Rollie C-41 CD-C bad

[Joel_L]

I don't shoot near enough anymore to quickly use up chems. As a result, I try to use the best storage techniques I can and I do experiment with chemical life time. I have a Rollie C-41 kit I bough 3 years ago Used it a few times ( always mix one shot, so full strength chems are stored ), then have either not been shooting or doing mostly B&W or E-6 since. Today I tried a test roll just for grins. I shot a roll of Optima 100 through my RZ67 and went on to process. First indication of a problem was the CD-C bottle was a bit dark, but I wanted to see what would happen anyway. After processing the roll, the negatives came out very light ( not salvageable ), so I just figure dead developer.

The rest of the bottles seem fine. I hate to dispose of all of it just because of the CD-C part. Anyone find pick and choose chems? Is CD-C hard to do from scratch, is it worth the effort?

 

[Anon Ymous]

It's not just CD4 in there, there's probably more and in unknown quantities. Perhaps you could order part C alone, but being US based may complicate things.

https://www.macodirect.de/en/chemis...digibase-c-41-c-colour-developer-part-c-100ml

 

[AgX]

Storing the concentrate in glass bottles capped with cheap inert gas as butane likely would have saved your developer.

 

[Joel_L]

That's what I do ( Argon ). Maybe I contaminated it.

Storing the concentrate in glass bottles capped with cheap inert gas as butane likely would have saved your developer.

 

[Rudeofus]

If you look at MSDS of these concentrates, you will see, that the powerful sequestering agent is only contained in one of the CD concentrates, and that's typically not the bottle with the color development agent. If you bring traces of Iron or Copper into this concentrate, catalytic decomposition will start. There is a non-trivial chance, that these glass pebbles caused more problems than it solved. Since there is no confirmed formula for C-41 liquid concentrates, you basically have three options:

1. Accept that you don't develop enough to justify buying 1 l kits. Send the few rolls you shoot to a lab and be done with it.
   
2. Accept that you need at least one kit per year and be prepared to throw out expired concentrate. That's more expensive than solution 1, but the the greater scheme of things even this cost isn't all that much.
3. Get CD-4 from Artcraft and Sodium Metabisulfite from wherever, and try preparing concentrate CD-C such that you end up with 4.52 g/l CD-4 in your working solution as listed Dead Link Removed. Add traces of Sodium Metabisulfite to your concentrate to make it last longer, target concentration for working solution would be 0.1 g/l. If, and that's a big IF, Rollei put all their Bromide, Iodide and Sulfite into part CD-A, then this self crafted part CD-C should work. You should at least invest a couple of test strips to make sure it does. Obviously, that's the most expensive solution, both near term and long term, but yes, home brewing can be fun, too.

 

[Joel_L]

Ya, I think I will just accept that occasionally I my have to dispose of a partially used kit. As you said, the kits are not that expensive. Fortunately there is a visual indication that the kit is bad, in this case I chose to push it just to see. In the big scheme of things, things have lasted much longer than advertised for me. On the plus side, I can probably stop the diluted mixing I have worked out and just mix full strength each session.

 

[mklw1954]

Part C developer with these kits has been a weak point (has a purplish color when bad), at least in the past. In 2012, a kit I bought from Freestyle came with a bad Part C (Freestyle replaced it).

 

[Joel_L]

I have another bottle coming, other than time to ship, price was not bad. Interesting to hear that part C might be an issue.