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

[Ivo Stunga]

Oh, ok - my bad then and thanks for clarification!

 

[Ivo Stunga]

And yes - already processed slide dumped in Kala Namak doesn't tone like at all - needs something strong like hot double espresso, tea or whiskey - E-6 slides in my previous link were toned that way.

 

[isaac7]

And yes - already processed slide dumped in Kala Namak doesn't tone like at all - needs something strong like hot double espresso, tea or whiskey - E-6 slides in my previous link were toned that way.

I have been intrigued by the idea of bleaching a finished B&W slide with a rehalogenating dichromate bleach and then redeveloping with a sepia toner. @koraks uses the process to increase density and contrast with his negatives but not with a sepia toner. I have never heard of anyone doing it positives but it would seem like an obvious thing to try if dmax and contrast are the weak points of your positives.

 

[isaac7]

After over 30 tries and a lot of pain and suffering trying to figure out reversal processing, I found out that the first developer has to very aggressive with a silver solvent added, and I had to give up on the light exposure step and use a fogging developer instead (Kodak FD-72). The light exposure step turned out to be the thing that was causing inconsistent results and a lot of confusion. I found that I was getting uneven exposure across the whole roll. Some of the frames would appear to be properly exposed with a normal strength developer. Once I tried a fogging developer all the shots became much darker, and I had to make the fist developer a lot stronger. I wonder how people have success with the light exposure step? I certainly failed there.

I'm still not totally sure if I have it dialed in yet, but for normally exposed FP4+, I found that 1:5 Rodinal with 1 gram Sodium Thiocyanate per liter with 11 minutes of rotary processing at 20C seemed to be approaching correct. I set this aside a few years ago, but I plan to get back to it, and compare what I have to Ilford's recommended process. I was using Dichromate bleach, and the amount of chromium rinse water it produced that I had to haul off to the dump got to be too annoying. I might try a different bleach process once I can convince myself I got everything else right.

Wood also preferred using a fogging developer. In his test of the Ilford process that @Ivo Stunga hates so much, there was a lot of unevenness. That could very well have been from inconsistent light exposure. Did he do it on purpose, was lazy, or just did it once and didn’t try to optimize? Who knows. He has mentioned online that fogging developers give more consistent results. I imagine that is even more important when you are running lots of film through the process. It would be a pain to incorporate a light re-exposure step with a dip and dunk processor.

While Wood didn’t use any silver solvents in his first developer it looks like D-11 has a lot of sulfates (sulfites?) in it which could be doing the same thing. Man, I wish I could actually be doing this stuff instead of just theorizing about it. Sigh.