Monochrome Slide Film?

JoeV

JoeV

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Is there any monochrome (B&W) transparency (i.e. slide) film being made these days? I think it was Agfa's Scala that was the last one I knew of, but alas, the Agfa conglomerate has been split up.

So, can reversal processing of B&W negative film be reliably done in a home-based darkroom? I am certainly not a chemist, but have been developing and printing for 20 years; however, reversal processing is entirely new to me.

My interest in monochrome transparency film is motivated by a desire to make film strips of B&W images, shot with my Olympus Pen D, and projected by my old filmstrip projector.

Thx,

~Joe
 
I have looked into developing B&W into positives... and it seems Kodak does have, or used to sell a kit to turn your T-Max ISO 100 film into slides. It's a longer process, as it involves two bleach baths, but then, if you have been doing this for a while, it should be fun to do.

Otherwise, you can send your flim to a lab in CO, with Richard Woods. Just click HERE to get the facts.

BTW, I used to send them stuff (probably some T-max 100 and 400), and, while they are pricey, they are very professional and reliable.

Have a fun research session! :)
 
I know that there are a few processes out there for reversal processing of regular B+W negative film, but I have never looked into them that closely. IIRC freestyle has a link somewhere to a lab that offers a discount if you're a freestyle customer. I remember seeing home reversal kits for a kodak process awhile back, TriX maybe? PlusX?

Sounds like a fun project Joe, best of luck.
 
JoeV said:
My interest in monochrome transparency film is motivated by a desire to make film strips of B&W images, shot with my Olympus Pen D, and projected by my old filmstrip projector.
~Joe
Click to expand...
That sounds cool. To my knowledge, Scala was the last dedicated b&w positive film made- but I'm sure you could get chemistry to process positives from trad. films easily. I know some of the big photo stores at least used to sell a kit to do it, so I bet you could find the stuff to do it. It would probably be fun to do.

You could also let dr5 do it for you http://www.dr5.com/

Either way, I'd love to see the results from your Pen Film Project- keep us posted!
 
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Commercial: dr5 is pretty much the only game in town
Homemade: you can still buy the TMAX 100 reversal kit from Kodak, and the Photographer's Formulary also makes a similar kit. If you are really hardcore, you can just buy the raw chemicals from them and used one of the many published formulas for reversal B&W processing.

The other option, that I've been working on for a while now, is to get "print film" like Kodak 2302 or 5302 Fine Grain Positive Release film. It's a movie stock that is used to make prints from movie negatives. I use it to make slides from my 35mm negatives, dev in Dektol stock.

That way I have dual-use negatives: paper prints and transparencies.
 
Last year I needed 200 b&w slides. I shot regular negatives, printed them and shot the prints with regular (tungsten balanced Ektachrome) slide film, using appropriate lens filtration. The results are well exposed monochrome positives.
 
JoeV said:
Is there any monochrome (B&W) transparency (i.e. slide) film being made these days? I think it was Agfa's Scala that was the last one I knew of, but alas, the Agfa conglomerate has been split up.

So, can reversal processing of B&W negative film be reliably done in a home-based darkroom? I am certainly not a chemist, but have been developing and printing for 20 years; however, reversal processing is entirely new to me.
Click to expand...
There is Fomapan R100, which is a B&W 35mm movie film obviously designed for reversal. Foma is also selling a reversing kit for use in the home darkroom. Maybe you can get the Foma reversal kit somewhere, it's quite convenient to use.

I've done reversal in the home darkroom a couple of times. It isn't that complicated, only a bit lengthy. It helps if you have a processor, to keep the temperatures constant.

The basic idea of a reversal process is that your film emulsion consists of silver halide crystals. During exposure, every crystal is either exposed to light or it isn't; there is no in-between. In a standard development process those crystals that were exposed to light are developed to black, while the others are removed during fixing. This is what we don't want; we want those that were exposed to light to be clear, while the unexposed ones should be developed to black. So between developing the film and fixing it we have to include a number of extra steps. The process works as follows:

- Develop your film normally using a standard developer, without fixing it. Those silver halide crystals that has been exposed to light will go black. Because we want to reverse the film, this is precisely what we don't want; we want the exposed parts to be clear in the end.
- So now we start the reversal. Put the film into a bleaching bath. By bleaching away the developed silver halide crystals, only the unexposed silver halide crystals will be left.
- Put the film into a clearing bath.
- We now have a film where the parts that were exposed to light are blank, while those that weren't exposed to light have unexposed silver halide crystals. Those are the portions of the film we want to have black in the end, so now we expose those to light by taking the film out of the development tank and putting under a strong light for a couple of minutes. We now have a film where all silver halide crystals that weren't exposed to light in the first place are ready for development.
- Put the film back into the development tank and develop it normally, using stop and fixer.

You can use basically any developer (well, I guess staining developers would be bad). The bleaching bath consists of potassium permanganate and sulphuric acid, the clearing bath consists of sodium bisulfite; I guess you can find the precise relations online as well as more detailed descriptions of the process.

This process has two problems. The first is that obviously you need a film with a rather clear base, because if your base is grayish or bluish you'll end up with grayish or bluish slides. The second is that the process places a lot of stress on the emulsion, because the pH value of the various baths is wildly different. So in order to keep your emulsion from dissolving, you have to be quite careful that all your baths are at the same temperature. I normally included a short water bath between all the individual steps, because water has a pH value somewhere in the middle and that way the emulsion can adapt step-by-step instead of going from the alkalic developer straight into the acidic bleaching bath. If you take precautions, however, the results are fairly impressive.

Philipp
 
A few years ago I tried the print-film from Kodak to make a contact print from one strip of 35mm neg to the piece of print-film. I think this was the 5302 which MVH mentioned above. I can't be 100% sure but I think it was orthochromatic, meaning that you can work with the safelight on. It worked ok when I had made up a little cardboard frame to line up the two bits of film. This method is simpler and more adaptable than reversing negative-film from the camera, as explained in the Ilford link PeterC posted above, but it didn't look like Scala . . .
 
Hey, thanks everyone for your insightful responses. My filmstrip projector requires the film be kept in its uncut state, rather than cut and slide mounted, and projects motion picture sized frames (i.e. half-frame sized.) With a sound track on cassette tape, the unit will playback an audio track and advance the frames at a beep-tone. Old school Power Point!

I will look further into both DR5 and home-processing. Thanks again and I'll keep you posted on my progress.

~Joe
 
Scala is a great film, and luckily it is NOT dead. When I was in France last year, they said there was a huge stock of the stuff, and I heard rumors someone else would keep making it. In the US, you can still get it and have it processed by Main Street Photo in California (google them). Not cheap but not too bad, either. And way easier than this reversal stuff you guys are all talking about.
 
Phillip, that's one heck of an explanation. Thank you :)



rxmd said:
There is Fomapan R100, which is a B&W 35mm movie film obviously designed for reversal. Foma is also selling a reversing kit for use in the home darkroom. Maybe you can get the Foma reversal kit somewhere, it's quite convenient to use.

I've done reversal in the home darkroom a couple of times. It isn't that complicated, only a bit lengthy. It helps if you have a processor, to keep the temperatures constant.

The basic idea of a reversal process is that your film emulsion consists of silver halide crystals. During exposure, every crystal is either exposed to light or it isn't; there is no in-between. In a standard development process those crystals that were exposed to light are developed to black, while the others are removed during fixing. This is what we don't want; we want those that were exposed to light to be clear, while the unexposed ones should be developed to black. So between developing the film and fixing it we have to include a number of extra steps. The process works as follows:

- Develop your film normally using a standard developer, without fixing it. Those silver halide crystals that has been exposed to light will go black. Because we want to reverse the film, this is precisely what we don't want; we want the exposed parts to be clear in the end.
- So now we start the reversal. Put the film into a bleaching bath. By bleaching away the developed silver halide crystals, only the unexposed silver halide crystals will be left.
- Put the film into a clearing bath.
- We now have a film where the parts that were exposed to light are blank, while those that weren't exposed to light have unexposed silver halide crystals. Those are the portions of the film we want to have black in the end, so now we expose those to light by taking the film out of the development tank and putting under a strong light for a couple of minutes. We now have a film where all silver halide crystals that weren't exposed to light in the first place are ready for development.
- Put the film back into the development tank and develop it normally, using stop and fixer.

You can use basically any developer (well, I guess staining developers would be bad). The bleaching bath consists of potassium permanganate and sulphuric acid, the clearing bath consists of sodium bisulfite; I guess you can find the precise relations online as well as more detailed descriptions of the process.

This process has two problems. The first is that obviously you need a film with a rather clear base, because if your base is grayish or bluish you'll end up with grayish or bluish slides. The second is that the process places a lot of stress on the emulsion, because the pH value of the various baths is wildly different. So in order to keep your emulsion from dissolving, you have to be quite careful that all your baths are at the same temperature. I normally included a short water bath between all the individual steps, because water has a pH value somewhere in the middle and that way the emulsion can adapt step-by-step instead of going from the alkalic developer straight into the acidic bleaching bath. If you take precautions, however, the results are fairly impressive.

Philipp
Click to expand...
 
MartinP said:
A few years ago I tried the print-film from Kodak to make a contact print from one strip of 35mm neg to the piece of print-film. I think this was the 5302 which MVH mentioned above. I can't be 100% sure but I think it was orthochromatic, meaning that you can work with the safelight on. It worked ok when I had made up a little cardboard frame to line up the two bits of film. This method is simpler and more adaptable than reversing negative-film from the camera, as explained in the Ilford link PeterC posted above, but it didn't look like Scala . . .
Click to expand...

It's blue-sensitive, to be more exact, so it's not sensitive to green and red. Ortho films are sensitive to green as well, and look very much like normal panchromatic films.

Blue-sensitive films are pretty cool as in-camera negative as well. I've experimented with 2302 in Rodinal, and the results are very 1900.
 
I'll chime in for dr5 also. Top notch work, and they are very flexible. I had them run a bunch of HP5 120 for me from the Fuji 645 folder to make 'negative prints' from, and they ran a bunch of Plus-X for me when I was shooting stock. They seem to love to experiment, tinkering all the time with every new emulsion that they come across.
 
Hi,
I am shooting 90% of my b&w on Foma R and I process it at home, so I can tell you one important thing - this film is 100 ASA when processed with the Fomakit. Otherwise... it varies. With the chemicals I use it is 320 or even 400 ASA... be aware of that... I was greatly disappointed with this, because I wanted to use it for my 8 mm camera and I bought 1 km of film. Now I need to use a 4x filter...
Of course you could use the Rollei retro, the Efke 25, the Ilford PanF50 or FP4, it will be even easier for you to process them, since you do not have to mix anything, just use the PQ Universal developer and then some other stuff, you can find the entire information about reversal processing on the webpage of Ilford. I am keen on b&w reversal, since I have no room for a darkroom and this is the only way for me to have true black-and-white images...
And yes, the time you would spend on processing is much longer, but you do not have to copy the film, so in the end if the result is just to have true b&w image, then the slide is even faster...
 
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Clear-base film rather than grey-base normally mean loading in very subdued light to avoid light-piping and a fogged leader. As far as I recall both Rollei and Maco sell clear-base films; I've forgotten which ones.

Reversal chemistry is easy to make up, though I've not done it for years; maybe I'll try again with one of the current generation of clear-base films. Exposure is quite critical, and film speed varies widely according to developer choice. Extending first developer time increases film speed; second development is normally to completion, so fixing is a minor 'mopping up' operation.

From bitter experience, I wouldn't go near contact printing from negs, as dust is a very significant problem even when you use a Leitz ELDIA (which I have).

Cheers,

Roger
 
Agfa Scala is very expensive to get developed officially, maybe like 20 EUR for each roll.

I have not yet tried, but soon I will be developing a FP4+ with Ilford's reversal process. Shouldn't be too hard, but needs testing.

Any BW film can be reversally processed, but with 400 ASA films the film base will usually be gray, not clear. Those films are also usually less contrasty, that is why also Ilford recommends slow film (starting from FP4+).I guess it could work with a pushed 400 if you add some more of that chemical that clears the film base.

Fotoimpex(.de) in Germany also sells reversal process kits for B&W and there are some clear-base films that Roger mentioned too, I think.
 
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