A crazy idea?

[dslater]

I've been toying with this idea for a while. If I were to take some E-6 film and skip the first developer and reversal bath, would I end up with an E-6 negative? Would the negatives not have the orange cast that C-41 films do? Would the effective speed of the film be faster? The reason I thought it might be faster is based on what I've read here about reversal processing B&W film - according to the article I read reverse processing film cuts the speed about in half.
Before I get a bunch of responses about why would I do this, just use C-41 film or cross-processing realize this is really just a thought experiment / idle speculation.

 

[htmlguru4242]

I'd imagine you would. The speed would probably change a little bit, and I doubt that the results would be too good, but I don't see a reason why it shouldn't work.

 

[dslater]

I'd imagine you would. The speed would probably change a little bit, and I doubt that the results would be too good, but I don't see a reason why it shouldn't work.

Interesting - in what way do you the result would be bad? Are you thinking bad grain problems, contrast problems, or color balance issues like crossover?

 

[Photo Engineer]

No. It will not work.

The E6 color developer is a developer designed to react to completion. Therefore you can expect high fog and very bad color. In the worst case, the images will be black.

There is a mild fogging agent and a silver halide solvent in the E6 color developer.

Cross processing is best. E6 film in C41.

PE

 

[dslater]

No. It will not work.

The E6 color developer is a developer designed to react to completion. Therefore you can expect high fog and very bad color. In the worst case, the images will be black.

There is a mild fogging agent and a silver halide solvent in the E6 color developer.

Cross processing is best. E6 film in C41.

PE

Hmm - I see - so does the color developer reduce all the silver halide in the film whether or not it's part of the latent image?

On another note, what is the purpose of the orange cast in C-41 film? Why isn't it negative image of the scene with a neutral cast?

Dan

 

[Photo Engineer]

Dan;

The E6 color developer will not reduce all silver halide, but will produce a fair degree of fog. The pH is way up there, it has silver halide solvents and fogging agents, and it is very active as a result. I've tried it and it gives unusable results.

The orange color in negatives is a built in mask which forms a positive image to mask out negative image dye impurities. This is why a color negative is more accurate in color than a transparency. There are extensive discussions here and on Photo Net about this. On PN, I posted a series of curves showing the masking process.

Many textbooks cover this subject as well, but unless you are really into matrix algebra I don't suggest you go too far into it.

PE