[pure-silver] Re: AW: Re: Teltenal film processor

DarkroomMagic wrote:
>Well, I find a 3-bath process too limiting. I use a second fixing bath, 
a
>toning bath and a hypo-clearing bath in addition to the usual steps.
>How do you cope with all of that?
>Regards
>Ralph W. Lambrecht

Ralph has a good point!  I've got the tetenal, and its been a bit of a 
baptism by fire.
3:30 p.m. and I've got from now till 5:30 (tennis pickup) to get 
something going in the machine.  So as the first runs going to be a dud 
anyway I load it up with a roll of agfachrome 40 super 8 and a roll of 
agfa ct18 which had been hanging around since got knows when, contents 
unknown. There both well out of date slide films. E6 here we go.  For 
the uninitiated this phase is known as "staking the deck against your 
self".  Whats on the shelves?  (a trip into town for fresh chemistry is 
going to take a morning and I haven't one free till the end of the 
week.  "Patterson Chrome E6" That looks good. Hmm the sales date is 
2003. No instruction sheet but thats what we've got the Internet for.  
Didn't work. After about an hour on google instructions.  Just I now 
knew that CT18 was a rather obscure agfa slide process which had no 
chance of flying in E6 as the chemistry was totally different. Make the 
tennis pickup. 
OK let the CT18 run as a dead loss and try for the movie stock. Back 
into the darkroom and briefly consider cross processing in C41.  Nah I 
don't want negative movies. Then I saw it. Tetenal Dia something! its a 
tetenal slide kit! and its newer. As its a tetenal machine so theres a 
much higher chance of the preprogrammed E6 working with it. I open the 
box, and find no instructions and rather two many packets and bottles.  
Ok back to the Internet and find out what we've got. Theres what looks 
like a chromium bleach, a small bottle with Nadichromate and sulphuric 
acid in it. Now I'm guessing that that comes between the first and the 
second developers but I'm not sure.  This looks like a 6 step slide kit 
but doesn't seem to correspond to the mixing instructions for the 
tetenal on the JOBO USA web site.  Regional difference?  At this stage 
nothing is going to stop me. Six step? thats just two times three. 
Whatever that Lambrecht guy says. I've read some of his stuff and he's 
good, but you know, a perfectionist! All I'm hoping for is image any 
kind, any color.  Its now ten at night, I load up the machine and hit 
the go button.  Back in to the computer and still cant pin down the 
tetenal 6 stage 500ml kit. Back out the machine is happily churning 
away and then it hits me. SW Dia! Thats what it says on the little 
packets in the kit. Its Schwarz Weiss Diapositive, a black and white 
slide kit. This might work after all. any slide process I know uses 
silver in there somewhere, and while the color coupling dyes and so on 
may be quite loopy least of ways the first part will be silver based 
chemistry. I dream on.   
Next thing the machine starts pumping out the used processing 
solutions, not down the carefully numbered hoses but out from somewhere 
underneath onto the darkroom bench.  I started to mop it up and then I 
remembered the dichromate. Switch off the machine! stop the pump!
Work this out before we have toxic dichromate all over the show.  I 
powered down the machine and got most of the puddle into the sink. I 
then retired to contemplate methods for cleaning up and safe disposal 
of dichromate.  OK its "Add thiosulfate fix to change it from nasty 
Cr+6 to Cr+3" Then "Add an alkili to precipitate it out". OK I went 
back out and with the gloves on cleaned up the bench and left the 
machine where it was.  The thiosulphate trick worked a charm on the 
water in the sink all 3mm of it. I then added a little salt to take out 
the silver.  Yo. and as Pepys used to say "and so to bed".
Morning:  I drained the machine, moved it out to the driveway where I 
could deal more safely with anything that came out of it, then bunged 
in the second developer and the fix  that came with the kit and let the 
machine go. Oh and I opened the drum first to see how everything was 
going on and posibly do a reexpose step on the silver that hadnt been 
removed.
The CT18 showed some image and the agfachrome was all pale browny grey.
Well to cut a long storey short hanging up in the darkroom I have about 
nine positive images from the Agfa CT18 film. Theyre in black and 
white, with a slight sepia background.   The agfachrome didn't do so 
well, though as it was originaly shot at night the fact that its all a 
dark grey may be 
a shooting fault.  The lettering along the side of the film is clear. 
Finnaly there were other problems. Either the long overnight soak in 
the bleach step or the high temperature didn't agree with the emulsion 
on either of the films.  The section which I think was imersed 
overnight has  floated off the base and while most of it washed off 
some of it is stuck onto the emulsion of the good frames.
So in conclusion 1) It seems that it may be posible to get an image out 
of Agfa CT18 by processing it as BW positive film.  
2) If dealing with a unknown second hand film prossccor test it with 
plain water first.
 I hope this bit might help someone out there, any of the other 
proceedures mentioned above are used at your own risk and as they say
"Children, don't try this at home."

All the best
Larry Cuffe
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