Best C41 chemical kits?

[Sirius Glass]

I have only used the Unicolor C41 kit.

 

[JWMster]

I have Unicolor, Tetenal and Arista and the results were all excellent. For small lots and for powder form - which may be more easily shippable to New Zealand, Unicolor kits make a lot of sense. Given Tetenal's central place in film chemistry as a supplier to suppliers, it's a good thing to support them if you can, too.

 

[mshchem]

I have Unicolor, Tetenal and Arista and the results were all excellent. For small lots and for powder form - which may be more easily shippable to New Zealand, Unicolor kits make a lot of sense. Given Tetenal's central place in film chemistry as a supplier to suppliers, it's a good thing to support them if you can, too.

Tetenal liquid kits have given me great results, C41 and E6. Tetenal states that if you use solutions past a certain point you can get acceptable results but will be less than optimal. The powder kits work, but these were originally intended as "Press Kits" that a photographer could literally mix this stuff up in a motel room if needed to develop their film. If I had a new CPP3 processor, I would find someone in NZ that is using C41 RA chemistry, be it Kodak, Fuji, or Tetenal and try to buy from them.
The OP is talking about processing up to 8x10 color sheet film. I would want proper commercial chemistry made by the three companies I have mentioned. Fuji Frontier machines use cartridges, these can easily be tapped into. This is what most minilabs use these days.
It sure is a pain in the ass to find chemistry to process the films Kodak is trying to sell us. That's something Kodak should address NOW!

 

[mshchem]

This is what is in the Fuji Hunt cartridges for certain Frontier minilabs. These are strictly replenishers . Fuji makes a kit for starting up a fresh minilab set of tanks. These cartridges are used in every Fuji minilab in the world (AFAIK). From left to right. Developer, bleach, fixer, stabilizer. I looked at the stabilizer bottle on the right is enough (for the machine) to process 666 rolls of 36exp. Kodak, CPAC, Tetenal make cartridges for Fuji machines. Also all of these guys make solutions in bottles or bulk as well. The Tetenal Blix kits are much more available in small quantities, but are not as cheap per roll or sheet.
My local shop has a Noritsu machine, it doesn't use cartridges. He will sell me single packages of Kodak and CPAC chemistry.

 

[afriman]

That developer looks rather dark, suggesting a fairly advanced stage of oxidation. Do you find it still usable when it looks like that? Or is this normal for the Fuji Hunt chemicals?

 

[mshchem]

That developer looks rather dark, suggesting a fairly advanced stage of oxidation. Do you find it still usable when it looks like that? Or is this normal for the Fuji Hunt chemicals?

This is normal color. Part of this is my lighting. Material is probably about 1.5 years old. I got a bunch of this from a friend that closed his shop. I've passed 4 or 5 cases of various Fuji film and paper on to my young enthusiast friend. Normal color is described as pale straw color. The starter kit is like Kodak a 3 part mix, this is just straight replenisher. I use fresh Kodak Alaris Flexicolor chemicals. I don't like fiddling with this even when it was free.
I'm not going to use this stuff, I am clearing out my darkroom, this is going to my friends.
Crazy world, it's either feast or famine. One man's junk is another man's treasure. I bet I had 150 lbs of this stuff. I still maintain the capability to process everything. Black and white, fiber base printing is what I love best.

 

[mshchem]

That developer looks rather dark, suggesting a fairly advanced stage of oxidation. Do you find it still usable when it looks like that? Or is this normal for the Fuji Hunt chemicals?

I went back and looked at this. Yes this developer does look darker than new. The Fuji developer is definitely got some color to the concentrates both film and paper developer replenisher. I once saw a guy develop prints in Dektol that looked like maple pancake syrup. Horrible, it worked.
I won't use anything that looks off. Kodak HC-110 concentrate looks like this and still works.

 

[afriman]

I definitely wouldn't use colour developer that looks like this. When I first started doing my own colour processing back in the 70s, I used Photocolor II kits, where the developer came as a one-part concentrate (like the developer in your picture). Here in South Africa the demand for these kits was quite small, and they tended to sit on dealers' shelves for quite some time. PE and others have from time to time commented how single part colour developer concentrates age quite rapidly, and this was my experience with a couple of newly-bought kits where the developer had already become substantially darker than pale straw (or white wine, as the Photolcolor II instructions referred to the color). After a few reels of underdeveloped negatives I refused to use developer that looked "like sherry" (again according to the Photocolor instructions) and returned the kits to the shop.

I know there are quite a few black and white developers that still work perfectly well after having turned the colour of Guinness , like those you mentioned (another one is Rodinal), but that is definitely not the case with colour developer. The same applies to E6 first developer, which will begin giving you underdeveloped (dark) slides as soon as it's become noticeably darker than pale straw -- but there you can still compensate to some extent by increasing development time.

 

[mshchem]

Don't worry I'm not using this. This is not a single component developer. You need to mix a 3 part starter tank, completely different kits to have developer. This is just a replenisher. It's rather dark, it's not something I intend to use. This is stuff I'm tossing out. I have seen fresh Fuji cartridges and the developer replenisher looks tan like HC-110
All three components of Kodak Flexicolor C 41 developer replenisher are water clear.

 

[afriman]

I realise that. My comments were really intended for others who might think that the colour of that replenisher would also be "normal" for fresh developer.