Using ancient Kodak C-22 kit

[wblynch]

Well, why do you think that C-22 ran at 75F and had at least one hardener step?

PE

See, there you go, presuming I think !!

Honestly though, I couldn't find anything on the WWW about C-22 and had no idea about the 75F till just now. It was a throwaway roll and I just wanted to see what would happen. (obvously nothing happened)

 

[John Shriver]

So I mixed my vintage C-22 kit today. I have serious concerns about the bleach, which is central to the rehalogenation process I'm going to do.

Part B of the bleach, which is the large pouch containing (at least) potassium ferricyanide and potassium bromide. It had a hole in it's foil pouch. Only about half of the very caked powder was the proper bright red-orange, the rest was dark blue-green. The mixed C-22 bleach solution is a deep lime green. Does it sound like this bleach is dead or alive?

I suppose I could just throw a scrap of processed B&W film in it, and see that it bleaches it. If it's only half-strength, I can bleach twice as long, just to get the job done.

The CD3 (developer part A) was just fine, a light tan powder, not clumped at all. So I won't need to take Wilde Hyde up on his generous offer of CD3.

Part B of the hardener was only about half liquid, the rest was white crystals. But it certainly smelled of Formaldehyde, so I think it is somewhat alive. Also, I just fixed the film I'm going to reprocess in Kodafix to harden it, since it was originally fixed with non-hardening Ilford fix. So I think the emulsion is plenty hard. (I also washed the film very vigorously for 30 minutes.)

 

[Photo Engineer]

The bleach is dead! It should be approximately the color of orange juice, not green.

Any rehal ferri bleach should work just fine though.

Formalin polymerizes with time and forms a solid. It may be ok but may have lost a lot of its strength. If it dissolves properly in the full amount of water, things should go well.

Do not try to use any C-41 chemistry except perhaps the fix and the old style stabilizer. Those should work with C22 films and processes.

PE

 

[John Shriver]

Wow, that was a quick response. Thanks!

Quite sad to see it's dead. Now I need to get some ferricyanide bleach before the developer dies in two weeks. Looks like one easy way is to buy Photographer's Formulary Reducer IV, which is just Potassium ferricyanide and Potassium bromide. Just ordered that, along with your DVD set.

I'll set the little formalin bottle inside a tank of hardener, and see if the solids dissolve.

What's proper disposal technique for the dead bleach? I know it's noxious stuff. Something I should buffer it with? Or just let it evaporate back down to solids and send it off as solid waste? Save it for the next local hazardous waste collection?

 

[John Shriver]

OK, I scraped all the polymerized bits out of the tiny bottle, and rinsed it out. They all dissolved once I heated the mixture a bit. (Just put the lid on the Nikor Q25 tank I was using as a mixing bowl and held it under running hot water. I was using a lifting rod as a stirrer.)

Now I just wait for UPS to deliver my Formulary order.

I presume the absence of disodium phosphate (listed in the BJP formula for the hardener) won't have any bad effects on the C-22 process.

I'll see if I can use up the kit cross processing "exceedingly expired" E-3 or E-4 Ektachrome film, my daughter is a big fan of cross-processing.

Of course, I can also hope that the second set of developer packs are OK. That will give the kit a second wind.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Good luck.

To dispose of Ferricyanide, add Sodium Sulfite solution. Do this slowly and with stirring. This can then be dumped gradually down most municipal drains in the US without harm if you run lots of water with it. It has rather low toxicity, but I would make sure that it is dumped very dilute. It is by no means like Dichromate.

I'm not sure what you mean by Disodium Phosphate above, but alkali is usually best for causing hardening to take place in this type of hardener. I don't think I have the formula here, but I can take a look.

PE

 

[Curt]

My first color photograph was made from a negative with the C22 process, which I bought from Freestyle, mail order color kits. It's one of my favorite prints. I made the enlargement too.

A question I have for Ron is what is the film like after development. It seems to me that one roll had a very delicate emulsion but dried very nicely, easy to touch at that point.

This sure does bring back memories. Sigh....

 

[Photo Engineer]

In that day and age, Kodak probably used Formalin and Mucochloric acid to harden the film. Even so, it was very soft and mushy when it came out of the process. After drying it was very hard and durable. I never coated a C-22 product as C-41 was "the thing" when I came to work there. It was the major color negative product as was the new family of hardeners.

PE

 

[John Shriver]

OK, it has been done. I did get color negatives, for "small values" of color negatives. Here's a portrait of me from about 1968 on Kodacolor-X in an Imperial Satellite 127 camera, with a very tortuous C-22 color processing path.



I did use some "color correction" in Picture Window Pro to make the fallen leaves more yellow. But I certainly was wearing a red shirt.

The negatives are quite thin. Of course, they were originally underexposed, I shot them on the "B&W" aperture setting, which is why I thought I shouldn't get them processed way back when. I didn't realize it was just two-thirds of a stop of underexposure.

The negatives also have a strong overall purple cast. Of course, the dyes have had a lot of time to go bad, and been abused in many ways. The C-22 developer, being a week old, was probably not at it's best, there were beads of (I presume) benzyl alcohol that wanted to stay on the glass inside the bottle. But I was quite careful on temperature control of the C-22 developer, kept it within half a degree of 75F for all 14 minutes.

Looking at histograms as I scan the pictures, it's obvious that the yellow dye in the negatives is just about non-existent. Cyan dye is strong, and there's a decent showing of magenta.

All-in-all, it's really quite amazing to get anything in color after 44+ years of abuse.