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

koraks said:

It is correct that the base on the 135 version is tinted. Some people may find this to be an issue. Some won't. It's not a particularly dark base, or strongly tinted.

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P C Headland said:

I've not found too much difference in base between Fomapan 100 and the Ilford films.

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Perhaps they have changed the base. Last time i used Fomapan 100 was long ago and I recall the base being not too clear.

Raghu Kuvempunagar said:

All films can be reversed and some give better results than other. However, some films couldn't be run through the vastly famous Dr5 process and hence might have wrongly earned the reputation of being unsuitable for reversal.

From https://www.dr5.com/blackandwhiteslide/filmreviewdev1.html

The following below films are not recommended or CANNOT be run through the dr5-process:
FOMAPAN-100 & 400 • ALL SHANGHI • FUJI-ACROS100 • COPEX/ADOX-20
APX-400 & 25 • ALL C41-XP2

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Yes, I was following DR5's advice when I wrote that Fomapan 100 is "said" to be not good for reversal.

koraks said:

I bet @Ivo Stunga has tried reversal processing F100. He's put a heck of a lot more time into this than I ever have.

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Indeed I have and I like the old-school feel of this film. I like it even better than R 100 - reversed both in Foma kit or PQ Universal/Ilford.


I find the density of the base a non-issue.
If you project - sure, the slides are a tad darker (base acts as a weak ND filter), but that's almost imperceivable if you don't have a clear base slide next to it to compare to. If you scan it - no problems whatsoever with well exposed and developed slides. I suggest to ignore the base density and go for film properties instead. More fun, more options. Currently I have HP5+ @1600 in my camera...

Up to this point I only had trouble reversing unknown age mystery soviet tech film with a green coating. Everything goes and at EI you want - no strange "shoot this film at EI X to be compatible with our services" BS.

You can even reverse C-41 and E-6 films if you want to do so.

flavio81 said:

Yes, I was following DR5's advice when I wrote that Fomapan 100 is "said" to be not good for reversal.

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I see; it's apparently something to do with their proprietary process. I wonder what that might be. In any case, the film can be reversed per se, but apparently there can be specific issues in certain setups.

I'd hazard a guess that DR5 tried to approach BW Reversal as C-41 and E-6 processing - just one soup, one routine, one temperature - thus the awkwardly forced EI to be compatible with this approach. If it doesn't work, film is announced as "unsuitable" and that's all. And people being people - blindly reiterate the statement without challenging it, without doing any testing on their own.

With BW negative approach (tailoring dev strength/hypo number/time to each film) you can reverse any film under the sun today.

Yes, you may very well be right.

Ivo Stunga said:

I'd hazard a guess that DR5 tried to approach BW Reversal as C-41 and E-6 processing - just one soup, one routine, one temperature - thus the awkwardly forced EI to be compatible with this approach.

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For a commercial lab dealing with substantial volumes of film, running a customised process for every film and EI combination wouldn't be very pragmatic. On the other hand, running a process with just one soup-routine-temperature for all films and be able to get excellent results seems even less practical. Even the supposedly well-researched Adox Scala kit hasn't been able to achieve that.

koraks said:

I see; it's apparently something to do with their proprietary process. I wonder what that might be. In any case, the film can be reversed per se, but apparently there can be specific issues in certain setups.

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It could be that some films (rejected by Dr5), though can be reversed, don't give high quality results no matter what process is used. Hobbyists might not care about DMin and DMax of their slides, but Dr5 does.

Raghu Kuvempunagar said:

Hobbyists might not care about DMin and DMax of their slides, but Dr5 does.

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Depends on the hobbyist. I can easily outperform DR5's botched effort with Ilford/PQ Universal and to my brain this seems like an attempt at a scam - let's "prove" that other BW reversal methods doesn't work so you're forced to use my services... Just a business move. And I'm nothing but an amateur - they were the supposed pros!

And if that attempt at Ilford Reversal was honest and thorough - then I question the capabilities and professionalism of DR-5. Twist this as you wish - looks ugly from all angles.

Ivo Stunga said:

Depends on the hobbyist. I can easily outperform DR5's botched effort with Ilford/PQ Universal and to my brain this seems like an attempt at a scam - let's "prove" that other BW reversal methods doesn't work so you're forced to use my services... Just a business move. And I'm nothing but an amateur - they were the supposed pros!

And if that attempt at Ilford Reversal was honest and thorough - then I question the capabilities and professionalism of DR-5. Twist this as you wish - looks ugly from all angles.

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There’s been plenty of discussion about Wood’s professionalism or lack thereof but there’s no questioning the results of his process. His developer #2 is what made me love B&W reversal. I shot TXP 4x5, PanF+ 35mm, and ORT25 35mm with his recommended exposure info and got back stunning results without any testing, tweaking, or fuss. That’s exactly what you want from a retail lab. I spent a decade in both retail and specialty photo labs and I’m amazed at what he was able to do with a completely custom process. He recommended something like 20 different films in his hey day. All of them had to be tested. He also gave pushing and pulling instructions for all of the films.



So yeah, Fomapan 100 wasn’t compatible with his process but that doesn’t mean it can‘t give results you like if you’re willing to do the tests. I wonder how much the process has to be tweaked or changed when you want to shoot another film. The first developer times would obviously need to change. Would a completely different developer be needed? What about bleaching times? I had always heard that dichromate bleaches were as reliable as they come. Not sure how the hydrogen peroxide bleaches fare from film to film.

The changes to accommodate a 'new' film would be mostly/only in the first developer. All the rest could be standardized assuming sufficiently effective approaches are used for bleach, fog and redevelop. Part of the fine-tuning that happens on these steps IMO has to do with attempts to make things work under marginal conditions. In those cases, you may end up with a bleach that only just gets the job done on one film, but fails on another film if the emulsion happens to be a little harder etc.
On the first developer, I'd expect that the only parameters you really need to adjust are (1) the amount of solvent added to it and (2) the development time or temperature.

koraks said:

On the first developer, I'd expect that the only parameters you really need to adjust are (1) the amount of solvent added to it and (2) the development time or temperature.

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This.

And to avoid emulsion damage I use diluted Permanganate bleach (1A+1B+1H2O) - this bleaches film to completion and avoids damage. And yes - some films tend to need more bleaching, some less, but all are good at about 5-6 minutes with constant agitation.

Underbleach is easy to eliminate - just inspect the film for uniformity. If there are dark spots remaining, bleach some more and upon completion you have a bleach time for a particular film. Easy to do unlike finding the correct amount of silver solvent in 1st developer and/or adjust developer concentration to control contrast, because you must finish the 1h long processing and wait for the film to dry to evaluate this. Not hard, but very time-consuming and requires surplus of patience and will to iterate over and over again.

I suspect the reason for DR5 being complicated is also the reason it was able to achieve such amazing dmax. Between photo engineer’s cryptic comments about steps being in a different order than normal and David Wood’s proclamation that his process resulted in “pure chrome” I think he used a dichromate intensification/redeveloper step at the end. Adding an extra step will always add more complications of course. Has anyone tried dichromate intensification with their B&W reversal? I would think overexposed and/or low contrast rejects would be ideal test subjects.

isaac7 said:

Between photo engineer’s cryptic comments about steps being in a different order than normal

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Could you please point me to PE's comments? I remember PE saying that Dr5 process uses unique chemistry but I'm not aware of steps being in a different order than normal.

isaac7 said:

David Wood’s proclamation that his process resulted in “pure chrome” I think he used a dichromate intensification/redeveloper step at the end. Adding an extra step will always add more complications of course.

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Chrome also means slides/transparency and need not necessarily imply chromium intensification. Pure chrome could possibly mean a slide with only silver and no dyes.

Raghu Kuvempunagar said:

Chrome also means slides/transparency and need not necessarily imply chromium intensification. Pure chrome could possibly mean a slide with only silver and no dyes.

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Which is like any BW film out there, except a couple of C-41 chromogenic BW films out there. Reverse it and it's made up of silver, thus it just doesn't make any sense.

isaac7 said:

I think he used a dichromate intensification/redeveloper step at the end.

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That's an interesting thought. Technically it's definitely feasible. I use chromium intensification all the time on negatives for carbon printing; it'll work just the same on positives. One reason why I think it's an interesting approach is that it perhaps allows for initial development to be fairly flat, with the intensification step boosting overall contrast. This might make the process more robust/consistent across different types of film.

Ivo Stunga said:

Reverse it and it's made up of silver, thus it just doesn't make any sense.

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It makes sense, at least to me, in the context of the discussion - high DMax and possible use of intensification to achieve that. Chromium intensification doesn't produce pure silver slides as some of the density added by it is due to the addition of a chromium compound. Nor does dye-based intensification. Dr5 process is somehow able to produce slides with high DMax with silver alone which is quite remarkable. Klaus Wehner's process also achieves high DMax for some films but the details of his process are unknown and hence we don't know if his slides are "pure chrome".

Raghu Kuvempunagar said:

Dr5 process is somehow able to produce slides with high DMax with silver alone which is quite remarkable.

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DR5 has been discussed several times; I think it also came up recently in which someone voiced the hypothesis that sepia toning/fogging is/was used in the warm-toned slides. This would of course yield a slide in which the image density does not consist purely of silver.

koraks said:

sepia toning/fogging is/was used in the warm-toned slides. This would of course yield a slide in which the image density does not consist purely of silver.

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Dr5 offered two types of development: DEV-1-NEUTRAL BW-SLIDES and DEV-2-sepia. It's not the case that only the second produced high DMax.

Raghu Kuvempunagar said:

Could you please point me to PE's comments? I remember PE saying that Dr5 process uses unique chemistry but I'm not aware of steps being in a different order than normal.

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I will search for them later tonight. I could be misremembering the comment. It could have been more like the process was more involved and/or out of the ordinary.

As far as a different order goes, there is a reversal process where you follow the first developer with a fogging developer then rehalogenating bleach, then fix. Or if we imagine the dichromate intensification step it would be 1st developer, bleach, fog, second developer, dichromate bleach, third developer. Would there be a way to use a dichromate intensification step in that first process since dichromate intensification uses a rehalogenating dichromate based bleach? All speculation on my part of course. Maybe I should start a new topic about this…

Raghu Kuvempunagar said:

It's not the case that only the second produced high DMax.

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I understand, but since the second leaves an image consisting of more than metallic silver, perhaps this also applied to the normal service.

isaac7 said:

there is a reversal process where you follow the first developer with a fogging developer then rehalogenating bleach, then fix

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This can be done if the fogging developer leaves an image that's unaffected by the bleach that comes after it. In a sepia process this can be the case, with the sepia image consisting of unremovable silver sulfide.

isaac7 said:

Would there be a way to use a dichromate intensification step in that first process since dichromate intensification uses a rehalogenating dichromate based bleach?

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I don't think so. The reason is that after the dichromate bleach, fogging of the resulting silver halide needs to take place to render it developable. If the non-image silver halides would still be present at that stage, they would be fogged along with the one that need to form the image later on, obliterating the image.

Raghu Kuvempunagar said:

Could you please point me to PE's comments? I remember PE saying that Dr5 process uses unique chemistry but I'm not aware of steps being in a different order than normal.

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I went in a search here and could only find a second hand report of his comment which is probably what I remembered.
Post in thread 'DR5 getting published?'
https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/dr5-getting-published.178237/post-2393541

Looking through a bunch of posts here about DR5 it doesn’t look like he was using a dichromate intensifier. There are all the regular steps and a mystery one at the end.

Post in thread 'Wanting to try reversal processing but also not die'
https://www.photrio.com/forum/threa...ocessing-but-also-not-die.174178/post-2268858

Other tidbits I ran across include that he did alter the first developer time depending on the film. No “ham fisted” one time for everything. The same chemicals were used every time which is probably why there were some films that just didn’t work well. He also did not use any silver reduction in the first developer. The warm tone developer (he caller number 2) was apparently run at 60(!) degrees Celsius.

Lots of speculation about the process of course. The most credible I think was that he used a really strong fogging developer that built up density and then was able to clear the highlights afterwards.

He used and swore by dichromate bleach.

It was mentioned several times that his process depended on and required specialized lab equipment. Indeed, he had quite a sophisticated processor. But in the years after he closed his lab he has done limited runs with his Jobo processor. He said that the #2 developer was not able to be done though. That makes me think that the custom equipment was only necessary for volume processing and/or for running the #2 developer. How hot can Jobo reliably get?

In any case he had been doing commercial B&W reversal processing for 15 or so years after lots and lots of testing. He was able to process and get great results from a large number of films. Fomapan 100 didn’t work in his process but HP5+ was a popular film for it despite Ilford saying it wasn’t usable in their process. Different processes work differently, who would have guessed?

isaac7 said:

The same chemicals were used every time which is probably why there were some films that just didn’t work well.

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Just like Ilford reversal where you can literally reverse any film by adjusting silver solvent, time and agitation frequency (and developer concentration, if needed) to land contrast you need, making it a very flexible process.

HP5+ included which tends to lend a very flat result in need of boosting contrast, which can be done by deploying constant agitation and increasing developer concentration. Delta 3200 behaves similarly too.

Push/Pull included - any film.
Does this produce best slides out there - unknown to me, but I see no problems with "gradation" and densities.


Sadly he will probably take his knowledge to the grave, because reasons.



Is there a way to use the densitomer in my scanner software to have an understanding what numbers I'm getting with Ilford? Silverfast has one, but I haven't used/don't understand it.

I like the idea of a member organized...thing. Not sure if I'd be very stimulated by shooting a white board and doing densitometer measurements. But the idea of getting our hands dirty as a group on some reversal processing - that sounds quite nice. I'd consider joining in on the fun!

What would we like to experience/learn/demonstrate/see? To answer that one for me - I'd simply enjoy seeing what people make with the technique. It might be putting the cart before the horse a bit, but perhaps there's a nice challenge or theme to apply it to? How about "contrast"? Or something like "geometry"?