C-41 film in C-22 chemicals

Hello everyone,

Just been talking to a friend about colour film processes, and we both wondered what could happen if you developed C-41 film in C-22 process chemicals.

I can imagine this having been a problem in 1972 when Kodak brought in C-41 to superseed C-22 and how they used weird/cool cassettes to warn off most processors, but i'm sure a few slipped through to the C-22 batches now and again. Would there be massive colour shifts and under/uver development, or just mildish tints?

If I can mix up the chemistry I might even give it a shot as I've been told C-22 is "VERY EASY" but I won't hold my breath.

Thanks for any replys Mike

This question seems to be asked over and over. What you will get is poor color fidelity and color cross-over between the layers. This is due to different chemistry including a different color developing agent than the one recommended. If you can mix up the chemistry then why not use C-41.

Color fidelity is just one of the issues you will encounter, and one that can be mostly corrected in digital post processing. In fact I have heard from people that they process C41 film in RA4 chemistry (cheap!!! ) and allegedly get decent results after scanning (obviously they don't enlarge optically).

The bigger problem that I foresee is color stability. A lot of effort has been spent on color processes to obtain long term stable colors, and anyone looking at 30 year old color prints (faded, strong color cast) can confirm that this effort was very, very necessary. These days Kodak and Fuji claim that properly C41/E6/RA4 processed materials are more or less archival for many decades.

But if you cross process, you throw all this effort away and are completely on your own. Unless your images are for immediate consumption only (read Lomo), I'd stay away from incorrect processing.

I almost always do my serious stuff in black and white, usually Pan F Plus, and a bit of colour stuff using the odd roll of slide film and Kodak Gold. I was just a bit curious as I have a couple of rolls of ultra cheap (£1, ~$0.60) film to play with and wasn't satisfied with how it came out of C-41 (Very pale colours, but quite nice for beach scenes oddly).

I might try it if I can get the chemicals cheap, but that's doubtful, just a thought though

Thanks anyway - Mike

You'll struggle to find the required CD-3 (and indeed CD-1, CD-2 and CD-4) at all nowadays in the UK, since Silverprint stopped carrying it. You'd have to get it from someone like Moersch in Germany, and it wouldn't be cheap (shipping) ...

Too bad you're not in the US, CD-3 is easily had here, and then I would send you a few acutely C-22 rolls you could test (and one I would like processed that's been sitting in my fridge... hehe).

I also don't see this question often, I see the reverse, film that's C-22 souped in C-41 and how to do that correctly, but not the other way around.

Llamarama said:

I almost always do my serious stuff in black and white, usually Pan F Plus, and a bit of colour stuff using the odd roll of slide film and Kodak Gold. I was just a bit curious as I have a couple of rolls of ultra cheap (£1, ~$0.60) film to play with and wasn't satisfied with how it came out of C-41 (Very pale colours, but quite nice for beach scenes oddly).

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I am a bit surprised that you got very pale colors. Film which is that cheap is usually consumer film which tends to be more saturated. Is there a chance that this film is way past its expiration date or that there was some processing error?

Llamarama said:

I might try it if I can get the chemicals cheap, but that's doubtful, just a thought though

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While Moersch may be more expensive that Silverprint, they do have more or less complete stock of all compounds which you need for mixing color developers, bleaches and fixers. Shipping costs within EU are quite reasonable assuming you order more than just a small quantity of a single compound. The main question is if you want to order all these chemicals for just a single experiment with quite uncertain outcome ...

Rudeofus said:

I am a bit surprised that you got very pale colors. Film which is that cheap is usually consumer film which tends to be more saturated. Is there a chance that this film is way past its expiration date or that there was some processing error?



While Moersch may be more expensive that Silverprint, they do have more or less complete stock of all compounds which you need for mixing color developers, bleaches and fixers. Shipping costs within EU are quite reasonable assuming you order more than just a small quantity of a single compound. The main question is if you want to order all these chemicals for just a single experiment with quite uncertain outcome ...

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I highly disagree that consumer film is MORE saturated, I've NEVER experienced that, it's always the other way around, consumer film is dull compared to pro film from my experience.

Thats a shame about the CD-3, I'm guessing it's not just a case of souping chemicals like Parodinal or Caffenol?

It's Agfaphoto Vista Plus 200 if anyone's interested, made in Japan, so perhaps a variant on an old Agfa/Fuji emulsion? Expired 2015 so it *should* be fine, but it was stored near some of my harsher chemicals by mistake, so that may have affected it. I'm not sure, but I liked the effect and I haven't been able to reproduce it since.

I'm on a bit of an obsolete film trip at the minute, so it'll probably pass in a bit. I'll keep an eye out for old C-22 kits though, may be useful and old photography stuff like that pops up reasonably regularly at an antiques fair close to me every now and again.

StoneNYC said:

I highly disagree that consumer film is MORE saturated, I've NEVER experienced that, it's always the other way around, consumer film is dull compared to pro film from my experience.

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The saying goes that consumer film was used with cheap P&S cameras which had terrible lenses and inept photographers, so saturation had to be higher to compensate for lens flare and poor lighting. Obviously there are special pro films which are extremely saturated (Velvia, E100VS, Ektar), but there were many very saturated consumer films around that have since disappeared from the market, e.g. Kodak Ultracolor.

Llamarama said:

I'm on a bit of an obsolete film trip at the minute, so it'll probably pass in a bit. I'll keep an eye out for old C-22 kits though, may be useful and old photography stuff like that pops up reasonably regularly at an antiques fair close to me every now and again.

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From what I read, C-41 was introduced in the early 70ies and quickly replaced C-22. Even if you can find one of these C-22 kits, its ingredients have become inactive by now, see (there was a url link here which no longer exists) thread.

In my opinion there is nothing special about the C-22 process, it is simply a CD-3 based color developer which will give you some off colors. If you want to try processing your C-41 film in a CD-3 based color developer, an RA-4 kit is by far the cheapest and simplest option for doing this.

Rudeofus said:

The saying goes that consumer film was used with cheap P&S cameras which had terrible lenses and inept photographers, so saturation had to be higher to compensate for lens flare and poor lighting. Obviously there are special pro films which are extremely saturated (Velvia, E100VS, Ektar), but there were many very saturated consumer films around that have since disappeared from the market, e.g. Kodak Ultracolor.

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I was under the impression that UC was a professional film since the canister said professional on it

Gold in my experience was never ultra saturated, and neither was Kodacolor.

The amateur or consumer films were about 10 - 20% more saturated with higher contrast due to the poorer lenses with more flare on the P&S cameras as compared to the pro cameras. I worked on 400 Gold and knew the aims.

MP films are the lowest in contrast due to the pro quality of the equipment and cameramen. Print materials were also adjusted for contrast to match the films intended for use with a given print material. There was Ektacolor professional paper and Ektacolor 20 paper for pro and consumer use.

The entire Portra family is a pro family of films and Ektar falls somewhere in between.

C-22 was replaced by C41 as the process that got better color, sharpness and grain. Removal of benzyl alcohol was a major step in improving sharpness and the high temperature aided in the release of the DIR fragments (along with CD4) to improve sharpness and grain.

C41 also reduced pollution by removing Ferricyanide.

PE

Llamarama said:

It's Agfaphoto Vista Plus 200 if anyone's interested, made in Japan, so perhaps a variant on an old Agfa/Fuji emulsion? Expired 2015 so it *should* be fine, but it was stored near some of my harsher chemicals by mistake, so that may have affected it. I'm not sure, but I liked the effect and I haven't been able to reproduce it since.
.

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I use quite a bit of Vista Plus 200 (at £1 per roll at Poundland it's a bargain!). I'm a critical sort of guy when it comes to my own photos, but find it good for general use, with a fairly normal contrast level. (I've believed for a long time that there are no "bad" films around, but that there has been a lot of reallybad processing and printing over the years by mini-lab and mail order operators).

Photo Engineer said:

The amateur or consumer films were about 10 - 20% more saturated with higher contrast due to the poorer lenses with more flare on the P&S cameras as compared to the pro cameras. I worked on 400 Gold and knew the aims.

MP films are the lowest in contrast due to the pro quality of the equipment and cameramen. Print materials were also adjusted for contrast to match the films intended for use with a given print material. There was Ektacolor professional paper and Ektacolor 20 paper for pro and consumer use.

The entire Portra family is a pro family of films and Ektar falls somewhere in between.

C-22 was replaced by C41 as the process that got better color, sharpness and grain. Removal of benzyl alcohol was a major step in improving sharpness and the high temperature aided in the release of the DIR fragments (along with CD4) to improve sharpness and grain.

C41 also reduced pollution by removing Ferricyanide.

PE

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Strange, I always found Gold to be low in saturation... Is this out of circumstance? I was shooting with the same camera and lens for 15 years, a canon AE-1 and 50mm 1.8 kit lens... But I also used walgreens to process my film.

In the earlier years, you had to send it out, and then later they got 1 hour photo, but it cost more so I didn't always want to kill all of my allowance on the 1 hour cost, so I did kodak send out a lot.

I'll have to try and scan some negatives, sadly the images that I'm happiest about as a kid... I can't seem to find any of the negs just prints... Hey I was 12+ what do you expect? lol

Either way they never seemed overly saturated compared to the pro films. I believe you, just wondering why my experience differs. The canon lens isn't a pro lens, but it's not a crappy lens either.

Stone:

It all comes down to the photo-finishing.

The Vericolour films that were then current pro emulsions were definitely less saturated and contrasty than the Kodacolour emulsions. But the amateur labs would print with less contrast and saturation.

People who liked lots of saturation tended to shoot fuji slides anyways

MattKing said:

Stone:

It all comes down to the photo-finishing.

The Vericolour films that were then current pro emulsions were definitely less saturated and contrasty than the Kodacolour emulsions. But the amateur labs would print with less contrast and saturation.

People who liked lots of saturation tended to shoot fuji slides anyways

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As a child I really didn't have access to Fuji anything... There was Walgreens film, and Kodak Gold/Kodacolor, and that's it... And only one walgreens I could ride my bike to safely.

It seems to me there's a subtle underlying theme that may have but kodak in the butt that no one ever really discusses.

There's a reason that customers went and shot digital so quickly, and is a reason why they have this believe that film is low quality and digital is high-quality, and most of it has nothing to do with reality of the film itself and the medium, but the way in which it was processed and displayed.

The biggest and most obvious example to me is something like 110 film, which as PE had mentioned was studied and Kodak found it to be good enough to make 8x10 prints, and supposedly had a fine-grained nature in the color films that they felt it was a good option for people.

What they didn't seem to take into account was the end process, even if you use a lower quality camera lens that was plastic, supposedly the images would still be sharp enough for 8 x 10, but when you're using a crappy local process lab that is not a professional lab, and then have it printed by that same lab that is not a professional lab, your results and a poor, and it seems Kodak's testing didn't take this into account at all.

This is probably very much true for 35mm film as well, which also came back pretty poor sometimes from the local labs that I used, again I was a kid, and I just use the lab that my mom used, which was Walgreens, sometimes we would use the one hour photo, put most of the time we would use the 24 hour to save money, either way was essentially the same machine just that the queue was pushback to slow times for processing, but also probably meant a reuse of chemicals that were overly pretty exhausted and contaminated.

Unfortunately I also was never able to shoot slide film until my adult years. This I regret. But perhaps it's for the best.

Anyway, I think it's sort of the same thing when it comes to using Kodak's printer equipment, it seems they have a bunch of low quality printers with a good amount of ink, better than most, in terms of the amount that they're getting, but people are often willing to pay more to get higher quality standards these days than they used to be, and I feel that they've tarnished their name by using the Kodak cheapo printer that was in the market, and now when people think about Kodak all they think of our cheap printers, not high end ones... I hope this can change for them. However anyone that probably used one of those printers now associates Kodak with poor quality in that respect too, again it's one of those functions of the end process being done by non-kodak technicians being more poor than the lab testing done by professionals in the plant...

These are my OBSERVATIONS based on what I have seen and others have told me... Not facts.

Ah, the evolution of photofinishing.

A long, long time ago, before even I was aware of it (), Kodak colour film could only be processed and printed in Kodak labs - the chemistry and process was proprietary.

The US Justice department stepped in, and forced Kodak to sell chemistry and paper to competitors, and make available the details of the process to competitors.

As a result, a plethora of alternatives entered the marketplace. Some were good/great, some were not.
Some were cheap, others were not.
Some employed well trained, skilled and intelligent staff, while some ...

Photofinishing provided excellent cash flow and customer traffic, so the market was very competitive. Unfortunately, it also became very price sensitive.

Kodak (and others) had a number of programs that would help labs maintain high standards. There were a number of manufacturers of processing equipment, and the quality and the price of that equipment also varied greatly. All of the higher quality options tended to result in higher costs to the consumer.

Kodak and its competitors were selling film into a market that was serviced by this great variety of photo-finishers, and to customers who, to a great extent, were making decisions on photo-finishers based first on price and convenience factors, and secondly on quality.

110 film was shot in generally acceptable quality point and shoot cameras with short focal length lenses (and therefore excellent depth of field). There were also higher quality cameras available and used.

In general, the results from 110 film that came back from the better, more expensive photo-finishers exceeded the results from 35mm film sent to cheaper, poor quality photo-finishers.

Despite that, the majority of customers still tended to choose the faster and cheaper photo-finishing options.

I don't know that the parallels extend to the inkjet printer business that Kodak became involved in. They never really got involved in the medium quality printers that some people use now to do their enlargements. Instead they attempted to serve both the low end consumer market (think $100-$200 printers) and the high end commercial printing market (think commercial packaging and display materials, not necessarily photographs). There was no mid-range - sort of like being involved in 110 film and 8x10 film, but nothing in between.

Kodak was forced to drop the consumer printer business, because it wasn't nearly profitable enough. They are now focussing on the high end, more profitable stuff.

Rudeofus said:

From what I read, C-41 was introduced in the early 70ies and quickly replaced C-22.

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C-41 finally succeeded all different still CN processes. However that succession varied for the different manufacturers and took decades.