Caffenol for Color?

Eliot · Jan 21, 2016

Will processing color film using Caffenol produce color negatives or will they end up looking more like a monotone B&W negative?

ruilourosa · Jan 21, 2016

No.

just a shitty monochrome

But there is some attempts to substitute hidroxilamine sulphate in the C-41 formula by coffee. There were also some attempts to use hair dyes to develop color...

Cheers

Rui Lourosa

hjesus · Feb 12, 2016

Eliot said:
Will processing color film using Caffenol produce color negatives or will they end up looking more like a monotone B&W negative?

No, but you can develop C-41 color film with hair dye:

http://caffenolcolor.blogspot.pt/2016/02/color-from-scratch.html

Have fun!

removed account4 · Feb 12, 2016

Eliot said:
Will processing color film using Caffenol produce color negatives or will they end up looking more like a monotone B&W negative?

b/w negative with "the mask"
larry d was removing the mask with super dilute household bleach

YMMV

pdeeh · Feb 12, 2016

hjesus said:
No, but you can develop C-41 color film with hair dye:

I never had much luck with that, though I did have a bit of fun. the results were not great to say the least.

jnanian said:
larry d was removing the mask with super dilute household bleach

YMMV

MMV'd a lot! I could never get that to work, though I did get somewhere with rapid fixer + citric acid (though you have to be careful with that as it quite quickly attacks the silver image too )

hjesus · Feb 13, 2016

pdeeh said:
I never had much luck with that, though I did have a bit of fun. the results were not great to say the least.

Meanwhile I have got very nice pictures. It is not a real alternative, it is more a kind of cross-process but I like the colors more than those of classical cross-processing C-41/E6.

http://caffenolcolor.blogspot.pt/2016/02/colors-developed-with-hair-dye.html

Fr. Mark · Feb 16, 2016

I got low contrast, high base/fog negatives trying c41 in caffenol. I Abandoned the idea quickly.

pdeeh · Feb 17, 2016

hjesus said:
Meanwhile I have got very nice pictures. l

indeed you have Henrique

hjesus · Feb 18, 2016

pdeeh said:
indeed you have Henrique

Until now it only worked with a movie film, Fujicolor Eterna 250 with removal of the remjet before developing. I will check soon if this pre-bath of soda is helping the process. With normal moder films it has been a disaster until now.

Dunga · Sep 8, 2022

I've read somewhere (can't remember the place) that they warmed up the developer, to mimic the C41 chems. That apparently gave better negatives when developing colour film in monochrome developer. If you'll experiment, i'm very curious to see some results

Donald Qualls · Sep 8, 2022

I scanned some Tri-X negatives developed in Caffenol as color (back in 2003) and got some realistic looking color images, more or less like two-color Technicolor. I doubt there was any actual color information (since Tri-X has no dye couplers and uniform panchro sensitization), it was mostly differential levels of stain doing it -- but the result looked remarkably good. I'm at work now, so can't attach a scan, but I'll try to remember to do so when I'm home...

Caffenol for Color?

Privacy & Transparency

Privacy & Transparency