C-41 Developing Underexposed, Saturated and Green Tint

[Anthony Huynh]

I use Cinestill's C-41 Developing kit, keeping it in non-transparent containers, and try my best to keep them in a cool place. I've developed many rolls before and try my best to keep the chemicals at temperature before pouring them into my tank. I shot a roll of Kodak Gold 200 (new) on a Olympus Mju 1, but half the photos came out grainy and greenish. I have kept this roll in the camera for about 2 months and the earlier shots are fine (ex. Mil. Falcon). Later shots were taken outdoors which this film should've performed fine, but came out too contrasty. Any ideas where I could be going wrong?

 

[Tel]

I'm not familiar with the camera, but all of these shots seem to me to be underexposed. The Falcon less so than the other shots, but still under. Underexposure can cause color shifts.

 

[Anthony Huynh]

I'm not familiar with the camera, but all of these shots seem to me to be underexposed. The Falcon less so than the other shots, but still under. Underexposure can cause color shifts.

Ah I see, the Olympus Mju/ Infinity Stylus has a f/3.5 lens and shooting at iso 200. Possibly the angle of the sun was not in the right position or was cloudy. Thanks for the insight!

 

[koraks]

I've developed many rolls before

In the same developer? I agree with @Tel that your problem seems at least partly related to insufficient exposure, but you may have an issue with developer fatigue on top of that. C41 can get unpredictable if you reuse a small volume (let's say 1 liter) over a longer period of time and for many rolls of film.
Finally, your color casts are mostly a result of scanning; the scanner/computer tries to create a 'normal' (whatever that is) image out of a very thin negative, which results in severely skewing the color balance. This is why scanning is a problematic way to determine color accuracy of C41 negatives, unless you know exactly what you're doing.

 

[foc]

The image of your negative shown what appears to me to be underexposed negatives. The edge marking look ok (although it isn't a clear indicator) that the film appears to be developed correctly.

The image with the tower and sky in the background (also in the negative) has a lot of sky and this could have fooled the light reading (back light) and also the sun appears to be from the side which would suggest an evening/sunset light, all of which doesn't help to get correct exposure.

The image on the steps of The Met is very underexposed looking. I suspect your scanning software has made corrections to try to produce an acceptable image, resulting in high contrast and exaggerating film grain.

 

[Tel]

Ah I see, the Olympus Mju/ Infinity Stylus has a f/3.5 lens and shooting at iso 200. Possibly the angle of the sun was not in the right position or was cloudy. Thanks for the insight!

Not what I meant. The combination of an auto-exposure camera and a slow film stock (ISO 200 is not a fast film) is asking your tools to do things they were not designed to do. I am assuming that the later frames are darker because there was less light on the scene; if that's not the case, you may have a failure of your camera's meter to read the light correctly. Could be bad batteries or just age, but the negs are clearly underexposed--there's almost no detail in the shadows there.

 

[pardesi]

Underexposure was my initial reaction. As for half the roll being fine and the other not, my guess would be that you inadvertently changed some setting on the camera, but then I looked up the camera and it has no settings to change, and the metering system on that camera is supposed to be pretty good. So why was half the roll well exposed and not the other half?

I cannot say for sure. You didn't post pictures from the first half that you feel came out well, so there's no way to compare. I see two areas where there might be problems. First, you are probably using depleted chemicals. Your kit uses blix instead of separate bleach and fix, which is not optimal and is especially problematic when depleted. The greenish tint can be caused by a temperature problem with the developer, but more likely depleted chemicals. Second, the scanning seems to be responsible for a big part of the problem. The negatives you posted are capable of producing much better images. (See attached.). You did not say how you were scanning your negatives.

To troubleshoot, you need to run a roll through with the camera on a tripod in good lighting, preferably not direct sunlight. Send the roll to a good lab or at least process in fresh chemicals. If the pictures come out well, as I suspect they will, then you know the problem was not the camera and was probably the processing and scanning. I doubt the film was the problem, as 2 months in the camera is not an issue.