Yea, my understanding is that it’s from the silver but I would have expected a good sodium sulfite bath to clear most or all of that away. The sulfite certainly reduces it but doesn’t eliminate it in my experience.
I need to read through this thread again to see if anyone left notes about using EDTA with the vinegar formula (as opposed to with citric acid in the later formula) along with the sulfite clearing bath. In the vinegar version of the formula, the vinegar and peroxide combine to become peracetic acid, which makes sense why it’s a little rougher on the emulsion— peracetic acid being more corrosive than either the dilute peroxide or vinegar/acetic acid alone. But it seems like the paracetic acid may for some reason be what causes the speed gain so maintaining that while getting the clearing action of the EDTA would be ideal if possible. If anyone knows where in this thread or elsewhere this might be answered please let me know. I’m sure it must have been tried while folks were working out what became the EDTA/citric acid version. Regarding the differences between acetic acid vs citric acid in the formulas, does anyone know why acetic acid (contributing to the resulting peracetic acid) might contribute to a speed gain where citric acid does not? I’m not sure what the resulting compound is when the citric acid combines with the peroxide but if I’m not mistaken, acetic acid and citric acid are fairly similar with the primary difference being that citric acid is tribasic where acetic acid is monobasic. I wish PE was still around. My bet would be that he would know exactly how to explain it. (Cheers to the man and the legend)
Sorry if that was not clear: there is no reduction in speed from the Citric acid/EDT bleach. Fomapan 400 is not a 400 speed film (per Foma's own datasheets), so shooting it at 400 is a ~1 stop increase. Also keep in mind that the developer has much more to do with speed increase than the bleach. However, the bleach can make the speed worse by blixing too much and leaving you with a thin negative. Leaving it in the bleach too long in the acetic acid/peroxide bleach will take quite a lot away. The unpredictable nature of the bleach speed is also very annoying.
The leftover yellow "staining" from the acetic acid bleach is not actually staining, as discussed earlier in the thread. It's fine grains of silver that get evenly deposited across the film. This is why it doesn't clear with a sulfite bath. The EDTA and citric acid in the the bleach we formulated on this thread chelate that silver and prevent it from re-depositing on the film. You still need to use a sulfite bath with this bleach to get rid of the actual staining.
Peracetic acid _can_ damage the emulsion, but the majority of what you see is damage from bubbles of oxygen splitting off the peroxide when catalyzed by the silver and then tearing the emulsion on the way out. The faster the bleach goes, the bigger the bubbles are that form and the more damage, within reason. So slowing it down a bit actually produces better results. Also, chelating any free silver as much as possible before it has time to further catalyze the breakdown of the peroxide seems to help a lot. The acetic acid bleach is worse at this. Stabilizers for peroxide also help from the patent literature. HEDP is recommended as a peroxide stabilizer in the Konica patent. I began testing with this but have not revisited it.
In your negatives you are definitely seeing some emulsion damage. But because they are so big you probably don't see it on scans. Do a detailed scan and zoom to the highest resolution and you will definitely see it. Some films do better than others. Temperature seems to have very little impact from all the testing I did. Which is further reinforced by the fact that none of the patents out there talk about temperature as a controlling factor in emulsion damage.
I need to read through this thread again to see if anyone left notes about using EDTA with the vinegar formula (as opposed to with citric acid in the later formula) along with the sulfite clearing bath.
Yes, we did test it. No it doesn't work well. You get weird swirl lines all over the film.