End of Agfa Scala. Alternatives?

[Jan Nieuwenhuysen]

Selenium toner darkens the shadows somewhat and increases contrast a bit, brown toner (in prints) generally lightens the print somewhat, in other words: opens the shadows and clears the highlights . I suppose this works the same in b&w slides.
Brown toner is not selenium based, by the way. It is a polysulfiding toner (turns the silver in silver sulfide).

[Hans]

I have tried ADOX Selenid toner at 1:25 dilution and 24°C in JOBO rotation to simulate the last processing step before washing. 5 minutes are too much, the slide already turns into red-brown. I toned another slide with 2,5 minutes, that's perfect. It appears neutral when hold in hand and slightly sepia in projection. I found out that the density looks perfect when viewed with a small slide viewer, the projector still needs a lower density to achieve an acceptable brilliance.

I found it encouraging enough to continue with the Kodak kit for the moment. I will try to optimise density and contrast (maybe with sodium sulfite in the first developer as suggested by Kodak) in the next step.

[Hans]

Jan,

I have found that brown toning was somewhat uneven, at least this was my subjective impression in the projector. As this effect was also mentioned by Kodak, I followed their instructions and increased the concentration of the selenium toner to a higher grade than for paper processing, i.e. I tried 1:10 and shortened the time to 1 minute. Unfortunately it is not possible to fine-tune the toning with test slides because toning a film at the end of a development process seems to generate slightly different results. I guess this is because the emulsion is becoming softened during the reversal process.

The second roll of Tmax exposed at 100ASA and developed with (1¹/₃)² of Kodak's base time for the first developer of course became lighter and achieved a higher contrast. It has still a higher density and lower contrast than Scala.

Whilst the third roll of Tmax is being exposed like 200 ASA, I developed an Ilford FP4 exposed like 200ASA. The emulsion of the FP4 gets significantly softer than with the Tmax. The Jobo reel was not white after processing any longer, it seems that this process is stress for the emulsion. The film has not achieved the targeted 200ASA but thanks to the fact that some scenes have been bracketed in ¹/₂ f-stops, I can tell that the FP4 (135/36 in this case) would have been just right with 125ASA at (1¹/₃)³ of Kodak's base time. The contrast is just like the Scala, sharpness and grain are very fine. It seems there is another alternative to Scala when handled very carefully because of the soft emulsion.

Let see what can be done to further tune the Tmax...