Tetenal E-6 first developer replacement

Hi,

I bought a Tetenal E-6 kit a while ago and the first developer is going sour. In the past I have had my chems go a year as concentrate when I purge the bottles with Argon ( cause I have it ). This FD is not going to make it near that long. Question is, is there a suitable replacement? I've heard B&W developer but am not sure that really works ( works well ).

Thanks

Joel

I may be wrong, but the 1st developer is a basic concoction to develop the part of the film that is going to be bleached away. So if I am right, after a bit of testing you could possibly find a developer elsewhere that will do the same task. I will have a chat with a photo lab friend of mine to see if this is correct.

UPDATE

I have just spoken to my friend and he states that if you approach Tetenal direct they may be able to supply you with the correct developer for a small charge. The idea of using a normal B&W developer would not work very well due to the difference in processing temperatures. Have a look at this link for the company.

http://www.digitaltruth.com/store/cart/E-6-Kits/

If you look at a typical working recipe for E6 FD like (there was a url link here which no longer exists) or (there was a url link here which no longer exists), you see right away that there are significant differences between E6 FD and regular b&w developers. Working solution strength E6 FD is loaded with Phenidone/Dimezone-S plus secondary developer and would develop regular b&w film in fractions of a minute. That is at room temperature, not the 38°C normally used for E6 processing!

It is also specifically balanced to create three matching characteristic curves for the respective three color layers. A standard b&w developer might get your slides developed, if you let it soak long enough at full strength and elevated temperature, but you will get unpredictable toe and shoulder regions, which means your blacks or your white could be off, each in different directions. You will likely waste more E6 film in the process of fine tuning your results than what you would spend on a new 5l kit.

My recommendation would be: if you can, get a replacement bottle from Tetenal, if that doesn't work out, either home brew (stefan4u's recipe works very well) or get a new kit.

According to some friends that have tested it, Tetenal Dokumol 1+9 will do the trick. Same temperature and times

There is a motion picture film first developers that you could try. The results may be somewhat inferior to a developer designed for E-6, but it will probably work to some extent.

Kodak DR-100 Reversal First Developer
First developer for the Process VNF-1 used for Ektachrome motion picture film.
Water (21 – 38C) 800 ml
Quadrafos 2 g (sequestering agent)
Sodium metabisulfite (anh) 8 g
Phenidone 350 mg
Sodium sulfite (anh) 37 g
Hydroquinone 5.5 g
Sodium carbonate (anh) 28.2 g
Sodium thicyanate 1.38g
Sodium bromide (anh) 1.3 g
Potassium iodide 13 mg
Water to make 1 l
pH at 25C = 9.93; density at 25C = 1.075
Develop camera film 3minutes and 10 seconds at 37.8C.
Develop print film 2 minutes and 6 seconds at 37.8C

Sodium hexametaphosphate can be substituted for the Quadrafos, or it can be omitted if you use distilled or deionized water.

Kodak E-6 first dev is cheap, it makes 10L worth of replenisher, you'll need starter to go with it.

I tried this a about 2 years ago and got ok results. The film was old, expired and have been meaning to retry using fresh film. Attached is a sample but I will have to search out the original as I seem to remember it was a bit dark and had an reddish tint. At the time I discovered a forum discussion on Flickr where folk had been using Fuji Papitol, only available in Japan, as first developer and then also using a modified C41 or ECN2 colour developer. Can't recall the exact Flickr reference , some other first developers were also mentioned but I think people rely on scans to get the best results so not directly comparable.