Petzi: You’re probably referring to the combined bleach-fix bath rather than using a bleach bath followed by a fixer bath. As far as I know, though, this is for regeneration and recycling reasons; the separate baths are easy to regenerate and, above all, the silver is easy to recover. [right][post="7293"]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/post][/right]
Yes, I’m referring, amongst other things, to the bleach-fix. A retired Kodak engineer who developed the bleach-fix for Kodak years ago is active on various English-language forums. He says that even today it only works to a limited extent and remains a frequent source of errors.
As for the reasons that led to the development of the bleach-fix bath, I can only speculate. Theoretically, it could be used to simplify the developing machines, but that isn’t possible because of the regeneration process. The real reason might be that photo labs at newspapers and the like can achieve faster results with it. After all, the small developing kits were sold in huge quantities to the press.
So, in my opinion, there is no real reason to skip the original process steps, unless every minute counts. Doing so makes the chemistry far more complicated and critical.
