Tetenal colortec E6 kit sediment

Hello everyone,

I have a half used Tetenal colortec E6 kit which I've opened on mid June to develop my first batch of slide film. I've used the Tetenal Protectan spray for the remaining unmixed chemical concentrate in the original bottles. The instructions state that the concentrate should be good for 24 weeks.

I was planning to do some more development over the weekend and checked out the bottles. Two concentrate bottles have some sediment on the bottom of the bottle. The Bleach Fix Part 2 has a pale yellow-greenish sediment and the First Developer has some crystals looking bits, some of them are are about 1cm (1/3 of an inch) long. The rest of the bottles look like new.

Did they go bad? Is it still OK to use the solution? Should I adjust my development Blix times?

Thanks
Andrei

The sediment in FD is ok, although it is an indication of old age. FD mixed from this concentrate will be a bit weaker, and as a work around you should think about extending FD times to 6:45 or 7:00, depending on how dark your slides come out. Maybe try a test slide before committing important work to this FD.

The sediment in BX2, on the other side is fatal, that's basically fixer throwing up elemental Sulfur. Don't use this BX2 or you may get colloidal Sulfur into your slides. See this thread for details. BTW this very thread started my long journey into self mixing of chems, and one result of this is this article. If you go that route, you won't need BX2.

This is very interesting Rudeofus. This is the second kit that have done this to me. For the first one, I've not used the Protectan spray. I am not sure what I am doing wrong. They are not lasting half of their manufacturer's recommended life span. I am keeping them in the original bottles and box away from sunlight or heat. Why are they going bad on me I wonder?

Andrei, if it comforts you: I had a hole collection of Tetenal-Kits that went bad. Follow Rudeofus' instructions, see link above (Thank you Ruedeofus, this kept us going!!). Do not use Blix2 when it starts looking even a bit cloudy (happened to me with kit fresh from the shop) - it effectively destroys the slides. The separate "Blix1 + Bromide" and then neutral fix (I use C-41 fix from Minilab, just for convenience) work very well.
1st Dev with very few crystals can be used normally and reused once (at least I'm ok with the results), as soon as crystals become big enough to cover the bottom of the bottle, expand development time as suggested and don't reuse developer. At a point you'll find that the developer doesn't reasonably work anymore (crystals build-up to 1cm on the bottle bottom)...
Wishing you good luck with your adventures in slide development.

Thanks guys. That have saved me from wasting a test roll, which wouldn't have been a big deal, but still. I will check out the Rudeofus' instructions. @Rudeofus, thanks a bunch!

By the way, can I use a separate Bleach and Fixer from the Fuji X-Press C41 kit for the E-6 process??

It has happened to me twice, once with an opened bottle but also with a pack unopened that I had for about six months. With the latter I got a replacement kit. I also had the same experience with an opened bottle of Tetenal Superfix, not the odourless version which is now my usual fix and use this as my E6 fixer after converting the BX1 to separate bleach according to Rudefos's technique.

Mozg31337 said:

By the way, can I use a separate Bleach and Fixer from the Fuji X-Press C41 kit for the E-6 process??

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There are two opinions on that:

1. a theoretical opinion: E6 film material is designed and rated for the comparatively very weak Ammonium Ferric EDTA bleach. The Ammonium Ferric PDTA bleach is quite a but stronger, and therefore might damage your film's dyes.
2. a practical opinion: the person here on APUG/photrio most diligently looking at E6 chemistry and running by far the most tests strips against home brew stuff so far of all the folks ever posting here is Stefan Lange (posting as stefan4u). He used Potassium Ferricyanide bleach (which is even stronger than Ammonium Ferric PDTA) and never had a problem. Neither did a long list of other folks who used Ferricyanide or Ferric PDTA.

So I guess there is no straight answer. If you can run a test clip of some material through Fuji X-Press C41 bleach & fix and it works alright, then there's a good chance that more important slides on same material will work just as well. Given that there are not all that many different slide films out there anyway, even full coverage of all currently sold products can happen quickly.

Thanks @Rudeofus for the explanation. I will give it a go in a few days and get back with some results (hopefully positive).

Moved to Color chemistry forum from B&W.

Rudeofus said:

The sediment in BX2, on the other side is fatal, that's basically fixer throwing up elemental Sulfur. Don't use this BX2 or you may get colloidal Sulfur into your slides.

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PittP said:

Do not use Blix2 when it starts looking even a bit cloudy (happened to me with kit fresh from the shop) - it effectively destroys the slides.

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Got to disagree with that. I had the exact same problem with my first Tetenal kit. But I mixed it up and it worked just fine. I did extend the BLIX time (typically BLIX runs a couple minutes longer than prescribed anyway, since I don't pay as close attention to that). And I believe I only did six rolls instead of the usual ten. But all of them came out fine. They are over a year old now and I just checked. They still look great.

Any failure of the FIX would leave a silver compound still in the film. This would immediately be apparent on a transparency and would likely get darker with age, Likewise, sulfur left on the slide would be obvious. And it would somehow need to be chemically bonded to the film or it would just wash off in the rinse. There is no indication of any of that happening across multiple rolls.

Since the first kit I've been decanting the concentrate into 100ml bottles. This not only eliminated the oxidation problem, it makes the subsequent kits much easier to mix. While having BX2 to some extent oxidized may not be the best thing in the world, from my experience it certainly doesn't ruin the slides.

Thanks for all your input guys!
I have used the Fuji Hunt X-Press C-41 kit's bleach and fixer and used the FD with filtered out sediment and the CD and the Stabiliser from the Tetenal E-6 kit. I've extended the development time to 7 minutes and also increased the times of the bleach and fixers as they were also close to the expiry age.
It has worked out pretty well. So, fingers crossed that the film will not go bad in a few years time.

By the way, I have talked with Tenetal UK customer support team regarding this issue and they said that apparently there are a few 'bad' batches of their product that they are investigating. They have asked me to send pictures of the bottles and the batch numbers. They will get back to me. Will keep you updated.

By the way, is there any end date of the kit printed somewhere on the box? What is the shelf life of unopened concentrates, should those be rather stored frozen or at room temperature?
I ruined many films due to bad BX2 concentrate too (although not from the newly fresh kit).

There are no dates on the box itself. the manual said that 24 weeks for a fully stopped opened concentrates and 8 weeks for the not stopped once. I've used the Tetenal Protectan spray, and it went bad way before the 24 weeks have passed.

So, if there is no way to identify an expiration time of the concentrate (based on batch number, etc.) than potentially one could buy a kit with these problems, since the concentrates could not be stored "forever"?

thuggins said:

Since the first kit I've been decanting the concentrate into 100ml bottles.

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How long has it lasted for you in the 100ml bottles?

A mixed batch lasts me between six weeks and two months. So the concentrate will be open between six and eight months by the time the last batch gets mixed.

I came across this thread after having had a similar experience recently while developing a 35mm roll of new Ektachrome. My partially used Tetenal E6 kit is about eight months old, so I assume full responsibility for any abnormalities and don't blame Tetenal in the least. As a standard practice, I always decant the FD, CD1, and CD2 solutions into several small, amber glass bottles, but have not (up to now) been decanting the BX1, BX2, or stabilizer solutions (on the hopeful assumption that they're less prone to age-related deterioration). When mixing a batch of chemistry yesterday, I noticed that the BX2 had the aforementioned yellow-greenish sediment in the bottom of the bottle and looked somewhat cloudy when poured into a graduated cylinder. I was suspicious of the reliability of the chemicals (again: my fault, not Tetenal's), but was curious enough to go forward with developing to try and learn something about their longevity. In short, the resulting color and exposure of my developed film looks okay, but I noticed two otherwise abnormal things.

First, I noticed that the emulsion side of the developed but still-wet film (i.e., immediately after the stabilizer bath) had a hazy brown color to it, which is different from the hazy blue that I've come to expect from "normal" wet transparency film (the haziness, as you know, goes away as the film dries). The second observation is that the film had a lot of white "scum" along the edges/sprocket holes that I initially thought was just residue from the stabilizer (which would still be odd), but which didn't dissipate even after re-rinsing in distilled water. After allowing to dry for several hours, the brown haziness seems to have disappeared (or at least dissipated substantially), but the white scums persists as a white powder that can be wiped away with fingers or a cloth.

As I mentioned before, the developed images look about right (maybe a half-stop too dark for my taste), but I'm wondering if the two observations I've made are related to the past-date BX2. In other words, does the new Ektachrome exhibit a hazy brown color when still wet (unlike the more "normal" hazy blue), or should I conclude that the color was due to the old BX2 (e.g., vis-a-vis, retention of sulfur on the film). Likewise, is the white scum/powder on the dry film just residue from the stabilizer, or might this be residual silver halide that wasn't adequately removed and washed away during blixing/fixing? As a follow up, if inadequate blixing/fixing was a problem here, does it make sense to re-blix/re-fix with new chemistry, or will that do more harm than good? Thanks in advance for the feedback.

I have always seen different hazy hues with slide film when it was wet, and the old E100VS always had strong brown color which went away after drying. There's little reason to think that new E100 would be much different.

Regarding darker image: I would think that E6 FD lost strength over time, and this would nicely explain what you see. You'd have to raise FD time in 15 second increments until you find new optimum with your old chemistry.

Interestingly, I shot another roll of film yesterday -- an old roll of E100VS, no less -- and developed it with the same Tetenal E6 chemistry I have on-hand, and it showed the same hazy brown color as the previous, new roll of E100. So, the hazy brown color of wet transparency film appears to be normal for Kodak (I've only been shooting Fuji transparency film since I started doing my own E6 developing a couple years ago, so that's my only data point for assuming hazy blue is "normal").

Regarding my other observation -- the white, powdery scum left on the film after stabilizer -- I was able to wash that away by gently rubbing the film with my hands under running water. I'm still not sure what the cause of that was, but I'm feeling more confident that my "suspect" E6 kit still had usable life in it. Nonetheless, I'll start decanting the BX1, BX2, and stabilizer into amber glass bottles, too, in an attempt to reduce any uncertainties. I agree with you on the reduced strength of the FD solution.

thuggins said:

Got to disagree with that. I had the exact same problem with my first Tetenal kit. But I mixed it up and it worked just fine. I did extend the BLIX time (typically BLIX runs a couple minutes longer than prescribed anyway, since I don't pay as close attention to that). And I believe I only did six rolls instead of the usual ten. But all of them came out fine. They are over a year old now and I just checked. They still look great.

Any failure of the FIX would leave a silver compound still in the film. This would immediately be apparent on a transparency and would likely get darker with age, Likewise, sulfur left on the slide would be obvious. And it would somehow need to be chemically bonded to the film or it would just wash off in the rinse. There is no indication of any of that happening across multiple rolls.

Since the first kit I've been decanting the concentrate into 100ml bottles. This not only eliminated the oxidation problem, it makes the subsequent kits much easier to mix. While having BX2 to some extent oxidized may not be the best thing in the world, from my experience it certainly doesn't ruin the slides.

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I think you got lucky!

Why take a chance. Once you get colloidal Sulfur in the emulsion, your slides are just about ruined.

PE