Fomopan R100

[MrJ]

Has anyone had any experience of processing Fomapan R100 16mm to a negative ...in a rewind tank?

Many thanks.

Mark

[Mmechanic]

When developing Fomapan R(eversal) to a negative you won’t see a thing, you’ll have a black film. Fomapan R 100 has a thin silver undercoat as anti-halo protection. That silver layer is opaque. The film base is a colourless cellulose triacetate.

Fomapan R 100 like all true reversal films needs to be reverse processed which includes bleaching after first development to render the negative image soluble, a clearing bath to dissolve it out the film, second exposure to light to make all of the remaining silver salts developable, second development for the complementary positive image, fixation, and rinse. The undercoat is bleached and dissolved together with the negative image.

Fomapan R 100 actually has an exposure index of a little more than ISO 50. The apparent gain of speed lies within the process. It’s not exactly the same emulsion as Fomapan 100 has.

Other reversal films were Agfa Scala, Agfa-Gevaert DiaDirect, and many more of happier times with amateur filmmaking. Svema, Tasma, Schleussner Adox, Kodak, Perutz, Lumière, 3M, Konica Sakura, Gevaert, Ferrania, Forte, DuPont, Bauchet, Azomureş, Orwo, even Fuji Photo Films sold black-and-white ciné stocks but they were manufactured by Oriental Photo Industrial Co., Ltd., today Cybergraphics Corporation.

[aj]

Rewind tanks are laborious and troublesome. Certainly not recommended for ciné film processing.

Fomapan R needs to have its anti-halation layer bleached out. Normally it would come out with the one-shot bleach.

The advantage when using a Fomareversal kit would be that the processing times are long and there is less difficulty maintaining times adn numbers of winds Mind that it takes some 45 minutes which would mean you would have to be winding continiously for that time

Find a Lomo for happy processing.

[MrJ]

Thanks for the replies.

Simon, can this stock be processed in a D19 / R9 reversal process as I would TriX?

Andre, as it is a reversal process I certainly will use a LomoTank. I am a big fan of the rewind tank though but only for neg processing (so far)...I processed 6,000ft of Double X in it last year for a film and preparing to do 20,000ft + later this year ...sucker for punishment!

Thanks again.

Mark

[Mmechanic]

Alright, friends, to tell a little about the practice at my black-and-white film lab (1999 to 2008)—

Our home developer was called ALMA-345, that is a simple five-components formula, a Phenidone-hydroquinone recipe. At first it was -645, the 6 for 60 g of sulphite per litre, but by the time I reduced that amount to 30 g. Sodium sulphite eats on the silver salts in general and right during development, it’s one of the many improper fine-grain formulae. Proper fine-grain developers use a different reducing agent than hydroquinone.

Any black-and-white film can be developed by any so-called negative developer. There is an increasing number of reducing agents in use, from Caffenol over vitamin C to Peenol and so on. The reducing agent makes the silver atoms form clusters with chemical development. With physical development things look quite different again but that is only rarely employed.

When we speak about Kodak D-19 we have a Metol-hydroquinone formula. Metol being poisonous has been largely replaced by less toxic Phenidone at commercial labs. D-19, D-27, D-76 are all MH formulae, Ilford ID-11 is identical with D-76. R09, Rodinal, Fomadon R9, are all more or less the same soup based on Agfa’s 1891 para-aminophenol. That is a proper fine-grain recipe with its special edge effect. The most famous fine-grain formulae have their roots in Seyewetz’ para-phenilene-diamine that the Lumière bought themselves in.

Some developing substances are expensive or perishable. Bulk processing thus has been a cheap thing ever since. Weighing out all parameters I’d recommend a vivid and cheap developer for home processing. Once fully at home with manual processing of films in spiral reels one can do experiments of various nature. D-19 has the M-H ratio of 1:9, hence the designation. It might be a tad too contrasty for my taste, so a ratio of 1:5 would suit me better. Anyway, D-19 is fine, R09 diluted 1 to 30 is fine. Results also depend on bath volume, agitation, temperature, and the quality of bleaching-clearing-second exposure-blackening-fixing.

Please neutralise your baths and dispose of them responsibly.

[freddenacka]

I would like to try this method.
http://www.filmlabs.org/docs/citric-hyd ... bleach.pdf

[MrJ]

Many thanks for the response Simon...very informative.

So just to be clear, I could use a caffenol developer as 1st and 2nd developers with a R9 bleach?

Thanks

Mark

[Mmechanic]

Of course, go ahead, make your experiences.

[studiocarter2]

If the film were exposed normally, loaded onto a Lomo spiral, bleached, cleared, developed, and fixed, I think a negative would result with the anti halo layer removed (as in the first bleach).

[nikonr10]

If the film were exposed normally, loaded onto a Lomo spiral, bleached, cleared, developed, and fixed, I think a negative would result with the anti halo layer removed (as in the first bleach).

Why would you want to bleach if you want a film as a negative would be just as if you was developing 35mm still film as a negative ?

1x developer
Wash
1x stop bath
Wash
1x then fixer
Wash
?

[studiocarter2]

The anti halo layer bleaches away. It has to be removed before the exposure is developed into silver. I want the reversal film to be negative. The antihalation layer hides any image if it is not removed. It must be removed with the first image, as in reversal, or before the first image is made into metallic silver, as in what I think might work as negative, that is not obscured by the dark antihalation layer.

[nikonr10]

The anti halo layer bleaches away. It has to be removed before the exposure is developed into silver. I want the reversal film to be negative. The antihalation layer hides any image if it is not removed. It must be removed with the first image, as in reversal, or before the first image is made into metallic silver, as in what I think might work as negative, that is not obscured by the dark antihalation layer.

Why don,t you use a B&W super 8 film which is easy to make a negative from and would save you alot of time and Money ?
I think you find that that the fomapan is not made to be a negative film .

If you think it would work ! give it a go , Only other way to find out ? ;)

[Mmechanic]

That won’t work because upon bleaching and clearing you will lose the negative image, too. Fomapan R like all true reversal films has two emulsions mixed and coated in one layer. One of the emulsions (suspension would be the correct term but tradition has it differently) is panchromatically sensitized at about ISO 50. The other is a non-sensitized one of about ISO 6 to 8. The less sensitive silver salts get heavily underexposed but remain enough developable for the positive complement to the dissolved negative. The ISO 100 nominal speed of the film results from the reversing proper. Agfa Scala, rated ISO 200, has basically a ISO 100 panchromatic component. Reverse processing yields about double speed from the mixed components trick. That was discovered some time between 1912, when Eastman started a chemical laboratory within his enterprise, and perhaps 1919. In 1920 Charles Pathé and George Eastman discussed the sharing of the sleeping giant called amateur market. Pathé had the first with reversal film in 1922, format 9½, Eastman-Kodak followed in 1923, format 16.

If you want to have a negative, use negative film.

[avortex]

Our home developer was called ALMA-345, that is a simple five-components formula, a Phenidone-hydroquinone recipe.

Would you mind sharing the recipe? Looks quite interesting! (On a private message, if you prefer)
Phenidone based developers always gave me inferior results to Metol, so I'm very curious!

[studiocarter2]

Thank you for an answer.