(Another) First run with C-41 thread... need help tho

Kirks518 said:

Rudeofus - can the re-Blixing be done in the light? I would think so, but I figure I'd ask....

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Yes, absolutely!

Thanks. I did it in the dark.

I only did one frame for another 6:30 of the Blix and then a 1:00 stabilizer. The base color now matches the lab developed negs, and while there still is a green cast (on the unadjusted scan), it's not nearly as bad as it was.

Would it be nuts to next time do the Blix for 15 minutes?

Kirks518 said:

Attached is a pic of two strips of negatives from two different rolls. Both are Fuji Reala, and from the same batch number. The negative on the left was developed at my local lab (not a Walmart/Walgreens etc), and the one on the right was from my first run the other night. The base color of mine is much darker, and more muddied looking. It is the 'excessive' darkening to the orange base that I'm thinking (which always gets me in trouble) is causing the color shift. Any ideas what caused my base to be so much darker?

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A darker base color can't come from insufficient BLIXing alone, because in those regions there should have never been any silver that had to be bleached, yes? Obviously, if you have some developer fog to begin with, any retained silver will darken the base color even more. The very subdued colors look a lot like insufficient BLIX, but experiment beats theory every time, especially if an experiment requires little effort and has the potential to improve your negs.

It would also be very helpful if you could try a small batch of Farmer's reducer, this is a very powerful BLIX which would once and for all tell us whether retained silver is the source of your woes. You can get Potassium Ferricyanide in every well stocked pharmacy, and can use 3-5 grams together with half a liter/quart of standard dilution rapid fixer. If this concoction works while re-BLIXing with Unicolor's BLIX doesn't, we can take steps at (there was a url link here which no longer exists) their BLIX. If Farmer's reducer doesn't visibly change the appearance of your negs, we need to take a closer look at your color developer.

One thing I noticed: the lab processed neg strip doesn't appear to have any orange film base in your image. Do these negs really look like what I see here on my (non calibrated) laptop monitor?

Kirks518 said:

I only did one frame for another 6:30 of the Blix and then a 1:00 stabilizer. The base color now matches the lab developed negs, and while there still is a green cast (on the unadjusted scan), it's not nearly as bad as it was.

Would it be nuts to next time do the Blix for 15 minutes?

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It would not only not be nuts, to the contrary: it would make a lot of sense! You can't really over-BLIX, and the powder-BLIX seems to require extended BLIX times. In my experience liquid kits provide more reliable BLIXes ...

Rudeofus said:

One thing I noticed: the lab processed neg strip doesn't appear to have any orange film base in your image. Do these negs really look like what I see here on my (non calibrated) laptop monitor?

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+1

My first reaction when I saw what you posted was that the "lab processed" negatives looked to be more screwed up than the ones you processed.

But then, I don't shoot Fuji, so I could be wrong.

EDIT: One further point - the "orange" mask is integral to the film, and serves to essentially correct for the inherent limitations of the colour dyes in the film.

It is a good thing, and it is automatically adjusted for when the negative is:

1) printed optically on to RA4 paper at normal filtration settings; and
2) scanned on an appropriately calibrated scanner, used with appropriately configured scanning software.

The "automatic" settings built into most scanning software: yech!