RO9 special/studional six months from dulition.

Fomapan 200 test negatives.

I'm now six months down the line with this litre of RO9s/Studional and nine completed developments to date. With it now being three months on from it's suggested 'best before' time I started this processing session with the last seven frames from my out of date Fomapan 200, to check that the developer was still viable.

 The Fomapan was in the developer for eight minutes this included the 20% compensation for developers age. For me anyway this developer was now in completely unknown territory and the 20% adjustment was under review again. Although the last time I used the developer the urge to increase was very strong, I considered it again and dismissed the idea very quickly this time. Remembering what I had said last time.

Agfa APX 100 negatives

As soon as the film had been fixed I pulled it out of the developing tank to check. On first look it looked like it had not worked but on closer inspection there was a very good looking negative peering back at me. Great! Now I can get on with the others.

including the 20% and a roll of Fomapan 400 which stopped me in my tracks for a while as I had no suggested development times for it. Ah! What to do? I was processing this for someone else. Don't panic Mr Mannering. I checked through the Massive dev charts 400 ISO film times for Studional with dilutions of 1+15. It was saying that between four and eight minutes. Which is quite a leeway to pair down. I then looked at the Agfa and Rollei times for 400 ISO film to try and shrink the time difference. This helped a lot, it was suggesting five and a half minutes as an average. So me being me rounded it up to six and added 20% which worked out at a bit over seven minutes.

 I intended to develop for seven minutes and ended up doing eight I was interrupted loosing track of the time. It is possible that the mix up has made for a better developed set of negatives which may have worked in my favour this time. Which leaves a dilemma for the next roll - what time should I use?

Fomapan 400 negatives

All in all this out of date developer has proved its self to be a good performer, out of the three newly processed film the Fomapan 200 is disappointing in that the negatives are a bit thin. Some of this is to do with bad exposure and not the development. On closer inspection of this last length of film it looks as though the surface has been contaminated with sweaty finger marks, some scratches and a lot of dust marks on the negatives. Not surprising really seeing that the film has been cut into sections on three other occasions.

It turns out that the Agfa APX 100 has been over developed. I have also noted that the negatives are a bit more grainy than they should be. This could be the down side of using the RO9s outside the three month best before date.

So what now? The developer is good for another three film but I think it will be discarded for a new batch. The reason for using this developer in the first place is because of it's finer grain. If I want it coarse looking I'll use RO9.

Redeveloping the negative.

You will at some point in your developing career, come across a negative(s) that has so much contrast that no matter what you do, you cannot get a decent print. There is a method you can use to retrieve the situation by redeveloping the negative(s).

To start with you will need to make up a solution of halogenizing bleach as follows:

• 10 grams of Potassium permanganate.
• 10 grams of Potassium Bromide.
• 1 litre of cool water.
• Stir this until all is dissolved in the water.

This can be carried out in a normally lit area so you can see the change in the negative. It takes about 5-7 minutes for the black silver on the film to be converted to a yellowish precipitate. You can remove the film from the bleach when the strongest high lights have gone a pale grey and wash well in running water. Now place in a soft compensating developer. When the highlights return to a greyish yellow remove the film and place in an acid stop bath for 30 seconds. Then fix, wash and dry as you would normally. This should produce a softer easier negative to print.

It is probably better to use a farmers reducer which subtracts the density from a

processed negative.They come ready mixed, you only add the right amount of water. This process can be repeated as many times as needed to get the right density; it's not a one shot approach. Allowing you to do a test print at each stage. There are three to types:

• Kodak R-4a is best used for over exposed negatives and is easy to control. Acts on shadows first, then mid-range and then highlights. Mainly used for clearing fog from film and reducing prints.
• Kodak R-4b is best for over developed negatives; it removes equal amounts of deposited silver from the highlight and shadow areas.
• Kodak R-15 This is a super reducer, striping the highlights and not the shadows. For seriously over developed negatives and is the most difficult to control.

This is just a basic outline on the subject and will require further reading.