Colour neg development - disaster!

[alspix]

Bringing the thread back to life again....

I have been experimenting with Nova Prospeed C41 (available in the UK, about £12 for 1 litre, 12 film dry kit). I mixed up, and divided into two 500ml batches, freezing one. The first batch I used for probably three times the specified number of films, varying types and speeds. The mixed chems were given a 2 weeks shelf life, I kept them longer, (in 500ml plastic bottles, squeezed to expel air, at room temperature) and tried then every now and again, hoping that at some point they would start producing some interesting results.

They were mixed in March 2006, yes ONE YEAR ago, and I have just run two more films through them, guesstimating an extra minute development time and doubling the blix time. I'm still getting very usable negatives! I wouldn't like to make any judgements on the colour accuracy, but lets just say I was a little dissapointed not to get more whacky results!! In fact, they look very reasonable indeed (especially given that one of my test films expired in 1999!)

The developer is now more or less black, but from my experience most of the colour the developer assumes is from the disolved anti-halation layer (which is very dense with some films, especially it seems kodak)

I will write all this up and blog it soon with some examples.

 

[pentaxuser]

Alspix. Thanks for your contribution. I love it when a thread comes alive again. I wouldn't have seen your post except for browsing through several pages of threads.

I had tried the Nova kit and very good it was too. It was really a bigger quantity kit than I wanted but I had saved up several films for development so was able to use most of it. That was some time ago.

I had never thought of freezing it. Do you mean literally freezing it solid in a freezer or simply refridgerating to 3-5 degrees C? I had assumed that both cold routes might destroy the chemicals but obviously not.

Since then I have found Celer-41. A kit stocked by Silverprint and made for them by Michael Maunder of Speedibrews fame. Each kit is in powder form, in which form it lasts as good as indefinitely, makes up into 600ml of liquid for developer and blix respectively from which you can do at least 4 films on a one shot basis. It is easily mixed and Speedibrews give instructions as to how to extend it to at least 8 films with little loss in quality but I haven't tried this yet.

I confined myself to one pack of Celer-41 and did 4 films @ 150mls per film in a Jobo. No problems at all.

There have been several threads on finding low volume kits and your post has prompted me to talk about my experience with Celer-41.

I also had correspondence with Michael Maunder who was very helpful indeed. I hope he continues to produce this kit. It will be a real loss if he stops.

I'd encourage any low volume user to try Celer-41.The only caveat I'd add is that Speedibrews in its instructions suggest that for rotary processing as opposed to inversion processing in a water bath, you should reduce the time from the standard 3 mins 15 secs by deducting as much as 25 to 30%.

I was wary of this, having always used rotary processing and 3 mins 15 secs and tried a clip test for a couple of frames at the full 3 mins 15 secs. They came out fine. More accurately I should probably say they came out the same way as previous film had with Nova, Tetenal and Paterson kits. My fine may be different to other people's fine. I have seen minilab negs and they seem a little thinner and less saturated than mine although the prints, also produced by the minilab were also fine.

So I stuck with 3 mins 15 secs at full rotation. That isn't to say that you couldn't cut the time for a rotary processor. I just don't know as I didn't try it but I'd be a little concerned about cutting by 25% or so.

Anyway to summarise. Celer-41 is certainly worth a try for low volume users and my thanks to Silverprint and Michael Maunder for providing the kit.

pentaxuser

 

[stevewillard]

Another approach to this problem is to save up enough exposed film for a run using fresh chemistry, and thus reduce your chemical waste. I do landscape photography and shoot heavily all summer and fall in the back country. I use llamas to port all my gear into the backcountry. Between trips it is very difficult for me to develop the film when I come out and get ready for the next trip. I would love to be able to store my exposed film in a safe place and develop it all at once at the end of the season using fresh chemistry.

So I have been experimenting with the storage of C41 film after exposure and before development. I exposed 35 sheets of Portra 160 VC film exactly the same and then immediately processed 5 sheets in fresh Kodak chemistry. The remaining exposed film was stored in a cool dry place. Every other month I have processed 5 additional sheets of the exposed film in fresh chemistry and then compared the densities to the first 5 sheets I developed. I just processed my last 5 sheets in fresh chemistry which were exposed over a year ago, and I found no differences in density from the first 5 sheets developed. This tells that me that Kodak's Portra 160 VC film stores very well for long periods of time after exposure.

This year, I intend to develop all of my film at once at the end of the season without concern of storage problems. This approach insures that all my film is processed in new fresh chemistry with little chemical waste. This also insures repeatability in the exposure-development film densities I desire because the chemistry is new and fresh.

You may want to duplicate this experiment for your film-chemistry combination to characterize the long term storage of your exposed film.