I want some advice regarding B&W slide processing. I'm gonna be developing tmax 100 into slides; I was thinking about using a paper developer as a second developer to increase the contrast. But how should I rate the film speed, & how long sould I bleach..,any other advice/recommendation?

-- ahmad (xosni@netscape.net), July 21, 2000

Answers

Greetings,

I can't comment on the use of paper developers for film, but T-max is a negative film and slide implies a positive. Agfa makes a B&W positive (slide) film called Scala, though I don't think you can procees it yourself.

Regards,

-- Pete Caluori (pcaluori@hotmail.com), July 24, 2000.

Ahmad, the contrast of the slide is controlled by the first developer. In the second developer, all of the remaining silver after the first developer and bleach is fogged and developed. The only thing that you can control in the second developer is tone. If you want to increase contrast of the slides, mess around with the first developer.

As far as rating, you have to experiment. When working out a new film I use a step tablet for the initial work on the first developer so I dont have to worry about specifically what speed it is. It will fall somewhere on my step tablet range. Then, when I know a bit more about how the film is behaving and have the first developer giving me the contrast that I am after, I go shoot a series of exposures bracketting around where I calculated the EI to be based on the step tablet work. I do these bracketts in 1/3 stop increments. That tells me how the film behaves with real world scenes.

As far as bleaching, you want it to go to completion. I use a potasium dichromate bleach and bleach for three minutes followed by a two minute clear in a sodium sulfite clear bath.

I cant help you too much on reversal processing of TMX. I tried working with it a couple of years ago and really disliked the results I was getting so I abandoned it and moved onto different films. You may have better luck with it (or may like different characteristics in a black and white transparency) so the best advise I can give you is to charge ahead and experiment. After all the most you have to lose is a few bucks worth of film and a little bit of time. Good luck.

-- Fritz M. Brown (brownf@idhw.state.id.us), July 25, 2000.

well I tried it & the results came out bad but not realy disappointing.I first developed it in a film developer (ilford id-11, 1:3),reexposed, bleached for 12min, & 2nd developed it in the same developer. The results came out a very dense positive. I noticed that some shouts are less dense,better, than the others; these were the underexposed shots.So next time I'm gonna overrate the film upto 6 stops & try again. I'm also considering droping the idea of reversal processin for just solarizing an extremely under exposed negative to get a positive. I'll kee you informed.

-- ahmad hosni (xosni@netscape.net), July 26, 2000.

may i suggest;

http://www.dr5.net

regards

-- drwood (drwood@dr5.net), October 14, 2000.

I have used this technique described in "Darkroom & Creative Camera Techniques", Jul/Aug 1993 with great success. Dupe your b&w negs on to Kodalith and develop in a fine grain full- tone developer like D76 or ID11 for 5 minutes using full agitation. Bracketing in 1/2 stops is required to first get a stating point and later - the exact density. When you later mount and project the slides - only one will be perfect. This way you can shoot normally and turn your favorite images into brilliant slides with minimal grain.

-- John R. Fowler (jfowler@cpci.ca), December 02, 2000.

May I suggest Polaroid 's PolaPan 125 iso and PolaGraph 400 iso ? Of course you need the small manual machine (which is affordable...) and some Anti-Newton slide holders... but if you have accurate measures and if you allow yourself a nice little bracketing ( 1/3 stop is ok...) it make some very koool things !!

Try it someday !

Regards,

Bruce

-- Bruce Barelly (barelly@club-internet.fr), April 18, 2001.

I've done some B&W reversal processing...one thing I've learned...if you are going to develop it yourself....the kodak "system cleaner" has sulfuric acid & potassium/sodium dichromate in the same ratio and concentration as I've seen in recipes for reversal bleach

I forget the URL...but Ilford had a page explaining how to reverse it's films...

-- rogerrrrr (rogerartsax@aol.com), September 03, 2001.