Bleach Bypassing and getting Cyan Tones

[CalebK]

Hey all!

I've been experimenting with Bleach Bypassing, specifically Portra 400. The beginning of the year I shot these Images.

Heavy Cyan tones.... I kinda like it!







With More testing I Shot this shot....



I like it as well and is what I should have probably expected in the first place BUT... I want to get the Cyan tones. I've come to the conclusion that "I messed up" in developing somewhere but don't know where.

I was wondering what part of development I should play with to get a cyan cast to the image.

Did I maybe overextend the life of the chemicals... maybe I got the temperature wrong on accident... maybe contamination of the developer?

I need a person more wise in the subject to help out.

Thanks!

 

[halfaman]

What processing steps did you follow?

 

[Donald Qualls]

Underdevelopment (temperature too low or too short time) will tend to affect the deepest color layer the most -- which is the cyan-forming layer. Too little cyan dye in the negative will reverse as a cyan cast in the print or scan.

 

[CalebK]

On the top 2 images I used Cinestill c41 and the 3rd I used Arista
Develop 3:30
Water Stop Bath :30
Rapid Fixer 6:30
Rinse 5:00
Color Stab 1:00

I unfortunately didn't take notes that first time around. The 3rd image all I really did differently is change out the Water Stop for a chemical stop bath.
So when I think back, all I can come up with is that I accidentally got some of my Blix from the roll before into my developer OR my chemicals were over extended a bit and I forgot to add the 2% in the developing time or the temperature (but I regulate the temperature pretty consistently)

 

[halfaman]

First deviation is that seems you are using a rapid/acid fixer. C-41 fixer is and must be neutral (pH 6.5). PE stated that color films are sensitive to fixer pH. I would add also a seconds 30 seconds rinses between the developer and fixer.

I did once a Bleach-Bypass using a standard B/W stop bath after development, two 30 seconds washes, and fix using Rollei RXN neutral fixer in 1+4 dilution for 4 minutes and a half. Everything run well.

 

[koraks]

Part of the "problem" here is likely what happens in the digital part of the process. Scanner software tends to perform extensive corrections especially when scanning color negatives. These can be further modified/corrected in further manual processing. In all images there is a heavy cyan cast, so if that's what you're after, you're on the right track. I'd suggest looking at digital post processing (or filtering when doing ra4 prints) to get what you're after and not so much negative development.

 

[CalebK]

Part of the "problem" here is likely what happens in the digital part of the process. Scanner software tends to perform extensive corrections especially when scanning color negatives. These can be further modified/corrected in further manual processing. In all images there is a heavy cyan cast, so if that's what you're after, you're on the right track. I'd suggest looking at digital post processing (or filtering when doing ra4 prints) to get what you're after and not so much negative development.

@koraks You are totally right. After some investigating earlier I figured out it was my way of inverting the negative. My original try in bleach bypassing, I only underexposed by one stop making my negative overexposed once bleach bypassing it. So to get as much range as I could, I scanned as a positive and inverted it in Lightroom and balanced to the darks of the image, thus turning my image cyan. I wish I got there chemically but At least I know what happened to get me there.

Thanks for all the help to get to the bottom of it!

 

[koraks]

No problem! Color negative is always a little tricky in the digital domain because the film and c41 process are so specifically tailored to match the idiosyncracies of the dyes used and the requirements of ra4 paper.