Saturday, February 4, 2012

It is only a question of persistence

As already told in the last posts, I am using now a homemade bleacher and fixer. According to my feeling, the bleach bath was too strong and was bleaching the color or a part of it. So, I decided to dilute it even more, adding one more equal part of water. So, considering the formula:

9,5 g Potassium dichromate
12 ml Sulfuric acid concentrate
Water to make 1 liter

This ammount was first diluted 1:1 (plus 1 liter water) and then again (plus 2 liters water), we end with 4 liter bleach solution, or, if you want to make just 1 liter, divide all quantities by 4:

2,4 g Potassium dichromate
3 ml Sulfuric acid concentrate
Water to make 1 liter

It is a very cheap formula but worked, and the colors are now somehow better. But maybe the developer was exhausted. I have used the same 500 ml bath developer for several experiences, since I decided to establish the developer formula as the final one by now, see recipe page.

The duration of the bleach bath, after trying with some small pieces of film, was fixed at 2 minutes, with permanent agitation.

This is without any digital reatment
The same photo after  'contrast strech'  and 'white balance' with GIMP

The same photo after a little more saturation and less luminosity

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