Blue and yellow shifts in C-41 development

Cholentpot · Jan 13, 2020

Hi,

I've been getting shifts in my blues and yellows when developing. At first I blamed it on my chemicals as I may have mixed them wrong. I'm on my second press kit and the colors are still off.

Is the a time or temp issue? I use a blix kit, one of the Dev, Blix, Stab 1 liter boxes.

I didn't used to have this trouble but since I started using one of those immersion heaters it seems that things have gone a little haywire. I've also been on a water softener recently. Can any of these be effecting my process?

Thanks.

koraks · Jan 13, 2020

Scans or optical prints? Examples?

Cholentpot · Jan 13, 2020

koraks said:
Scans or optical prints? Examples?

Part of the negative. Portra 400NC

Inverted

eatfrog · Jan 13, 2020

you cant just invert a color negative to get correct colors. it is a much more complicated process than that. check out negative lab pro for example: https://www.negativelabpro.com/

Cholentpot · Jan 13, 2020

eatfrog said:
you cant just invert a color negative to get correct colors. it is a much more complicated process than that. check out negative lab pro for example: https://www.negativelabpro.com/

The photo is inverted and edited. The only thing left out is messing with the contrast and levels.

I've done hundreds of rolls. I may not be perfect but I can spot when there is a problem. The chair for instance is supposed to be yellow, at this point of the edit it should not be lime.

This is final with levels. There should not be a blue cast, the chair is still off and the skin tones are awful.

Yes, I did the proper white balance, adjusted the individual levels and everything else.

Refer to the negative to see that the colors are off.

This is what I generally aim for. Not perfect, but good enough.

Cholentpot · Jan 13, 2020

eatfrog said:
you cant just invert a color negative to get correct colors. it is a much more complicated process than that. check out negative lab pro for example: https://www.negativelabpro.com/

Sorry, my reply came off as a little rude.

I understand that there is more to editing color film than just flipping the image. I've spent the better part of a decade honing this in. The issue is in the development not the scanning. I more or less perfected my scanning method. I introduced a few changes over the past while to my development and am wondering if these changes have messed with my processing.

I'm going to run a roll at a slightly higher temp tonight and see if anything is different.

Also, these issues are across many rolls of many stock and speed. Most fresh film and some expired but well stored and frozen.

pentaxuser · Jan 13, 2020

Is the cruisecleveland shot your home developed negative and is your print made optically or an inverted scan? If the answers to both questions are yes then can you think of what changes occurred between these two occasions. Clearly something has changed in the two inverted scans. If the second the chair looks much more yellow( in fact had you shown me only the second "print" I would never have said that the chair was anything but yellow) Also in the second scan the blue is less washed- out.

If the neg photo shows the colours are off then can you say what were you expecting it to be like to be correct?

What might help is a shot of the negative of cruisecleveland.

Finally if you only scan, make alterations via the scanning software and then inkjet from that, is the real problem for you that you cannot make enough alterations to then make a good print?

pentaxuser

Cholentpot · Jan 13, 2020

pentaxuser said:
Is the cruisecleveland shot your home developed negative and is your print made optically or an inverted scan? If the answers to both questions are yes then can you think of what changes occurred between these two occasions. Clearly something has changed in the two inverted scans. If the second the chair looks much more yellow( in fact had you shown me only the second "print" I would never have said that the chair was anything but yellow) Also in the second scan the blue is less washed- out.

If the neg photo shows the colours are off then can you say what were you expecting it to be like to be correct?

What might help is a shot of the negative of cruisecleveland.

Finally if you only scan, make alterations via the scanning software and then inkjet from that, is the real problem for you that you cannot make enough alterations to then make a good print?

pentaxuser

The cruise is home developed and an inverted scan

The changes that have happened is I started using an immersion heater and moved to a house with a water softener.

As for the cruise negative here it is

My issue is that the negatives are far off enough for me that I can't adjust to satisfaction. if you look close at the chair you can see digital artifacts creeping in from over manipulation. I've had to basically delete a whole spectrum of color to get a passable image.

Really what bothers me is I know I can do much better. I've done better and I just have to find where I'm going wrong. Does developing too cold lead to these kinds of shifts or does developing too warm? Is my water now no good for color due to using a softener and I should now switch over to distilled? My B&W stuff looks just fine. My cameras are metering just fine too. Film is fresh. Stored well, shot well, light safe too.

It's down to tackling what my weak link is.

MattKing · Jan 13, 2020

What sort of water softener are you using?

foc · Jan 13, 2020

Cholentpot said:
but since I started using one of those immersion heaters it seems that things have gone a little haywire

Can you explain this a little bit more, please.

Without a control strip and densitometer reading it can be hard to pinpoint.

From just a quick look at your negative shown, it appears to lack some contrast. This could be a dev temp problem or time issue but would need more details of your process and workflow.
Since the neg doesn't look like the dev is contaminated, I would check your bleach and fix.

You could be getting retained silver if the bleach temp is too low, or low activity. You can check for retained silver by holding the negative, emulsion side up, and tilting it towards a light source. if you can see any part of it shiny (silver like or the neg looks to change to a positive) then you have retained silver.
If the fix is under temp or low activity you can get a cloudy appearance in the negs.

You could try rebleaching & refixing the negative (the one of the girl in the bluetop) rescan and see does that improve anything.

Let us know how you get on, please.

pentaxuser · Jan 13, 2020

I agree that it is a question of deciding what has gone wrong and frustratingly for you, all I can say is that I doubt it is your water softener. In the U.K. water softness varies considerably and yet it doesn't affect negatives here. Temperature I cannot comment on but I presume you checked the temp anyway?

I was trying to look for the same colours in both negs and in terms of colour or intensity they are not easy to compare but yes the two negatives do have a different look. The kid at the table neg looks to be, if anything, overdeveloped compared to the cruisecleveland. I once had colours similar to yours on my negatives and I had overdeveloped the film by about 30 secs but then all the colours on the print looked over-saturated.

Have you managed to make good inverted scans of the other negatives or do they all look as intense in terms of colours as the kid at the table one ?

Most importantly perhaps, I need to add that I optically print my negatives via RA4 and frankly do not know enough about scanning to make more meaningful comments on this aspect.

Sorry

pentaxuser

Cholentpot · Jan 13, 2020

MattKing said:
What sort of water softener are you using?

rainsoft system. Came with the house, joys of former foreclosed lots. Has the big salt bin and a carbon filter, the whole nine yards that i'd never pay for out of pocket but someone who owned this place plunked down 10k for a system.

foc said:
Can you explain this a little bit more, please.

Without a control strip and densitometer reading it can be hard to pinpoint.

From just a quick look at your negative shown, it appears to lack some contrast. This could be a dev temp problem or time issue but would need more details of your process and workflow.
Since the neg doesn't look like the dev is contaminated, I would check your bleach and fix.

You could be getting retained silver if the bleach temp is too low, or low activity. You can check for retained silver by holding the negative, emulsion side up, and tilting it towards a light source. if you can see any part of it shiny (silver like or the neg looks to change to a positive) then you have retained silver.
If the fix is under temp or low activity you can get a cloudy appearance in the negs.

You could try rebleaching & refixing the negative (the one of the girl in the bluetop) rescan and see does that improve anything.

Let us know how you get on, please.

No indication of a bad fix when holding up the negs. Lack of contrast would be that it was an under exposed frame. That wouldn't explain the color shifts though.

The only thing I can think of is I mixed the blix in the wrong order. Part B and then part A. That shouldn't effect things though. This same thing happened with my last kit and I did mix correctly.

pentaxuser said:
I agree that it is a question of deciding what has gone wrong and frustratingly for you, all I can say is that I doubt it is your water softener. In the U.K. water softness varies considerably and yet it doesn't affect negatives here. Temperature I cannot comment on but I presume you checked the temp anyway?

I was trying to look for the same colours in both negs and in terms of colour or intensity they are not easy to compare but yes the two negatives do have a different look. The kid at the table neg looks to be, if anything, overdeveloped compared to the cruisecleveland. I once had colours similar to yours on my negatives and I had overdeveloped the film by about 30 secs but then all the colours on the print looked over-saturated.

Have you managed to make good inverted scans of the other negatives or do they all look as intense in terms of colours as the kid at the table one ?

Most importantly perhaps, I need to add that I optically print my negatives via RA4 and frankly do not know enough about scanning to make more meaningful comments on this aspect.

Sorry

pentaxuser

Over development shouldn't give off colors, it should give more saturated colors I'd think. I've pushed color film before and it doesn't take on the wrong hues.

Interestingly enough not every frame has the same color shifts. Some have more some are almost fine.

I'll know later tonight if I can scan this test roll I ran.

Cholentpot · Jan 13, 2020

Well doggone it! Just pulled the negative off the reel and may have found my culprit.

I've been setting the sous vide at 102 because that's the dev temp. Right?

Well this time I set it to 104 and let the chems get up to 104. I poured at 104 and set the tank into the water bath. This time I took the temps as the dev was in the tank. Wouldn't ya know it? 101.4

Well.

Shame on me for trusting technology. My old way was to set bath at about 105-10 and pour at 104-105. I didn't have no fancy sous vide so I trusted the temp drop. Silly me relying on the developing version of sunny 16.

Next time I'm going a degree or two higher. The negs are drying and I hope to scan a test frame tonight and see if I cracked this.

Cholentpot · Jan 13, 2020

And here's the results 99% dry but I couldn't help myself.

Negative

Inverted

Final

Final still has some of those blues but it's good enough and I'm sure adjusting up another degree or so will solve it. It just might be the film stock though.

Thanks everyone! Talking it out solved my problem.

Lesson learned (Learned again!) USE A THERMOMETER when introducing something new. There is no trust!

pentaxuser · Jan 14, 2020

Cholentpot said:
Well doggone it! Just pulled the negative off the reel and may have found my culprit.

I've been setting the sous vide at 102 because that's the dev temp. Right?

Well this time I set it to 104 and let the chems get up to 104. I poured at 104 and set the tank into the water bath. This time I took the temps as the dev was in the tank. Wouldn't ya know it? 101.4

Well.

Shame on me for trusting technology. My old way was to set bath at about 105-10 and pour at 104-105. I didn't have no fancy sous vide so I trusted the temp drop. Silly me relying on the developing version of sunny 16.

Next time I'm going a degree or two higher. The negs are drying and I hope to scan a test frame tonight and see if I cracked this.

Good news you now have much improved neg scans but If I have followed your changes correctly, the sous-vide is now set at two degrees higher at 104 and the developer temp drops 2.6F" to 101.4

So roughly I'd have expected the same fall when it was set at 102 which is a dev temp of 99.6F. As the correct temp is 100F this was only 0.4F below what it should have been and within the range quoted. So you were formerly 0.4 F below and you are now with the improved negs 1.4 F above the correct temp.

I harbour doubts that a 0.4F drop from the correct temp was enough to give you what you got or that a rise of 1.4 F would get you this kind of an improvement. If anything I'd expect better negs at 99.6 F than at 101.4 F

Whatever the cause is, I feel there may be more to it than temperature

pentaxuser

Cholentpot · Jan 14, 2020

Correct temps for my kit is 102. My former temps would have hovered from 96-98. This development I was more careful about temps in general.

Four to six degrees is a larger margin.

pentaxuser · Jan 14, 2020

Cholentpot said:
Correct temps for my kit is 102. My former temps would have hovered from 96-98. This development I was more careful about temps in general.

Four to six degrees is a larger margin.

That might explain it although if 4-6 is that critical then I wonder how anybody using kits that work at considerably lower temps get decent negs but that's another whole thread

Out of interest what is the kit that needs a dev temp of 102?

Thanks

pentaxuser

Cholentpot · Jan 14, 2020

Unicolor 1L kit.

pentaxuser · Jan 14, 2020

Cholentpot said:
Unicolor 1L kit.

Thanks I see that this is another kit that has a range of temperatures that Unicolor say will work equally well.

pentaxuser

koraks · Jan 14, 2020

Cholentpot said:
rainsoft system. Came with the house, joys of former foreclosed lots. Has the big salt bin and a carbon filter

Don't use that water for mixing up color developer. Ion exchange systems basically add chloride and that's a restrainer. In color developers the effect may be significant leading to reduced saturation and color crossover.

Cholentpot · Jan 14, 2020

koraks said:
Don't use that water for mixing up color developer. Ion exchange systems basically add chloride and that's a restrainer. In color developers the effect may be significant leading to reduced saturation and color crossover.

Aha!

Someone with some knowledge of what I suspected. Stick with the 'ol wally world distilled?

koraks · Jan 14, 2020

Well, I'd be hesitant to use ion exchange water in this specific application. I'm generally not squeamish about these things, but this one is tricky. Doesn't have to be distilled per se; demineralized will do nicely.
Incidentally we just got a dehumidifier for our laundry room at home. Conveniently it creates distilled water as a byproduct...

Cholentpot · Jan 14, 2020

koraks said:
Well, I'd be hesitant to use ion exchange water in this specific application. I'm generally not squeamish about these things, but this one is tricky. Doesn't have to be distilled per se; demineralized will do nicely.
Incidentally we just got a dehumidifier for our laundry room at home. Conveniently it creates distilled water as a byproduct...

It seems to be fine for B&W though.

The rinse should be fine with the ion exchanged water?

koraks · Jan 14, 2020

Cholentpot said:
It seems to be fine for B&W though.

I bet it is and wouldn't hesitate using it there myself. Same for wash, mixing fixer etc. I'd only hesitate with color developers specifically.

Cholentpot · Jan 14, 2020

koraks said:
I bet it is and wouldn't hesitate using it there myself. Same for wash, mixing fixer etc. I'd only hesitate with color developers specifically.

Gotcha. I'll make a note of this for the next batch I mix up.

Blue and yellow shifts in C-41 development

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