Can ECN Film be Used for Slides?

septim · Mar 5, 2014

So from what I have found here ECN developer is CD3 and E6 developer is CD3 but E6 developer can't be used in place of ECN developer because it will fog the film (Go find an ECN thread where PE has commented). With all that being said, could ECN film be processed in the entire E6 process to provide transparencies? What is it that would make it chemically work/not work and what practical limitations would there be on the implementation of this.

Septim
** This is a purely hypothetical post and I am not planning on finding ECN films just to try this out. **

Athiril · Mar 5, 2014

Of course you can. It'll look somewhat funky, as C-41 through E-6 does.

septim · Mar 5, 2014

Athiril said:
Of course you can. It'll look somewhat funky, as C-41 through E-6 does.

Would that be due to a negative mask or due to the chemical differences between the ECN and E6 process?

R Paul · Mar 5, 2014

I tried 500T in E6 chemicals ,and it came out opaque purple,with brown images. Never tried it again
Rob

Athiril · Mar 6, 2014

Emulsion differences, integral mask, layers develop to different contrasts with different curves, and don't clip at the same point iirc.

Athiril · Mar 6, 2014

I've got some old 50D (5201) and 500T (5219) sitting here, I can try them tomorrow I guess.

Athiril · Mar 6, 2014

Here are two 5201 50D samples, scanned through frontier

With simple level corrections after:

Think I measured about 83 lp/mm @ 75:1 contrast in this process off this, which given the lens' resolution for the aperture I've found, should put the film at approx 100 lp/mm at max (given the right lens) at that contrast.

Photo Engineer · Mar 6, 2014

Process ECN normally and then print it on ECP (Eastman Color Print) to get a beautiful slide. Much better than any E6 product as it has about 2 stops more latitude in images and a Dmax of about 4.0 - 5.0.

Great stuff! Well, that's how movies are made if you use film.

PE

Athiril · Mar 6, 2014

The outdoor shots are really bad, heavily overcast at time of shooting, very blue. They're not correctable like the indoor shot, even though the light from indoors is provided through translucent white plastic in the ceiling from outside light.

I do have Vision Print film somewhere too, and CD-2 for processing it correctly. I just need to go collect it wherever I've left it.

septim · Mar 7, 2014

Athril, what was your processing like for the 50D? Those reds seem nice and saturated and those blacks deep and inky (on my display at least) - the sort of thing that appeals to me... Also, any chance of seeing those outdoor shots anyway?

Athiril · Mar 7, 2014

Sure, but will have to wait till Tuesday, I didn't bring home the images with me, but I do have some 500T examples to post as well.

Athiril · Mar 11, 2014

50D outdoors, overcast

Athiril · Mar 11, 2014

5219 500T outdoors

This was lower contrast than 50D slides on a table, the highlights don't clear unless you overexpose it, just kind of dim, so it seems to work better outdoors in cold light, even though it's Tungsten.

Photo Engineer · Mar 11, 2014

Dan, just for your own edification, and not for APUG general usage, try boosting contrast 20% in PS in those bottom 2 shots. That should compensate for the ECN being so low in contrast. It might help.

PE

septim · Mar 12, 2014

How far would you overexpose the film to clear up the highlights? I find the warmth of the 50D shots preferable over the 500T shots, though I suppose everyone has their own preferences. Do you mind sharing some more of the technical details of the process, it seems that you have had some success with this...

Xmas · Mar 12, 2014

ECN will do superlative slides for projection like in a movie theatre, normally they used 24x18mm...

But like silver bromide paper it is a 2 stage negative positive process.

The low gamma negative, remjet and integral mask get you in same major league as kodachrome, though PE may grumble at that.

A CC filter is desirable for the tungsten balanced film, and the remjet is a pig.

But it is like the Leica in the charity shop it won't be there tomorrow, the Zorki may not last long either.

Athiril · Mar 12, 2014

I used a small amount of borax in a large container of water (such as a bucket), and put them film in that and rub the film between my fingers from start to end gently submerged. Then lift it out and squeegee the film with my fingers a few times, dip back under the water/borax and repeat two more times.

Wearing disposable gloves (you could also squeegee with a soft sponge I suppose).

Then I load it into E-6, I usually get most of the remjet, some may be left, and can be wiped off after the process finishes (it shouldn't come off during the process).

Camera was AE-1 with 28mm f/2.8. ISO meter was set to 50 for 50D, 500 for 500T.

septim · Mar 12, 2014

Athiril said:
I used a small amount of borax in a large container of water (such as a bucket), and put them film in that and rub the film between my fingers from start to end gently submerged. Then lift it out and squeegee the film with my fingers a few times, dip back under the water/borax and repeat two more times.

Wearing disposable gloves (you could also squeegee with a soft sponge I suppose).

Is there any chance of the rem-jet getting lodged in the emulsion or is that more a hypothetical situation that is thrown around in threads and never been proven to be a major issue?

Then I load it into E-6, I usually get most of the remjet, some may be left, and can be wiped off after the process finishes (it shouldn't come off during the process).

Camera was AE-1 with 28mm f/2.8. ISO meter was set to 50 for 50D, 500 for 500T.

Do you run with standard E6 timing or have you changed it? Is there anything you could see changing in the process in order to improve the results or would it more be just watching which film is shot where?

Sorry for milking every little detail out of you Athril.

Xmas · Mar 12, 2014

Athiril said:
The outdoor shots are really bad, heavily overcast at time of shooting, very blue. They're not correctable like the indoor shot, even though the light from indoors is provided through translucent white plastic in the ceiling from outside light.

I do have Vision Print film somewhere too, and CD-2 for processing it correctly. I just need to go collect it wherever I've left it.

It was/is normal to shoot tungsten film in daylight with a CC filter, my chum who does shoot movie tungsten has all mine but from memory they are a murky yellow colour.

If you are shooting without a filter you may get too much blue and green to get a good white balance the CC filter cuts the blue and green.

You lose some film speed as well.

Athiril · Mar 12, 2014

septim said:
Is there any chance of the rem-jet getting lodged in the emulsion or is that more a hypothetical situation that is thrown around in threads and never been proven to be a major issue?

I suppose it's possible, just not in my experience as long as the film has been completely cleaned before drying occurs.

Let me put to you this way. Remjet is loosened by an alkali pH level in solution, the emulsion side invariably will come in contact with remjet in solution regardless.

If it doesn't stick to the emulsion in solution, I don't see why it would do so outside of the solution as long as it doesn't start drying.

septim said:
Do you run with standard E6 timing or have you changed it? Is there anything you could see changing in the process in order to improve the results or would it more be just watching which film is shot where?

Sorry for milking every little detail out of you Athril.

Completely standard. Pushing will likely compromise dMax (as in lower it)... if I really wanted to get something out of this to work with (to my satisfaction), I would make my own first dev suited to the emulsion, to make sure each red, green, blue part of the image has good dMax - dMin, shoot a passport colour checker, and generate a profile for a raw scanned image for it.

But then we are getting back to 'regular' imaging then through a method that has a lot of gambling involved if you are counting on regular images.

There are other things that may help also.. a strong compensating developer thats very weakly diluted/acting, developed to very low density neg prior to first development, so that the layers suffer, suffer less. With a shortened first developer time.

The process however is already convoluted. I just like to do these things, because everyone will say X about things that are a bit more obscure, but will rarely if ever have a single image of it to go along with their statement.

kb3lms · Mar 12, 2014

then print it on ECP (Eastman Color Print) to get a beautiful slide.

This is something I've thought about trying from time to time. How would you go about printing onto the ECP? I would guess ECP is a very slow emulsion? Would you use a 35mm slide copier or is it a contact print?

frobozz · Mar 12, 2014

kb3lms said:
This is something I've thought about trying from time to time. How would you go about printing onto the ECP? I would guess ECP is a very slow emulsion? Would you use a 35mm slide copier or is it a contact print?

With movie release prints it's a contact print (eg http://www.rtico.com/bhp/ ), but it seems like a slide copier setup would work just fine too. You'd probably want some way to introduce color filtration (done by coloring the light source in real release print printers.)

Duncan

StoneNYC · Mar 12, 2014

Anyone want my ECN? I have about 80ft of 500T and I won't be shooting it, it's been in a can since I got it fresh on set. It's less than a year old.

Photo Engineer · Mar 12, 2014

ECP is almost identical to an RA4 paper in the sense that it is balanced for about 50R filtration with a tungsten light for starters. It can be spooled in 35mm cassettes and then exposed using a simple copier attached to your camera. The ASA rating is pretty slow with all of the filtration, so I would start at around ISO 10 or thereabouts.

The slides you get, if done properly, will far exceed any E6 film. This is due to the huge latitude which is impossible with the E6 process.

As for rem jet. We used a sponge to remove it with a Sodium Carbonate solution. The emulsion never touched the solution, just the back. But, I have seen rem jet lodged in emulsion and it is a problem if not done correctly. The particles are very fine and often do not show up until you do an enlargement.

PE

JoJo · Mar 15, 2014

Photo Engineer said:
The ASA rating is pretty slow with all of the filtration, so I would start at around ISO 10 or thereabouts.

I have a large roll of 70mm print film for doing some experiments.
This material is very low in ASA. Making contact prints under the enlarger needs exposure times of 100-120 sec. with open aperture and a 150W enlarger lamp. RA paper is 20 times more sensitive.
The problem is that the normal exposure time at professional printing is very short (1/500s?). So you need a very very bright light source. With long exposure times, the Schwarzschild effect will multiply the required exposure time.
5-10 ISO could be a good value for highspeed printing. But when using a normal lamp, the effective sensitivity would be around 1 ISO or less. I calculated an effective speed of 0.5 to 1 when doing contact prints under the enlarger.
Maybe my material (Kodak 2383) is less sensitive because of age. I tried all kinds of developers, also self mixed ECP-2 (CD2).
The best and cheapest solution was using standard RA-4 developer (<1min dev.time), but C-41 will also work.

Joachim

Can ECN Film be Used for Slides?

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