C41 : Mixing chemicals from different brands

Hi all,

'Cause of too long to be related circumstances, I got an excess of Tetenal BLIX concentrate unopened bottles, used in both C41 and E6 5L kit. In the same time, I had a stock of unprocessed color films, waiting I buy a full C41 kit for homeprocessing them.

Tetenal doesn't seems to offer retail sale of any single bath concentrate, outside of their kits, or at least I didn't see anything like this on my favorite retailers webshops..

Then I considered the Rollei C41 chemicals, where you can buy separately even the different parts of concentrate (part A,B,C for CD), available for exemple from macodirect.de

Looking at the datasheet, times for Color Dev bath and capacity was nearly the same as Tetenal CD, so there is good hope that's almost the same product.

Although from my memory, Tetenal 5L kit use bigger bottles for concentrate, thus Rollei CD bath seems more dilute.

It's rather cheap, so the risk experimenting was weak.

I shot a few Kodak Portra 160 4x5 sheets, of a representative test scene (or I tried to do so...), and processed as usual with my Jobo ATL.

First scans are rather encouraging :

Kodak Portra 160 exposed ISO 100

Rotative processing in a Jobo ATL1 :
* TCD = 3m15s (Rollei)
* Acetic acid Stop bath for 1m
* TBX = 6m (Tetenal)
5 min wash
* 2 min bath with E6 stabilizer

Thanks for reading, any thoughts or comments welcome !

Best regards,

Raphael

Mixing different brands of blix or of bleach and fixer should not show any effect. There might be a possible color balance shift owing to slight degradation of dyes due to pH imbalance, but probably not if C41 bleaches and fix are used. Of course you can expect much larger effects if you have used an older C-22 bleach formula which is contrary to specification. Developers will likely cause larger differences, but likely not more than .5 in any filter pack. I am assuming that pH values are correct and that the temperature and times are as specified. E6 stabilizer and C41 stabilizer (for the older films) are essentially identical. BTW, either works just fine for B&W too, so you don't need to store another bottle.

Hi Mts,

Many thanks for your reply

Just in case, as I reading again my message, maybe I wasn't very clear explaining what "mixing" I have done :
each bath chemical (CD and BX) was prepared using parts (i .e,A,B and C for CD) from the same provider, Rollei for CD bath, and Tetenal for BX.
So it's "mixing" chemical from different brands, when processing one film.

I wasn't sure than I can do this, as I remember reading thing here and there about Tetenal processes specificities.

About Stabilizer bath, I indeed used the Tetenal E6 version instead of the C41 one. They seems however different in the last C41 and E6 Tetenal kit I used :
for C41, concentrate (for 5L) is in a very small bottle (maybe 100ml), Tetenal E6 version is diluted from a greater bottle (500ml) to provide 5L of Stab bath.
Aspect and odor seems also different, maybe there is a stronger formaldehyde odor in E6 bath, IMHO.

Thanks again,

Regards,

Raphael

It's possible, depending on your developing schema, to get carryover of developer into blix, if you are doing everything "one shot" it will not affect outcome.

darkroommike said:

It's possible, depending on your developing schema, to get carryover of developer into blix, if you are doing everything "one shot" it will not affect outcome.

Click to expand...

hi Mike,

Yes, exactly, that's part of the experiment. This is why I (re)used baths as usual, i.e I processed 6 films (35mm equivalent) with a 500 ml preparation. As long as I can see for the moment, no adverse effects so far ! But I need to scan a few photos from the last film in order to judge more accuratly. Even if it's seems hard for me to decide, with C41 negs, if colors are spot on (in contrary of E6).
Thanks, regards,

Raphael

Unlike black & white development, C-41 is standardized so you can mix and match.

For best and most consistent results, always use a stop bath. For E-6, use two; one after each developer followed by a rinse. Be certain not to interchange the stop bath once it is mixed and has been used once. Only one is needed for C41 processing. Separate bleach and fix baths are preferable to a blix, because incomplete bleaching that blix can produce leaves retained silver that may require additional bleaching and fixing.