Film Re-cycling Experiments Part 1.

After ripping out 70 odd ft of Vision1 500T (15 years old) out of a bulk loader and sitting it on my floor in the light (to make room for new Vision2 50D and Vision3 500T for bulk loading... still got another 700 ft of Vision1 500T in cans), I thought of something to do with it.

Cut some of it up, loaded it in a tank, processed it in some Xtol, now then I chilled a weak solution of potassium ferricyanide and potassium bromide to bleach the film back to all silver halide (just silver bromide) slowly to make a high contrast, fine grain, slow speed b&w film.. though I can try putting it through C-41 to get the CMY dyes (wont be a real colour image, but can treat it as a b&w during scanning for chromogenic b&w for IR dust removal), or just regular b&w processing.

The stuff still in the can and old expired film sitting around I have that's now shitty quality (Kodak Gold 100 from 2000), I can try just bleaching the fog (specks of elemental silver) away back to silver halide to restore the speed and denisty range.

If I want to keep it as useful colour film, that will have to be gas bleaching, so that it doesn't wash out the anti-halation layer and the spectral sensitisation dyes etc.

I also figured I could bake some film out in the sun until it is all reduced to metallic silver, and gas-bleach it back to silver halide for a high contrast, fine grain, slow colour film.

Infrared Sensitisation of Film

So I have some Tri-X (Arista  Premium 400) loaded in a patterson tank I presoaked in water, then soaked in a pigment that has a certain amount of IR absorption.

Now the film is drying in the tank and will be re-loaded into a reloadable 35mm canister.

Hopefully there'll be some pigment adjacent to the silver halide, and hopefully the pigment will be able to transfer energy to it.

I'll be shooting it with an R72 filter, focussed visually on a ruler for test shots, looking for a focus shift on the ruler.