Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/04/16
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Looks like the Rollei was deadly drunken indeed! Does it come from badly mixing the two components of the colour developer, or from (even very slight) contamination of the 1st developer by a component of the colour developer? Tetenal say in their docs that even colour developer fumes are enough to spoil the colour dev. and turn the deep blacks into greenish greys. PhotoChimie, a small French photochemistry maker (who closed down since) added a small silver-plated (?) pill into their E-6 kit to drop into the first developer, they said it was to protect it against this phenomenon. Years ago in Spain I went under a terrible thunderstorm and rain that entered about everywhere into my (then nearly new) Nikon F and the ektachrome-X cartridge inside (it was in 1975 or 76). I had to wait two weeks until I went home and could process the films (7-bath E-4), the results were terrific too. Similar colour inconsistencies, plus colour stripes, and sorts of psychedelic squid legs-shaped stains hanging from the top and bottom edges. I will try to dig out and scan a couple of them some day. Old E-4 Ektachromes had a very soft emulsion (it could not be processed over 25 celsius otherwise the emulsion dropped to the bottom of the processing can) and real strange things must have happened in there during the 15 day interval (hot summer). Processing was OK as the other ektachromes all went out right. The Nikon just dried on the kitchen table and is working smoothly ever since (not often). Jean