Another instructive step by step video. While you used a tray to show us what happens in the toner redevelopment, can I assume that in the cases of 36mm or 120 negs the amount of toner can be scaled back to, say, a beaker amount of toner with appropriately less sodium hydroxide and thiourea toner? Thanks
Yes, remarkable. I took another negative from the same shoot. I'd moved the camera slightly and the light was a tad different. After bleach and redeveloping in thiourea it was outstanding.
Question 1 (with acknowledgement of the importance and usefulness of the shared process), wouldn't more exposure and increased grade do the same thing? Question 2 - can one redevelop normal negs with the toner? Or is it just a compromise to not alter the pyro stain and would have no coloration on normal negs?
I did the bleaching on paper using the ferrocyanide and redeveloped the image using 2nd paper developer. After redevelopment, the image on the paper was full of defects and round spots, totally unacceptable. Why’s that?
Great video John What I need to do is reduce the density of a couple of my negs , I've been into insane times on the enlarger ! I was wondering about bleaching to reduce ?
When you do this, does that bleach affect the density of the shadows first , being the thinner part of the negative like bleaching a print would affect the highlights first?
Probably. Edit: I think Shane is right, that the shadows will be bleached first so the effect won't be even. And the redevelopment is too fast to control in a meaningful way.
I might do a video on this. The possibility of bleaching out the negative and developing again, N-, in regular developer or perhaps a two bath. I'll do some trials. Of course, the technique would be a last resort, for negatives that are just way too thick to print well, but it is something I'll try and see if it works. I think I read about it somewhere like one of Thornton's books. It goes something like this (but I need to test it): 1. Thick negative from over exposure and over development 2. Bleach back negative 3. Developer, by sight, to process less silver in the image watching to control highlights 4. Stop and fix as normal