out before the developer can work and are largely lost. We can make use of this to change the characteristic curve to help us contract the overall contrast of the negative to print easily yet to steepen the curves in shadow and highlight to counteract the toe and shoulder of the paper so that there is sparkle in the highlights and depth in the shadows unobtainable in any other way. Develop the film, even those of high contrast subjects, for the normal time, stop, fix and wash in the normal way. You can use old negs. too, Using water 400ml; pot. ferri. 11g; pot. brom. 12.5g; water to 500ml, bleach away the image completely (Note: not Farmer’s reducer). Discard the bleach and wash all traces of it from the film. Now, in room light by inspection, partially develop the image using a weak high definition developer. A good one is Water 800ml; Metol 0.5g; Sodium Sulphite 2.5g; Sodium Carbonate 2.5g; Water to 1 litre. You can also try double or triple dilution ordinary developers like Rodinal. Pull out the negative when the shadows seem to have developed, but the midtones are still flat. Water rinse the negative then put it in the Monobath developer. Between 30 seconds and a minute later this development will be complete. The Monobath’s tendency to cut the shadows can no longer work since they have already been developed by the first developer. The Monobath treats the mid tones as its shadows and therefore gives the highlights proportionally more density. Thus the contrast gradient in the midtones is shallower than both shadows or highlights. After the Monobath, stop, fix, wash and dry. Everything is done in room lighting. If the result is not quite what you wanted, simply rebleach and start again varying the first developer time or strength a little, until you have exactly the result you wish! For the Monobath you can use Tetenal’s pre-packaged Monotenal, or mix your own. Try Sodium Sulphite 6g; Hydroquinone 3g; Metol 0.125g; Sodium Thiosulphate 40g; Sodium Hydroxide 5 g; Water to 250ml.. It is well worth experimenting with this technique. There’s little to lose!
""

Proportional reducer kit from photo formulary (Reducer III):
http://www.photoformulary.com/Deskt...tabindex=2&categoryid=38&selection=0&langId=0

They use the original Deck (Gevaert GR-3) reducer formula:
http://www.photoformulary.com/uploads/05-0030.pdf

Kodak studied it and tweaked it to the following mixture, Reducer R-5:

Stock A
Water 1.0L
Potassium permanganate 0.3g
Sulfuric acide 10% sol. 16.0ml

Stock B
Water 3.0L
Ammonium persulfate 90.0g

It is said that "Various proportions of permanganate and persulfate were tried to secure the most effective combination in the presence of the acid. This modified version of Deck's reducer with additional persulfate is now Kodak acid permanganate-persulfate reducer R-5"

(Grant Haist, "Modern photographic processing," volume 2, p. 65-66)

1 parts A + 3 parts B. Reduction starts right away so you should be able to eyeball it. Afterbath of a 1% solution of potassium bisulfite for 5mins is recommended. Haist says it's pretty much the most reliable and stable proportional reducer.

The Formulary product works exactly the same way, A+B working solution, then C afterbath.

Let me know if you try the Photo Formulary product, because I have a few overdeveloped negatives that I would like to try, and I had my eyes on a permanganate-persulfate solution.

Thanks for the help and ideas. It may take me a while to dedicate some time to this. I have just about everything in my chem cupboard, but I don't have permangate

British Journal Phtographic Annual 1926 gives following as sub-proportional reducer (i.e. more action on higlights than shadows):

Ammonium persulfate 25 to 45 grams
Water 1 liter

Add "a drop of sulfuric acid per 2 ounces" to make the action more regular. Make solution fresh for each use. Kill action just before desired degree of reduction is acheived by immersing in 5% sodium sulfite.

Fix a second time if heavy reduction has been carried out.

BJ Annual also recommends bleach in ferricyanide/ammonium bromide bleach as used for sulfide toning followed by re-development in 2% Rodinal plus 1% potassium bromide to finality (30 mins or more), followed by fix, wash, dry. This is stated to give more control.

Annual has a total of 10 reducers, will copy relevant pages if you like.

Regards,

David

Make sure and test on a negative you can abslolutely discard. I use the persulfate proportional reducer from time to time. It reacts at wildly different time with different emulsions. Tmax can swim in it forever and FP4 goes off at the speed of light..Evan Clarke

Jim, I don't really see the necessity of going through any crazy formulas. I assume that your exposure was ok so you just have overdevelopment. I would just bleach the negatives and then redevelop them in a very dilute developer. Since you can do this in normal room light you can pull the negs when they look like they are proper and finish up with a fix to remove the undeveloped silver. Simple.

Jim, Im sorry to hear about your predicament. before risking those negs with a bleach and redevelopment try printing and using a waterbath http://www.michaelandpaula.com/mp/azoamidol.html about half way down under a section titled "Amidol and the use of a water bath."

WARNING: Purists, avert your eyes!!! If that doesn't work you can make a digital neg. of course it would take some serious photoshop skills to make it work (IE stitching together multiple scans). If the negs are valuable to you hiring a professional is probably the way to go.

yours:

patrickjames said:

Jim, I don't really see the necessity of going through any crazy formulas. I assume that your exposure was ok so you just have overdevelopment. I would just bleach the negatives and then redevelop them in a very dilute developer. Since you can do this in normal room light you can pull the negs when they look like they are proper and finish up with a fix to remove the undeveloped silver. Simple.

Click to expand...

I second Patrick's suggestion. Before you do though, sacrifice a roll or two that were exposed and developed similarly to the ones from your trip. That way you can get a feel for the process and find out if that is what you really want to do with your vacation film.

Mike Sullivan

Thanks to all! Since I have some ferricyanide bleach I believe I'll begin with Mike and Patrick's suggestion. Bleach and re-develop in 1:1:100 PcatHD visually. I'll report back with results.