One of my students has been using PMK for a long time and tells me that
Hutchings likes to put the film back in the developer after fixing to
increase the stain. He has also shown me negatives made with PMK (not
given that treatment) that showed the stain somewhat unevenly distributed
within the image. With his silver paper, he has not found that
uneven-ness to be a problem. Negatives returned to the developer seem
visually to be more even, but more brown overall. I wonder whether the
increase in stain really evens out the distribution or just makes the
negative appear more uniform.
The returning of the film to the developer seems to me to produce a
general stain across the entire negative and I doubt that it is
proportional. Seems to me its effect would be with UV processes simply
to increase the necessary exposure. With VC silver papers it would act
as an overall low contrast filter. What we would need for UV processes
would be the least possible overall staining, but proportional staining
can help.
I haven't tested this or even tried it myself, but I'm interested to see
what he's bringing in.
Larry Bullis
Skagit Valley College