Fomapan R100 B/W

[Thomas Larang]

Hi everyone! I posted this at film stock but I thought I give this section a shot as well.

 

Im in desperate need of help here. I'm trying to develop this stock - Fomapan R100 - with it's own developing kit designed especially for this.

 

I do all of the steps - 1st developing - Bleaching - Clearing bath in darkness, and when I turn on the lights I can clearly see the things I filmed with my super-8. I do the re-exposure step, BUT, when I do the 2nd developing step, all of it goes black, everything that I filmed disappears into total darkness.

 

What am I doing wrong? Plz help me if you can. I have developed Tri-x before and it worked fine every time. But I have only had slight success with Fomapan, with it's own kit.

 

/Thomas

[Martin Baumgarten]

Hi Thomas Larang. When you turned on the lights to re-expose the film after the Clearing Bath, how did the film appear? Was it a very light whitish tan color, like cream, and with faint nearly clear slightly brown tinged images? If not, and the images were black negative ones, the film did not bleach correctly. So what happened after re-developing the positive image, you ended up with both neg & pos images, thus total black, nothing. Always test the Bleach first using some scrap film to make sure it's working correctly. You can also turn the lights on after the film has been in the Bleach for at least one minute, and then keep it in the bleach until all the black metallic silver negative image has bleached out to a creamy white tan color. Make sure you keep agitating the film at proper intervals.

 

I prefer to rinse/wash the film between steps, especially after the Bleach, to remove all traces of it.....this will also help preserve the Clearing Bath solution, and generally will help extend the life of all solutions and avoid contamination which just weakens the working strength of the chemicals.

 

So to test that Bleach, take a piece of the film you have already processed, if you still have it....and place it in the Bleach and agitate and hopefully within a minute or two, the black silver will bleach away to a nearly clear film base. If not, the Bleach is not working for some reason, usually due to incorrect mixing, or the components of it are not strong enough. I prefer to use the standard B&W Reveral Formulas from KODAK, which work fine with Fomapan R-100. However, since you already have the chemistry, if the Bleach tests that it's no good, you can substitute the KODAK formula or another similar B&W Reversal Bleach and use that.

Without more information, this is the best that I can offer you. Good luck.

 

Kind regards, Martin Baumgarten

[kevin jackman]

where do you get this stuff in the first place?

[Thomas Larang]

Thanks Martin for your reple, and you are absolutely right, it turned out that the bleach had degraded somehow, making it unable to remove the anti-halation layer.

 

Kevin: Fomapan R100 can be bought from wittner-cinetec as meterware to load your own reloadable super 8 cartridges with. Apart from when I don't screw up the processing, the film gives me some really nice images.

[kevin jackman]

bummer as i find their stuff to be costly compared to getting stuff in north america. there used to be people here that sold the stuff. now if only my super8 cam took the 200ft carts.