Considering doing c41 at home

I’m a long time b&w shooter returning to film after a long time and would like to shoot some color film. So far I’m doing mostly b&w 4x5 and scanning - at $5-$6 per sheet I basically can’t afford color sheet film, but am interested in doing roll film on my view camera with a 6x9 back. So I’m thinking of cutting costs even more and developing at home.

Two questions- does it sound financially feasible to develop a couple of rolls of 120 color per week at home? And how hard is it maintaining temperature, as I gather that’s the most finicky part of the process? The sink in my darkroom isn’t the easiest to dial in an exact temp on…..

Jimi3 said:

Two questions- does it sound financially feasible to develop a couple of rolls of 120 color per week at home?

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Yes.

Jimi3 said:

And how hard is it maintaining temperature, as I gather that’s the most finicky part of the process?

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Not so hard. The sink method will work.

I'd recommend spending some thought and reading on possible procedure and materials, en then get going already

There are small developing kits available, but I'm not familiar with their cost. You can check that out in your area.

As to temperature, it's easy to handle. Just have a big tub of water at the correct temperature, with your chemicals in it at the same temp. You can use hot water from the faucet and regulate it with a thermometer -- or get fancy, and buy an aquarium heater.

xkaes said:

There are small developing kits available, but I'm not familiar with their cost. You can check that out in your area.

As to temperature, it's easy to handle. Just have a big tub of water at the correct temperature, with your chemicals in it at the same temp. You can use hot water from the faucet and regulate it with a thermometer -- or get fancy, and buy an aquarium heater.

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Aquarium heaters can get very hot. A second out of water & they go bang. They don't circulate the water, causing hot spots.

Far better is to buy a Sous Vide. This is Latin for 'photographic chemical heater' (ref - Derek & the tripod)

It has an enclosed temperature controlled heater & a pump to swirl the water around.
I got one that starts from 18 Celsius, so it can be used for B&W @20 degrees. Was about £40 on Amazon.

I used to put all the chemicals in a water bath & add hot water when required and this method does work, did many a batch of E6 like this, but the sous vide does make things much easier.

Probably overkill for B&W, but it does make it easier to set the temp, plonk in the chemical in the bowl and leave them to warm whilst getting on with something else.

There is a 'proper' sous vide for photo chemicals, but it is over-priced and the demo shows heating the chemicals directly with it. This is a recipe for disaster, with cross contamination & you can only heat one chemical at a time. I prefer the water bath method.

+1 to all of the responses above. All you need is hot water from the tap and a container big enough for your bottles of dev and blix. My kitchen can get cold in the winter, so I will often have a boiled kettle handy in case I need to boost the bath temp a few degrees. I never bought a sous-vide heater because I usually do one roll at a time. You will get conflicting opinions about shelf life of mixed chemistry, but I find that it's typically good for several months if stored correctly (brown glass bottles tightly capped in my case). Currently working with chems mixed March 4th, just did roll #15.

The late Ron Mowrey (PE in Photrio) would fill his sink with hot tap-water, getting the temp a little above the target of 100 F. The beakers would come up to that temp, and he would wait longer until the sink's water temp had drifted down to 100 F, and then start developing.

Mark

This thread gives me hope. I may head down this same path.

MTGseattle said:

This thread gives me hope. I may head down this same path.

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Yeah, doesn’t sound too bad. The prices on color film have skyrocketed since I last shot it many years ago, so if I can save on processing, I’m all for it. Just shot a roll of 120 today; I’ll have to buy a kit and and get started.

I bought a Jobo PPE2 to do color processing for 35mm, 120 and 4"x5" and now I use it to develop color and black & white film. One of these day I may start developing enlargements in print drums,

It's very easy. I haven't done C41 yet (coming this week), but E6, which is pretty much the same process.

All you need are 1 liter amber glass bottles, a sous-vide temperature regulator, a plastic container high enough to fit the sous-vide (needs a minimum amount of water) and able to fit tightly the two bottles you need warmed, and a very precise thermometer.

After that, it's simple. Mix the chemistry, put them in the glass bottle. Put the glass bottles in the plastic container, fill it with water, add the sous-vide machine and set it to the chosen temperature. Once the water is at the right temperature, you just have to wait a bit for the chemistry in the glass bottles to reach it too. Once that's achieved, just follow the steps given in you chemistry pack.

I would also like to try this for both color and b&w. Amazon has the kit for about $105 CDN. They say it does 24 rolls. That would make it considerably cheaper than getting processing done. I will watch this thread for comments before I decide. Good info so far.

I do my own color dev with the kits available from freestyle and B&H. They work very well. I have a small clear rectangle storage container from target with a sous vide. Fill the container with water, clamp the heater in and warm up the chemicals. works perfectly every time. My negs come out just as good as a lab.

D.

albada said:

The late Ron Mowrey (PE in Photrio) would fill his sink with hot tap-water, getting the temp a little above the target of 100 F. The beakers would come up to that temp, and he would wait longer until the sink's water temp had drifted down to 100 F, and then start developing.

Mark

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Yep, that is the way to do it with a water bath for colour, else you will be waiting hours for the chemicals to hit temperature. Have the water bath (I use the washing up bowl for B&W) at a higher temp & when the chemicals hit the right temp, adjust the water bath down to the correct temperature. I also pre-heat the tank with water. I know Ilford say not to do this, but it was the way I was taught. Else you get a sudden temp drop when the developer goes into the tank.

I use two thermometers, electronic jobbies from Amazon that can be home calibrated in boiling water. One for the water bath and one for the developer. Doing B&W, the temp of stop & fix is not critical, so I get the developer to the correct temp & as other chemicals are in the same water bath, they should be of a l temp.
The water bath can be used for rinsing, using the ilford water-saving method.

I have done colour negative in my kitchen, using Tetenal kits. It's been a while; I still have one unopened kit stored away.
After years of thinking it was just too hard, I saw someone's results at Flickr, and asked; he said 'just try it; it's not as hard as people say'. Your first film will be a great encouragement.
Temperature control is not very hard, but worth spending some care on. Remember that only the developer stage needs great care over temperature. My water bath is just a washing-up bowl. I have tried putting an aquarium heater in it, just because I had one. Not sure if it's better than just checking the temperature and having a kettle handy, as someone said above.

The kit I use comes with a second set of recommended times, for use at 30 degrees. I use those times firstly because they're longer, which lets me be more precise (my tank takes a while to pour in and out, which is a worry if the developing time is very short), but it makes maintaining the bath temperature easier in winter too.

I have always tried to save my exposed film up until I can exhaust a kit over a couple of evening sessions, rather than having it go bad half-used.

I have tried an E6 kit just once. Despite my care, I got quite a bad rash up my arms. I won't be doing any more of that.

Color negative film is not difficult to develop. If you will be doing a lot of color work just jump in and do it. You’ll save money and gain pride of accomplishment. Because I now shoot little color negative film I no longer find self processing to be cost effective, but you should explore the process and have fun.

Dustin McAmera said:

I have done colour negative in my kitchen, using Tetenal kits. It's been a while; I still have one unopened kit stored away.
After years of thinking it was just too hard, I saw someone's results at Flickr, and asked; he said 'just try it; it's not as hard as people say'. Your first film will be a great encouragement.
Temperature control is not very hard, but worth spending some care on. Remember that only the developer stage needs great care over temperature. My water bath is just a washing-up bowl. I have tried putting an aquarium heater in it, just because I had one. Not sure if it's better than just checking the temperature and having a kettle handy, as someone said above.

The kit I use comes with a second set of recommended times, for use at 30 degrees. I use those times firstly because they're longer, which lets me be more precise (my tank takes a while to pour in and out, which is a worry if the developing time is very short), but it makes maintaining the bath temperature easier in winter too.

I have always tried to save my exposed film up until I can exhaust a kit over a couple of evening sessions, rather than having it go bad half-used.

I have tried an E6 kit just once. Despite my care, I got quite a bad rash up my arms. I won't be doing any more of that.

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Hi,
I did lots of E6 using Barfen kits. (Not sure if that is the correct spelling, it was over 30 years ago) Colour printing was too much, so just colour transparencies.

I used a heating element in a plastic crate, controlled with a simple on/off switch. This was before the day of RCDs, so I could have electrocuted myself. I also got many burns, touching the heater.

Moving onto modern times, it would be easy to use a microcontroller, Arduino or similar, to monitor water temperature and control a heater, so rather than on/off, the heater output could be varied to heat up the water quickly and then drop back to a lower output to maintain the set temperature, so no 300 degree heater to burn myself on.

I looked into all of this when getting back into film (photography got interrupted by beer woman & curry) but the simple answer was the sous vide (as established, Latin for photography chemical heater) It has temp control, a shielded heater, so no burnt hands, some protection if it gets dry & a pump to circulate the water.

Find a suitable plastic container for the water bath, (which can also be used to store all the developing stuff afterwards). The sous vide does have a narrow min & max water depth, so a little care is needed when adding or removing bottles, I use a milk bottle filled with water to replace a chemical bottle when removed. Obviously, the bigger the water bath container, the less the height will fluctuate, but the sous vide is really designed to go in a cooking pot, so total water volume has to be considered.

Adding insulation to the container will save energy (money) depending on the container, it could be one in side another, to create an air-gap, or stick on polystyrene insulation. I did look at cool-boxes, but did not find anything suitable.

Would be great to see photos of peoples home-made water baths with sous vide or similar.

I really cannot suggest that an aquarium heater is a good idea. Just a second out of water & they go bang & crack the glass.

A sous vide cooker makes things easy/convenient. Lacking one, a decently sized tub filled with a mixture of hot & cold water to hit the target temperature will do just fine as well. The thermal inertia of the water in the tub will make it plenty stable enough for the few critical minutes in the process. When I started out with color, I just grabbed a plastic storage container, used the kitchen sink and the water cooker and a reasonably reliable thermometer.

Sure, C41 is 'best' when done exactly at 37.8C +/- 0.1C - but in reality, you're not ever going to see the effects of a +/- 0.5C temperature deviation. Maybe in a tightly controlled process, but any search for some recent threads on attempts at establishing such a process using control strips will prove that there are so many (often unknown) factors spoiling the broth that fussing over that 0.1C margin (or 0.2C or whatever) has very little practical significance.

Don't sweat it. Just have a go at it and solve any issues encountered on the way. Temperature control will end up pretty far at the bottom of the list of issues for a home user running their own C41 for the purpose of scanning or RA4 printing.

To put it differently: spend time on fixing other issues. Water spots, keeping chemistry from going bad, getting decent chemistry in the first place (shipped to your home at reasonable cost etc.), exposing your film correctly (dare I say it!?), figuring out how to get the most out of your scanner or RA4 printing process, etc. etc.

Thanks everyone. I’m thinking I’ll pick up a sous vide as my darkroom is in a spare bathroom that’s typically not heated all that well, so that’ll make life easier. Most of the ones I’m seeing at amazon don’t go down to 68f, but I’ll keep looking.

Also, I was looking at the cinestill c41 kits at b&h and they look really affordable. Is there any real advantage to doing separate bleach and fix, or should I just go with void and keep it simple?

Jimi3 said:

Thanks everyone. I’m thinking I’ll pick up a sous vide as my darkroom is in a spare bathroom that’s typically not heated all that well, so that’ll make life easier. Most of the ones I’m seeing at amazon don’t go down to 68f, but I’ll keep looking.

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Unless your ambient temperatures are consistently and significantly lower than 20C/68F, a Sous Vide heater is unlikely to be very useful. If you are considering this for black and white film, it makes much more sense to adjust development time as ambient temperature dictates.

Jimi3 said:

Is there any real advantage to doing separate bleach and fix

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Economy, efficiency and longevity of the results.

Cinestill two bath c41 kit was my first step, it is good enough to get decent results. As you advance your skills, you can graduate to 5/6 bath kits.

I wouldn't worry too much about low temperature control. Once you have done c41, you can do b&w development blindfolded. At least I never worry about b&w developer temperature.

I use the Tetenal 1 litre kits which is a three part kit of developer, blix, and stabiliser and develop at the lowest recommended temperature of only 30c. So it's not a big chore to get the chemicals up to temperature which then go into a Paterson tank sitting in a water bath using a fish tank heater (30c is within the range of a fish tank heater, for higher you need a sous vide). I think the rule for good processing is to follow the book to the letter, but not be too obsessive, there is a reasonable amount of latitude where you won't notice any difference at all in colour or density, after all having a heart attack over + or - a degree here or there will spoil the fun.

My advice : so much easier to control temp in a Jobo thin wall tank.

Less insulation goes both ways, easier to reach the desired temperature and also easier to drift from desired temperature.

I use the Unicolor C41 1 liter kit and it develop up to 16 rolls in two or three days. The kit recommends only 12 rolls, but FreeStyle told me the one can go up to 16 rolls if the development in limited to a short time.

Once the temperature is controlled it is about as hard as developing black & white film or "As easy as falling off a motorcycle" as I like to say.

brbo said:

Less insulation goes both ways, easier to reach the desired temperature and also easier to drift from desired temperature.

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Did bunch of tests… Not the case when seating in the right temp bath