SECRETARY' S NOTES
We arrived home from Holiday in Sussex and Kent with 15 films to process. This was a nice round number as I have a 5 spool Paterson tank and some 2 Litre accordian chemical bottles. First on the mat were about 20 pieces of C.R.C. correspondence. That took s everal days to answer as film and chemicals were needed by some members. I sent the items off as soon as possible then turned my attention to the films.
As my last lot of slides were quite good but had a slightly disturbing feature. The margins were red/black and in four out of 180 transparencies there was a slight hint of red in the deepest shadows. You had to look for it on projection, but it was there, and I was not too happy, to put it mildly. In the past I have suspected chemicals then this sort of thing has happened, but I had spent a long time mixing and balancing the pH until they were exact.
This time I had a long session thinking (half the night), then did some reading. I found that to get good density with maximum saturation of coloursit is impor tant to thoroughly fog the film during the reversal process. Kodak state that up to 5 minutes reversal may be given. I did not go that far. Timing of the First developer is also crucial to the films final density.
After the first wash of 3 minutes I gave the second 5 films 2½ mins. Reversal, then removed the lid and shook off the surplus on the drainer and gave the tank and lid a rinse. The spira ls were replaced and Colour Development went along as normal. The Conditioner stage was treated in the same way. All other stages were as printed in the Handbook.
The last 10 films were better than any previous ones I have processed. The margins and rebates are jet black and the colours are sparkling. Tests on a couple of colour charts are spot on and the pink has g one. Only one snag, some work will need to be done next time to balance the amounts of Potassium hydroxide and acid to get the pH exact without having to balance it quite as much.
A reliable source has told me that E6 solutions begin to deteriorate only 8 hours after mixing. In the above processing I used mine to capacity in 3 days with no loss of quality on the 3rd day. The two factors probably explain why some members have had red problems.
CD 4 & CD 5, start life almost alike with a pH of about 1.1; the CD 4 has Sodium hydroxide added to make the pH around 9. It is a crucial balance which if lowered by temperature, solidifies the solution. That is how I got ice in hours.