In the process of developing film tonite I accidently developed Sensia II in 1:50 Rodinal. Just after the 1st inversion I looked over and saw the APX sitting on the table - I had managed to swap the 2 film canisters and didn't think to look... (Ca me fait chier!) I looked at the APX 100 development times and cooked the stuff for 17 minutes then followed up with stop & fix.

Anyway, I do have some, ummm, interesting negatives. They are very dense - no clear areas whatsoever. The exposed parts are black, with the unexposed parts a dark muddy brown. Not the orange of a C-41 negative.

Now, while they are not priceless they are unique - any ideas on removing the brown which I assume is a failed masking layer? Would some of the C41 chemicals such as the bleach work? (I don't have any but I think there's some ferricyanide in the Kodak sepia kit) Should I fix longer?

Any ideas?

Cheers,

Duane

-- Duane K (dkucheran@creo.com), March 02, 2001

Answers

You should bleach (c-41 bleach will work), and then develop in c-41- don't push process- to get a high contrast, little more grainy color negative. You can redevelop it in B&W developer-after the bleach of course- but you will get a dull B&W negative anyways. If you have used a wetting agent then you have to rinse in heavily for 20 min.

-- Xosni (Xosni@gega.net), March 02, 2001.

No, no, no, no! For god's sake don't use a C-41 BLIX bath. That'll remove the entire image, and you'll just be left with blank brown film.

The orange mask is self-coloured coupler dye that gets partially destroyed in the colour developer of the C41 process. Try putting the film through C41 developer only, followed by a wash. It might reduce the density of the dye. If not, then a chemical bleach, such as very dilute hydrochloric acid, potassium metabisulphite, or sodium hypochlorite (household bleach) might work.
The aforementioned chemicals are used as colour reducers for overexposed or colour-biased slides, so they're reasonably safe for film, provided they're followed by a thorough wash.

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), March 02, 2001.

OK. Now that I've stopped panicking on your behalf, I see what Xosni was aiming at.
You could try a re-halogenising bleach bath, followed by re-development in C41.
The trouble is that most C41 kits use a combined bleach-fix bath these days, and this WILL remove the image in its entirety, as will a hypo-ferricyanide bleach.

If you can find an E-6 or C41 kit with a separate bleach only bath, then this might enable you to get some sort of colour image back. I still think it's safer to stick with the B&W negs you've got, and try to remove the brown dye.

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), March 02, 2001.

Yes I meant a separate bleach bath.E-6 bleach will do. I use tetenal, it has a sepaeate bleach bath. A black & white negative is useless, it's gonna look very dull, too soft. I believe you are gonna be happier with the color negative.

-- Xosni (xosni@gega.net), March 02, 2001.

Uhh guys, I might be way off here (and if so, just ignore me. :P ) but Senia II is Fujifilm's slide film (normal process E6). What would processing it C-41 gain? Also, would you want to use the resultant slide as a negative? I have a feeling that the slide is toast unless you want to use it in some artsy-fartsy way.

Am I out of my mind?

-- Johnny Motown (johnny.motown@att.net), March 02, 2001.

Johnny: There's no way that the film can ever make a slide, what should have been the positive half of the image is now fixed away, but the colour couplers should still be there in the emulsion. If there's any hope-in-hell of recovering a colour image, then it'll have to be a negative, and I agree with Xosni that the best bet for this is the C41 process. C41 developer *should* give an image of low enough contrast for printing.
I'm not optimistic though, and I also tend to agree with you that the colour info is toast.
Now, can somebody give me a hand down from this fence?

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), March 02, 2001.

This technique is called acceleration or maximization. I did it before, and tho I was not very happy with the results, this technique can yield very impressive vivid high contrast colors when done with a slide film but the first development is realy critical & you have to experiment alot to get the best timing & developer.

I'd like to hear the feedback

-- Xosni (Xosni@gega.net), March 02, 2001.

Thanks to all that have responded; your answers are definitely appreciated.

I had speaks with a co-worker today. He recomended that I get a silver bleach such as that used in color slide chemistry and see if I can remove the silver. I thought I might try the ferricyanide on a snip of the film. This should leave a positive image composed of the tricolor dye cloud. If this works, shall I post the results? Would anyone be interested in a most expensive & bass-ackwards way to make sepia slides?

I did try leaving a piece of the film in fixer overnight. It did seem to remove the silver and leave the dye cloud. I may try again with an image part of the film.

Cheers,

Duane

Thanx again and cheers,

Duane

-- Duane K (dkucheran@creo.com), March 02, 2001.