What did I do wrong with this B&W reversal?

[Unbuiltbread]

Film was Rollei Retro 400
Process:
1. D76 1+1 for 35 mins
2. 250mL 3% hydrogen peroxide + 15mL White vinegar bleach for 7 minutes
3. Reexposure using a strong LED flashlight. Probably 3 passes over the length of film that took 30-45 seconds each. Holding the flashlight an inch or so away from the film.
4. D76 1+1 for 18 minutes (new chemistry).

Ignoring the minor uneven developing issues why did the positives come out so god damn dark? I feel like I over exposed the image on the reexposure after the bleaching. Maybe I should’ve held the flashlight further away and exposed it for less time. I got worried since so many people I’ve seen do this had problems with UNDER exposing during this step.

I developed for so long to ensure any exposed silver got developed, and then during the second development I followed the standard time for Rollei retro 400s.

Next time around I want to shoot the film at 75-100 ISO, develop like it was shot at 200ISO, and give it less light exposure but I want to make sure that is what I did wrong

 

[dokko]

looks to me that the main issues is incomplete bleach (very dark image despite long fist development plus solarisation).
I never used a hydrogen peroxide/vinegar bleach, I suspect it's not a vry reliable way of bleaching for reversal.

the other things hat look possibly problematic to me is using D-76 1+1 will give low contrast slides on normal film, the first developer time looks very long to me, and a flashlight on short distance seems more prone to unevenness than a larger light from further distance.

 

[koraks]

looks to me that the main issues is incomplete bleach (very dark image despite long fist development plus solarisation).
I never used a hydrogen peroxide/vinegar bleach, I suspect it's not a vry reliable way of bleaching for reversal.

Bingo.
Try a regular B&W bleach using permanganage or dichromate.

 

[P C Headland]

I thought LEDs were not a good light source (something to do with the spectral output?)

The peroxide bleach has worked fine when I've used it.

I tried Rollei Retro 400s (135) at EI200:
1. Develop in Rodinal 1+25 @23c for 15 minutes
2. Rinse / soak 10 minutes at 25c
3. Bleach @30c for 15 minutes
4. Re-expose 2-3 minutes
5. Re-develop in Rodinal 1+25 15 minutes
6. Rinse

 

[dokko]

I thought LEDs were not a good light source (something to do with the spectral output?)

not sure where this claim started, but I used LED film lights for re-exposure many times and never had problems.
thinking of it this way:
If LEDs wouldn't work properly for re-exposure, they wouldn't work proprly for the first camera exposure to start with, yet we all took plenty of photographs under LED lighting.

The peroxide bleach has worked fine when I've used it.

As said I have no experience with that bleach, but in the case above if it worked fine, then it would have bleached away the silver from the first exposure, thus there is no way the negative could be as dense (unless it was massively underexposed). bleach failure is pretty much the only explanation for the strange greenish color cast and and strange solarisation though.

getting good reversal results is challenging enough with a good bleach, so why use something experimental? Dichromate is pretty fool proof but has serious health and environment risks. So permanganate is the next best thing.

 

[Raghu Kuvempunagar]

As others have advised, use a proven bleach like Dichromate/Permanganate and a stronger first developer. Reversal processing is unfortunately a long and laborious process and there is no need to make it more painful by using suboptimal choices for bleach and first developer. If D-76 is all you have currently with you, you can make it more active by adding some Sodium Carbonate to it. If you search this forum for Hans F. Dietrich you will find an adaptation of D-76 for reversal.

 

[thinkbrown]

If you're averse to using dichromate/permanganate, there's an alternate bleach that's been published on photo that's peroxide/citric acid/edta based that's supposed to perform much better: https://www.photrio.com/forum/resou...ach-—-hydrogen-peroxide-edta-citric-acid.448/

 

[Raghu Kuvempunagar]

If you're averse to using dichromate/permanganate, there's an alternate bleach

Copper Sulphate bleach works well on a variety of films and merits consideration though it adds additional steps to the process.

Bleach:

Water: 750ml​

Copper Sulphate: 50g​

Sodium Chloride: 50g​

Sodium Bisulphate: 35g​

Water to make: 1000ml​

 

[P C Headland]

not sure where this claim started, but I used LED film lights for re-exposure many times and never had problems.
thinking of it this way:
If LEDs wouldn't work properly for re-exposure, they wouldn't work proprly for the first camera exposure to start with, yet we all took plenty of photographs under LED lighting.

Makes perfect sense!

As said I have no experience with that bleach, but in the case above if it worked fine, then it would have bleached away the silver from the first exposure, thus there is no way the negative could be as dense (unless it was massively underexposed). bleach failure is pretty much the only explanation for the strange greenish color cast and and strange solarisation though.

getting good reversal results is challenging enough with a good bleach, so why use something experimental? Dichromate is pretty fool proof but has serious health and environment risks. So permanganate is the next best thing.

In my case, I used the peroxide/vinegar bleach as that is what I could easily obtain, and it worked well for me. Depending on where you live, not all chemicals (or commercial products) are easy to obtain, so you work with what you've got.

Noted above the stronger developer - I used 1+20 for Rodinal and 1+30 for PC-TEA. I've also read a number of articles where people have recommended using paper developers, though I've not tried this.

 

[isaac7]

What temperature was the bleach? One of those hydrogen peroxide bleaches need to be used at a higher temperature, 40c I think.