briand@tekig1.UUCP (Brian Diehm) (05/21/84)
Give this stuff a try. It pretty well delivers what it says:
1) One solution. Well, two if you count 5 min. wash with water.
2) Temperature insensitive. Very.
3) Contrast control. This is done by changing the alkilinity/acidity of
the (one) solution -- add some stuff (I believe potassium sulfite) and
it decreases the contrast.
4) Good resolution - absolutely great for a dye migration process.
It doesn't perfectly reproduce what can be held on a slide. That is in
fact theoretically impossible, but this stuff comes closer than Ciba.
It cannot reduce the contrast as far as to perfectly reproduce the
slide. It comes close, but your range of contrasts goes from very slight in-
creast to great increase.
It is *EXPENSIVE*.
The one solution seems not to be noxious. There is no neutralization
process as for Cibachrome, but maybe there should be, I don't know. You DO
handle it with gloves, however, but that doesn't seem too much of a price to
pay for the convenience. It does not smell particularly, or give off rank
odors into your darkroom (even less than Cibachrome bleach).
The dye migrates through an opaque layer, so if you expose the back side
of the paper by accident, simply turn off the enlarger, turn over the paper,
and reexpose as if nothing happened.
If you are unsure of this stuff, they have a trial pack with some (10?)
5 x 7 sheets. It comes with solution, gloves, contrast control power, and
directions. That, a tray for the solution, and a washer sets you up, and in
20 minutes or so you should have a whole series of prints almost dry.
Agfa calls the stuff "self correcting", meaning for example that you
needn't apply color correction closer than +-10. This is true - you won't see
the difference +-5 makes. I tend to think this is no advantage, and simply
means they have poor color resolution. However, it IS easy to work with as a
result.
One last hint for usage - be sure you have the exposure time correct
BEFORE doing the final color balance - the material tends towards a blue shift
if underexposed, and you cannot correct for underexposure while judging the
color balance - don't even try.