C-41 and E-6 home processing

[W_Taylor76]

I am wanting to try at home C-41 and E-6 processing, and I have never done it before. Is this something that is really labor intensive and do you need to buy all new equipment in order to do it? Another question I have is this something that is worth getting into or should I just stick with sending it to a lab.?

 

[Sirius Glass]

With the right equipment it is not much harder than developing black & white film. The right equipment keeps the film at the right temperature. I highly recommend you buy a Jobo processor is you want to have great consistent results from the start.

 

[Donald Qualls]

And after you recover from fainting at the price of a Jobo Processor, look on eBay for a "sous vide" cooker -- these will maintain a water bath within 1 degree F for hours at a time; that keeps your chemicals the right temperature.

My method is to load the film (same as B&W), fill the deep dishpan and start the sous vide, put the bottles in the water, and go do something else for an hour or so to let the bottles warm up. From there, it's barely different from black and white -- just more steps. For C-41, it's not even necessarily more steps, since most kits combine the bleach and fixer to make "blix" -- developer, optional stop bath or water rinse, blix, wash just like B&W (only in warmer water) and final rinse which does the same job as PhotoFlo, but isn't as optional (it preserves the film as well as preventing water spots).

For E-6, there's an additional "first developer," stop bath (highly recommended, since this needs to be a precise level of development), water wash to remove the acid, fogging bath and color developer (often combined in kits), bleach, fix (same as C-41, often combined into "blix"), wash, and final rinse.

To paraphrase a juggler I saw once, this is not more difficult, it just has more steps.

In some ways, C-41 is simpler than black and white -- because everything gets the exact same process. No looking up a Massive Dev Chart, deciding what dilution to use, wondering if the other dev chart having a significantly different time means that one is right, or this one is, doing a power calculation to correct for the fact your darkroom won't get down to 20C for another two months (and then it'll be 13C most of the winter)... C-41 is always 38C/100F (usually done as a drift-through starting at 39C/102F) for 3:15, always same bleach time, always same fix time, no matter what C-41 film you're processing. If I had a little warming cabinet (opposite of a dorm fridge) to keep my chemical bottles in, I could process a tank of C-41 in about a half hour, from turning off the light to load the film to hanging it to dry.

 

[Sirius Glass]

The price of a Jobo Processor is not high when one realizes that because of the ease of use and consistent high quality results one will use it more often and because of the higher use the amortized price comes quite low over your use and enjoyment. After all you are interested in enjoyment and good use for great results.

 

[Tel]

Doing your own C-41 can save you a lot of money. Step one is to ignore the manufacturer's estimate of the number of rolls you can process. I use the dry-powder kits from Unicolor or FPP (they seem to be the same) and mix up a liter of chemistry at a time. I immediately divide this into to sets of 500mL brown glass bottles. 500 mL is enough to immerse one roll of film up to 120 size. I can soup ten rolls with each set of bottles, for a total of 20 from the whole kit. (I've gotten more than 30 in the past, but I like to err on the side of caution.) Shelf life can be anywhere from 4 months to 6, although some people I know have stored it longer. I define a roll as anything from a roll of 35mm to 127, 120 or two sheets of 5x7 in a Unicolor drum. How much does your lab charge?

 

[grat]

@Tel: Do you lengthen your development times?

 

[Вormental_old]

@W_Taylor76 I was in your shoes just a few months ago and my C41 negatives came out great, even better than some labs I had been using. I started by buying the Cinestill C41 Kit (liquid), their temperature control tool and just followed the instructions. Here's my routine:

• Heat up the water bath to 103F using their sous vide tool.
  
• Keep the bottles with chemicals in the bath, they should reach 103F as well. The reason it's 103F and not the 100F is because you'll inevitably lose some temperature when pouring the developer into a tank.
  
• Get the blix and rinse out and put aside. They will cool down a bit but it doesn't matter.
• Start the development using their instructions (I agitated by inversion, every 30 seconds, keeping the tank partially submerged in the water bath in-between)

This was my "routine #1". It's dead-simple, reproducible and it worked really well.
Here's a shot from my very first C41 roll:

After I exhausted the Cinestill kit, I have switched to Kodak's Flexicolor chemistry. The process is a bit more complicated as you have one more step (bleach & fix are separate) and buying and mixing Flexicolor is super annoying, but it's much, much cheaper per roll and some people report improvements in image quality, although TBH I haven't noticed vs the Cinestill Kit, maybe because I didn't abuse it and developed only 6 rolls in it.

I looked into buying a JOBO, but decided to curb my consumerism. The consistency you get with a sous vide is pretty good, but you have to work a bit harder (juggling chems in/out of the water bath, agitating every 30 seconds, etc). In my mind JOBO makes sense if you're doing more than 2 tanks per session, which is not my case.

 

[mshchem]

And after you recover from fainting at the price of a Jobo Processor, look on eBay for a "sous vide" cooker -- these will maintain a water bath within 1 degree F for hours at a time; that keeps your chemicals the right temperature.

My method is to load the film (same as B&W), fill the deep dishpan and start the sous vide, put the bottles in the water, and go do something else for an hour or so to let the bottles warm up. From there, it's barely different from black and white -- just more steps. For C-41, it's not even necessarily more steps, since most kits combine the bleach and fixer to make "blix" -- developer, optional stop bath or water rinse, blix, wash just like B&W (only in warmer water) and final rinse which does the same job as PhotoFlo, but isn't as optional (it preserves the film as well as preventing water spots).

For E-6, there's an additional "first developer," stop bath (highly recommended, since this needs to be a precise level of development), water wash to remove the acid, fogging bath and color developer (often combined in kits), bleach, fix (same as C-41, often combined into "blix"), wash, and final rinse.

To paraphrase a juggler I saw once, this is not more difficult, it just has more steps.

In some ways, C-41 is simpler than black and white -- because everything gets the exact same process. No looking up a Massive Dev Chart, deciding what dilution to use, wondering if the other dev chart having a significantly different time means that one is right, or this one is, doing a power calculation to correct for the fact your darkroom won't get down to 20C for another two months (and then it'll be 13C most of the winter)... C-41 is always 38C/100F (usually done as a drift-through starting at 39C/102F) for 3:15, always same bleach time, always same fix time, no matter what C-41 film you're processing. If I had a little warming cabinet (opposite of a dorm fridge) to keep my chemical bottles in, I could process a tank of C-41 in about a half hour, from turning off the light to load the film to hanging it to dry.

Don't get me wrong, I love my Jobo stuff. But there's many ways, the easiest and neatest are these sous vide things. When I was in 8th grade, I bought E2 in half gallon size and developed my first Ektachrome. I used 1/2 gallon glass Mason canning jars. The 2 liter soda bottle was still at least 15 years into the future. I wrote to Rochester, there were no instructions, some tech service guy copied probably 100 pages and sent it to me in a huge envelope.
You new guys today got it made. All I had was a Timex wrist watch, hot and cold water, a good thermometer, and a Paterson tank.

Get going, buy one of these sous vide things, make sure you get the right one. And chemistry. Plastic tanks work fine, just pre warm the tank. Use what you have start with C-41, stick with one type of film, it helps you adjust and hold color balance.

 

[mshchem]

@W_Taylor76 I was in your shoes just a few months ago and my C41 negatives came out great, even better than some labs I had been using. I started by buying the Cinestill C41 Kit (liquid), their temperature control tool and just followed the instructions. Here's my routine:

• Heat up the water bath to 103F using their sous vide tool.
  
• Keep the bottles with chemicals in the bath, they should reach 103F as well. The reason it's 103F and not the 100F is because you'll inevitably lose some temperature when pouring the developer into a tank.
  
• Get the blix and rinse out and put aside. They will cool down a bit but it doesn't matter.
• Start the development using their instructions (I agitated by inversion, every 30 seconds, keeping the tank partially submerged in the water bath in-between)

This was my "routine #1". It's dead-simple, reproducible and it worked really well.
Here's a shot from my very first C41 roll:

View attachment 257419

After I exhausted the Cinestill kit, I have switched to Kodak's Flexicolor chemistry. The process is a bit more complicated as you have one more step (bleach & fix are separate) and buying and mixing Flexicolor is super annoying, but it's much, much cheaper per roll and some people report improvements in image quality, although TBH I haven't noticed vs the Cinestill Kit, maybe because I didn't abuse it and developed only 6 rolls in it.

I looked into buying a JOBO, but decided to curb my consumerism. The consistency you get with a sous vide is pretty good, but you have to work a bit harder (juggling chems in/out of the water bath, agitating every 30 seconds, etc). In my mind JOBO makes sense if you're doing more than 2 tanks per session, which is not my case.

Avoid the temptation to add to all the stuff. I buy Flexicolor chemistry from Unique photo in NJ. Not sure if you are using the Flexicolor C-41RA Bleach and fixer. This is for minilab fast process. Bleach 1 minute Fixer 1.5 minutes.,wash 3 minutes then Flexicolor final rinse

 

[Athiril]

You have to warm up your chems, at least the developer (others arent as important tbh, they are done to completion, meaning you can underdo them but not overdo them) to 38c, have 44c water on standby ready to go and a plastic paterson tank, presoak with the 44c water, this will bring the internal temperature of the tank, reels and film up to around 38c. Dropping in 38c dev without warming it up will drop your dev temp and you dont want that, even if you keep your tank in a water bath to prewarm it before dev. Once that is done, you can tip the water out, put in the dev at 38c, in a plastic tank itll be stable over the short dev time. Then use your stop bath or bleach step etc, after stop or bleach, the rest of the steps may be conducted in open light. I prefer something like a 1+9 white vinegar stop to preserve my bleach strength and pH.

I would just focus on getting the developer to exact temperature, and not worry as much about the others.

The easiest way I've done it, is the warm water presoak method, and microwaved some developer in a glass beaker, and mixed in some cold developer with that to reach 38c.

 

[awty]

Get a thermometer.
Warm your chemistry up to 39 C. Have a container of hot water at about 45C. Start the process and constantly monitor the temperature, drop the film tank in the hotwater when the temp drops and take it out when reaches 40C. Only have to do for 4 minutes and the other bits aren't as fussy.
Really not hard, as about as complicated as baking a cake.

 

[Tel]

@grat: I do. Typically 5-10 seconds as I near the end of a batch of developer.
@Bormental: Nice!

 

[W_Taylor76]

Thanks for all of the info. This helps a lot in letting me know what to do and that it is a lot easier to do than I thought it would be. It looks like I now need to invest more more into my photography addiction. That should make the wife happy.

 

[Nodda Duma]

When I first started developing color, I was pretty picky and worried a lot about temperatures. Now, after having done it for years in all sorts of formats (up to 8x10), I’m pretty sloppy: Fill up the kitchen sink with hot water at 125F and set the jars of chemicals in the water, go down to the darkroom and load film. Come back and check temperature to see if it’s in the 108-105F range. Yep, so develop away following Arista kit’s instructions. Try to actually agitate correctly (it gets boring).

negs always come out fine. See my color imageS in the Gallery.

Mix fresh if the negatives start getting darker than expected.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Doing your own C-41 can save you a lot of money. Step one is to ignore the manufacturer's estimate of the number of rolls you can process. I use the dry-powder kits from Unicolor or FPP (they seem to be the same) and mix up a liter of chemistry at a time. I immediately divide this into to sets of 500mL brown glass bottles. 500 mL is enough to immerse one roll of film up to 120 size. I can soup ten rolls with each set of bottles, for a total of 20 from the whole kit. (I've gotten more than 30 in the past, but I like to err on the side of caution.) Shelf life can be anywhere from 4 months to 6, although some people I know have stored it longer. I define a roll as anything from a roll of 35mm to 127, 120 or two sheets of 5x7 in a Unicolor drum. How much does your lab charge?

I use the Unicolor 1 liter C-41 kit. I mix all the chemicals, use 500 ml and put it back in the 1 liter bottles. I develop 16 rolls instead of the recommended 12 rolls and never had a problem. I have never tried 20 rolls per kit.

 

[GRHazelton]

And remember that the sous vide is WONDERFUL for cooking a steak! With it you can easily cook your medium rare strip steak medium rare all the way to the lovely crusty exterior you create with either a very hot cast iron skillet, or your gas/charcoal grill. No worry about timing Wonderful for boiled eggs, too.

 

[grat]

... not to mention turning a moderately tough eye-of-round into some of the best deli-style roast beef you've ever had. Takes about 20 hours, though.

 

[GRHazelton]

... not to mention turning a moderately tough eye-of-round into some of the best deli-style roast beef you've ever had. Takes about 20 hours, though.

Care to share the procedure?

 

[grat]

Care to share the procedure?

Nothing complex-- throw in usual suspects, salt, pepper, granulated garlic, that sort of thing, bag and cook for around 20 hours @ 136F, brown via your method of choice (I literally use a MAP torch), slice to preferred thinness, enjoy. General consensus is to avoid fats in the bag, as they can pull flavor out of the meat. I originally went with 22 hours, but it was a little too tender for sandwiches, I felt.

 

[Donald Qualls]

a little too tender for sandwiches,

Is that even possible?!