RA-4 Monobath - is it possible?

[htmlguru4242]

I was working with my D-76 based monobath last night (it works somewhat well now), and it made me think about doing a monobath for RA-4 papers.

Is this at all possible? If the paper is slightly overxposed, and then run though strong developer with some very dilute bleach and fix, would this be possible?

 

[Photo Engineer]

No.

The bleach is an oxidant and would destroy both the developer and the latent image.

A monobath with just a fix would give a 'bleach bypass' look to the prints, if it worked, but usually due to diffusion effects would cause severe crossover between the layers due to unequal effects.

PE

 

[htmlguru4242]

Hmmm ... you're probably right. What happens if the bleach step is bypassed. I've never seen or tried this before...

 

[Photo Engineer]

You get silver metal contamination of the colors with blocked shadows and desaturated color.

You can try it by this sequence. Develop (RA), Fix (Flexicolor C41 fix diluted about 2x normal), wash and dry. This will show you exactly a bleach bypass paper process.

PE

 

[Photo Engineer]

Hmmm ... you're probably right.

I started thinking of this comment and decided to come back to it.

Just FYI, BTDT. No 'probably'. I guarantee it! At worst, no image, and at best a distorted parody of an image. If you do a bleach bypass at least there will be a usable image. And, if you don't like it, just blix and wash and you get a good print.

PE