An E-6 Experiment

Hello,

I am wondering if, as I have heard now and again, I can use any black and white developer as the first developer in an E-6 process. I am very interested in trying some night photography with tungsten transparency film in which minimal agitation or pyro (minus the fixing and restaining step, of course) development are used as the first step, to perform extreme compensation for high-contrast compositions.

You can do so, but don't expect the subsequent color processing to be satisfactory. Pyro isn't going to work because it is a staining developer. Stain will not be converted to Ag-halide by the bleach and therefore cannot be removed by the subsequent fixer.

Rather than using a B&W first developer, you would be better off to modify established E-6 first developers and following with the standard processing. I have done so within the context of alternative E-6 modifying the ratios in the MPQ (metol-phenidone-hydroquinone) first developer. A fair amount of testing is needed, but the result can be useful for special situations as for example higher or lower contrast when pushing the film speed. What exactly are you needing to accomplish that cannot be obtained by push/pull E-6 processing?

Hi,

I don't care so much about the color being accurate. I may, in fact, end up printing this in b/w in the end. I am just looking to try ways to get different effects than one gets with pull processing (which I am quite familiar with, as I do it very often when shooting transparencies). I'd like to see what some of the unique properties of various b/w developers will do to a transparency.

So, as for what I need to accomplish, the answer is nothing. I just want to monkey around a bit, when you get right down to it. I hope that is a satisfactory reason.

A friend of mine has tried E6 with stand Rodinal in the place of FD. I don't remember the exact dilutions and times but that first time he got too dark slides and we increased time and temperature and maybe changed dilution after that. It may have been 1+50 for 2 hours starting at about 30-35 deg C or so and then dropping in the room temperature, and resulted in slides with a bit muddy colors with a yellowish tint and a bit low contrast, especially in highlights.

Rodinal (para-aminophenol) forms very weak dyes on itself (so, negative dyes in highlights!) so it's probably the cause for too soft-contrast muddy highlights. This effect was not interesting enough IMO.

It was really just a technical question. I will determine whether or not it is "interesting enough." Thanks.