Instant Fuji Film Negative cleared with bleach gel.

[sully75]

Posted this on the polaroid thread but thought someone might want to see it here.

Tonight I tried for the first time clearing the back of the negative with bleach as has been discussed online quite a bit. Results are pretty impressive. Negative is actually wicked sharp. Colors are good. Kinda hard to control but good. Other negatives with colors that were not as good in the positive were way, way off in the negative. This was really quite easy. I saw it demonstrated on youtube a while ago, not sure where but if you search there are multiple examples.

I used toilet bleach that's kind of a gel, it sits on the back of the picture better. Stole that from somewhere.
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8028/7666494996_9dd64e8477.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulmcevoy/7666494996/)
Accordion (http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulmcevoy/7666494996/) by Paul McEvoy (http://www.flickr.com/people/paulmcevoy/), on Flickr

Here's the positive:
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7038/6957061031_962dce475c.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulmcevoy/6957061031/)
Uncle Rob's Accordion (http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulmcevoy/6957061031/) by Paul McEvoy (http://www.flickr.com/people/paulmcevoy/), on Flickr

[Revolucion Artistico]

I've been meaning to try this for some time, glad you had such success!

[jcoldslabs]

I've used the "toilet gel" approach, too, and it works far better than regular bleach, at least with the tape-it-to-a-piece-of-glass method. I still find there to be many artifacts and streaks on the emulsion side that can dirty-up the image, sometimes in a good way. Busy subjects seem better suited to the reclaimed negatives, at least for me. Below is an example of the kind of texture I tend to get with this method.


http://www.kolstad.us/ebay/NEG---Amaryllis-II.jpg

Jonathan

[jp]

I haven't seen that texture Jonathan shows.

I rinse the finished negative in cold water. Seems to do a better job with the dried monobath chemicals.

[jcoldslabs]

I don't rinse the whole negative afterwards, just the bleached backside, so that might be my problem. The one time I tried rinsing the whole neg a lot of the emulsion seemed to come off, too!

Jonathan

[sully75]

I rinsed in water afterwards. The emulsion is really thin.

[sully75]

Oh yeah, there's some sort of mucusy stuff that's on the emulsion side, usually looks like dried booger. If you soak it in water for a little while, it comes off. Not sure that that's what's causing your texture but I suppose it could.

[EdSawyer]

I usually rinse that goo off the emulsion side too. Makes for a cleaner neg when dry. Have to be careful, emulsion is super fragile. I usually rinse in C-41 final rinse, which is basically just water an photo-flo. I just use the household bleach and it clears almost immediately, never bothered trying the gel method.

[buggz]

I have to do this, I saved my "negatives" after reading about this on the net, and seeing the youtube videos.

[sully75]

It's very, very easy.