E6/7 WEIGHING & MIXING

(or Any More Problems Mate!)

By Bill Reid (Area 20).

It has been a while since I kept you up to date with my ventures into weighing and mixing. However I have not been idle and have since got geared up for trying the latest E6/7 Formulae.

Firstly to trials with the A.M. Formula. You may recall I had all sorts of problems from dense slides to very blue cats. However back in the autumn from a walk around Oxford with some 3M100 film and a visit to the Radio Show at Earles Court with 3M tungsten film, I got my very first really good results from weighing and mixing. As I hadn`t made any changes from previous efforts I still don`t know why I got such good results on this occasion. The 100asa film produced excellent autumn colours and the 640asa tungsten film gave surprisingly good results from handheld shots, and without flash.

Around this time our Secretary, Ron Croad, and Lawrence Edwards was experimenting with the Kodak E6/7 formula. Work had gone so well that Ron decided to publish the formula as part of the Club`s Handbook. He had also found a good source for all the chemicals and offered a Starter`s Pack, which I sent off for. This pack instantly gears you up to try this formula at a very reasonable cost.

As with my earlier trials with the A.M. brew, my first two trials were a complete disaster. No! not dense slides, or even blue casts! in fact a completely `blank` film, and on two occasions. I have never seen such a clear film base. At least the bleach & fixer had worked well. At first I could suspect having picked up a wrong bottle, or perhaps a W&M error, but to have done so twice seems hard to accept, having taken more care the second time.

However Ron kindly offered to come over and go through my working procedures. We spent a few interesting hours weighing & mixing and even the pH values of the chemicals I had used read as close as possible, though the Col.Dev. was slightly out, but certainly not enough to cause a blank film. Even my tap water read pH 7, so I was having a good start. However when making up the very first Col. Dev., on adding the EDTA (Na2) this became very milky and seemed worse on adding the Phosphoric acid and didn`t clear very well. It was only after adding the CD3 that it took on the expected colour, but remained very pale.

During my second W&M I kept a check on the Col. Dev. and this time while it was still `milky` it cleared nicely on adding the Phosphoric acid and completely on mixing in the Potassium hydroxide and even better after the CD3 and HS-104. but still I got the other blank film!

The problem would seem to suspect lack of chemical reversal and/or Colour development and still mean having used a bottle in the wrong order.

As explained, Ron weighed and mixed a 300ml brew for me to to try later. We also processed one cassette of 3M film in a brew he had previously made up and partly used. This produced an excellent set of slides.

Two to three weeks later I had a number of films exposed and got round to processing the first 3 in Ron`s brew which I had no worry on using and got perfect processing. However I was a little concerned on using the brew I had made up and had even considered buying a kit, but decided to have ago and was pleasantly surprised with another set of very well processed slides and at last had finally produced excellent work from weighing and mixing.

From Ron`s visit I did make a couple of changes to my working procedures, but again, made no actual difference to results. One was that I dropped using a tap-mixer for washing stages and simply kept a bucket of water in the sink and gave the number of changes of water for the duration, lifting the spiral now and again. This certainly saves on the amount of water you use per session, and works very well.

The other change was in weighing. I had been fiddling about with the tiny weights, but Ron showed me how to use the small`slide` weights on the top bar of the scales which meant I only have to place a `complete` weight in the scale pan, then set the `part`weights by one or both of the sliding weights, and simplifies the work.

I have also made one chemical change which may or not have any bearing on final results. I noticed Ron`s supply of CD3 (as per Club sales) is of a very fine texture and almost white in colour compared to my older stock, which is of a very course texture like brown sugar, and very pink in colour. I recall the late Brian Wheatcroft stating that there was some `poor` quality CD3 going about at the time. Whether my old stock is of that supply I wouldn`t know. The whiter CD3 still turns the usual pink when mixed. I am sticking with the newer supply for the time being!.

With all the disasters I have had with my W&M I was on the point of giving up and sticking to kits. However I am now very enthusiastic for this latest E6/7 formula.

Once I had some more films exposed I made up another 300ml brew. On this occasion I had one cassette of Scotch Chrome 100 and three short lengths of the new Scotch Chrome 800/3200 film exposed at 800, 1600 and 32000 respectively. The 100asa film processed well, but the three short pieces came out very green. It would seem that the chemical reversal failed after the first film. However I was very taken with the High Speed film where exposures were good. With the 800 & 1600 pieces colours were excellent and grain very reasonable. While the 3200 wasn`t of much use, it did show the grain. But what is exceptional with this film is how well the colours stay the same at all speeds. In fact the latest Scotch Chrome handles shadows as good as any I have ever seen with no blue or green when processing is perfect. Ron has processed very nice slides taken in the winter months showing this to advantage. I think it fair to add at this point that results from Tony Chuter on Konicachrome also shows a great difference from those processed in the A.M. brews and indeed I have seen some from Lawrence Edwards which makes Konica look like a completely different film, showing this formula has a lot going for it.

I have since made up a fresh 600ml brew and processed five cassettes of film. Suspecting the reversal stage for that green cast last time, I gave the minimum time for the rinse (no more than 30 seconds) then straight in with the colour developer. The results were perfect each time. All commercial kits omit a wash stage between reversal and Col.Dev,. so it looks as if we should do likewise or at least keep it to the shortest possible time.

I am most impressed with these slides, super colours and not a hint of a cast and all look very neutral even in the dullest weather. I agree with our chairman that Ron deserves congratulations for the time and effort he has put into making the latest formula available to us. If he does no more he will have still done everyone a great service. I would never have thought a year back that I would now be producing such excellent work from weighing and mixing and now looking forward to a lot more processing before the summer is over.