erwin
Hello,
I’ve read lots of books on colour enlargement, but I haven’t yet been able to find out whether the same fixer is used for colour enlargement as for black-and-white enlargement! I hope someone can help me out!
Thanks, Erwin
MirkoBoeddecker
Hello Erwin,
In principle, the fixers work in a similar way, but in the RA4 process (colour paper process) a combined bleach-fix (BX) is used.
In the C-41 process, there are also separate fixers and bleaches, and you could use the fixer from the colour process for black and white as well, but not the other way round, because the pH value of the colour fixer is tailored to that process (which doesn’t really matter for the black and white process, provided the stop bath was acidic).
So if you want to enlarge colour prints in a tray, it’s best to buy the room-temperature kit from Tetenal.
It contains two bottles:
1x developer
1x combined bleach-fix
Both are simply diluted with water and you’re ready to go.
The instructions are quite detailed and you actually get good results straight away.
Of course, you have to work in complete darkness or in a darkroom, but that doesn’t matter because you can’t, shouldn’t and mustn’t examine the image in either the developer or the bleach-fixer.
Just wait patiently until the timer beeps – pull the image out with the tongs and wait again until the timer beeps (don’t forget to agitate it properly, otherwise you’ll get streaks).
Then rinse and inspect. Done.
Best regards,
Mirko
