Developing Color at Home - Questions

[Kirks518]

I've been doing B&W at home, and enjoy it. I don't have a darkroom, so I do everything at the kitchen sink and in a bathroom with a changing bag and a Paterson System 4. While I like shooting B&W, I also really like color, and the cost for getting color developed is starting to make me think about doing it at home. It seems that overall, color is easier, as all times and methods are the same, and the only thing that may be a challenge is the maintaining of the correct temperature. But there isn't different times for different films and developers, so there should be very little variation from one roll to the next. It seems pretty cut and dry. I have a bunch of 220 E-6 that costs me $15+ per roll to get developed, which IMO is insane. I shoot both 35mm and MF.

I was thinking about getting the Arista Rapid E6 Slide developing kit (1 gallon) from Freestyle, which would bring my 220 E-6 cost per roll to $4.90/roll, which is much more reasonable. I was also thinking of getting the same kit in the C-41 version. Do any of you use these kits, or is there a more economical/efficient way, which also has the relative ease of using a kit?

I would be doing the bathtub with a big blue Rubbermaid tote to keep the chemicals at the proper temperature, which I hear can be quite a successful substitute for a proper darkroom. What's your take on this method?

I use all my B&W chemistry as one shot, whether I'm using HC-110, or D-76, but is replenishing the way to go with color processing?

There are two things I think I would need (other then the chems) - a good thermometer (I'm not 100% confident in the one I have for B&W), and storage containers. I have no idea how many I will actually need, and in what sizes, to store the chems for each of the kits. I think I would need (3) one gallon containers per kit (dev, blix, stabilizer) or 6 1/2 gals, etc. Is this correct?

Any insight would be appreciated.

 

[polyglot]

a) do it. colour at home is very achievable and you will save loads of money
b) E-6 is pretty finicky and you have to get it exactly right or there will be colour casts. Practise your temperature control with C41 first because even if you get that slightly wrong, it's easily correctable at the scan or print stage.

The storage you need depends on the kit you use. I used the Fuji E6 kit which is a full process (dev, stop, reverse, colour dev, pre-bleach, bleach, wash, fix, wash) but it can be mixed up in smaller portions (say 1L for ~10 rolls worth) and they provide a table of time extensions to use as it exhausts. I presume the same approach will work with other, simpler kits, EXCEPT that blix is known to go off pretty rapidly once mixed.

When you're storing your chemicals (except bleach & fix), make sure ALL oxygen is excluded, e.g. by using butane and non-permeable (glass or PETE) bottles. Have a read of the FAQ linked in my signature as there's a few sections in there that will help you.

 

[wildbill]

plenty of threads covering color processing at home so read up
I use the Tetenal kits, I like the packaging better and the results are just as nice as the old kodak kits. These aren't 6 step kits so you don't need as many containers. Mix 1Liter at a time.
you'll need a way to keep your tanks submerged
you'll need a way to keep your tub of water at 100 degrees the whole time, even a large tub will cool down. You'll need 100 degree rinse water.
I've been using a pyrex digital kitchen thermometer for the last 10yrs. It's dead on and was about $15

 

[Athiril]

For kits when hand processing I've only used tetenal C-41. I've used Kodak and Fuji C-41 and E-6 when hand processing in a replenished setup. It works very well. Replenishment is how you get the cost down to under $1/roll (in terms of chemistry usage).

You will need to calibrate your thermometer. In a shop, I've looked at paterson colour thermometers, and at least half of them were a few degrees off in either direction.

Same with K-type thermocouples, can be had cheaply online, reliable and precise, just needs to be calibrated, eg: I had one that was consistently 2 degrees celsius off over its entire scale.

 

[Terry Christian]

My best thermometer is an instant-read digital Oxo brand thermometer I bought at Costco recently. Love it!

I agree that mixing up 1 L at a time is the way to go. Any more and you won't use it up before it goes off. Any less and you'll struggle to develop more than one roll at a time. 1 L will do 2 rolls of 120 at a time, or maybe more if you use a roller base.

For the developer I use a Nalgene water bottle. It has all the convenience of plastic without the permeability. Regular plastic Datatainer bottles for the other chems, and a Playmate cooler filled with hot water gets them toasty in about 15-20 minutes and keeps them there.

 

[snapguy]

The big easy

Color is not easier. It is rewarding, but harder to nail. You can make a fair amount of smaller mistooks in b&w and still get something you can use, but color makes you hew the line.

 

[BMbikerider]

Colour, whether E6, C41 or RA4 is pretty straightforward but there are some things that are particular and must be adhered to to get consistent results.
1) An accurate thermometer (within ,25 of a degree C or .5 of a degree F)
2) Absolute cleanliness of your mixing measures. Even a minute trace of 1st developer with the 2nd will give you very odd colour casts which cannot be removed.
3) Accurate timing especially with the 1st developer in E6.

Storage of mixed chemicals is probably best in brown glass screw top bottles. In UK these are easily obtainable from a Pharmacy or as I do, use empty wine bottles. (a double benifit!)

Personally I find E6 boring and too 'mechanical' and repetitive and prefer to use colour negative and RA4 printing paper, but each to their own.

 

[railwayman3]

I quite enjoy processing E-6 and C-41, and, if you're reasonable meticulous and systematic in processing B&W, you'll be fine with color. All that's said above about accurate thermometers and timing is, of course, essential (just as you should do with B&W), but don't get the impression that one-second out, or 1/100th degree out, is going to ruin your results. (Unless your the kind of person who spends his life photographing colour charts, although in that case you'll also see the variations in commercial processing. n )

 

[250swb]

I wouldn't say doing colour at home is 'harder to nail', results (at least for C41) do not fall off the cliff if you make a slight mistake with time or temperature. Clearly you don't want to make a mistake, you want complete consistency from one film to the next, but you'll always get something even with some pretty big deviations. For instance there is that transition period in chemical usage between storage time and films processed. So unless you replenish regularly irrespective of time and usage, or throw away the chemicals early, how long you carry on with a batch of chemicals is more to do with common sense than suddenly discovering a completely ruined film. Replacing/replenishing early is always good for absolute consistency, carrying on simply means you need to keep your eye open for slight changes in results and then change them.

I'm not advocating bad practice, but fear shouldn't be a part of the myth about home processing. If you can do B&W and keep the chemicals to the correct temperature, and replace them at the right time, you can do C41 at home.


Steve

 

[Ian Grant]

Both C41 and E6 are relatively easy, it's not difficult controlling the temperature at home. I used to do both quite regularly with very consistent results.

I started reversal processing with Ferrania film & kits which was very finicky and later E3/4 in both cases temperatures & times were critical at all stages, C41 & E6 came along where really the only critical steps are the Development stages that made life much easier.

Ian

 

[mklw1954]

I use the Unicolor C41 1-liter powder kits, available from Freestyle, and they are good. The only modification is to add 1/2 teaspoon of PhotoFlo concentrate to 1 liter of stabilizer, and repeat every 8 rolls, to prevent water drying marks. I develop 20 rolls from a kit, so the cost is $1 per roll. I save up all these rolls in the refrigerator and develop them all within a few days as the chemicals degrade somewhat quickly, and no time compensation has been required. I store the chemicals in 1-liter PET plain seltzer water bottles, squeeze all the air out before capping, store them in the dark, and filter (coffee filters) each chemical before each developing cycle. With a liquid concentrate kit, you could make up less chemical and develop a few rolls at a time.

I use a small 6-pack cooler to first bring the empty tank/reels/films to the pre-wash/developer temperature, using a digital thermometer with a wire probe (Extech TM20) in the water to monitor temperature. The thermometer is calibrated to a Paterson Colour Thermometer. Making small additions from a pot of hot water keeps the cooler water temperature constant for pre-heating the tank and during processing. Then bring the pre-wash water and chemicals to temperature. The pre-wash and developer temperatures need to be as specified; the blix and wash water steps can be at +/- a few degrees of the developer temperature, and stabilizer is at room temperature.

I wear lab goggles, nitrile gloves, and long sleeves and have decent ventilation. Working carefully, there should be no safety concerns. Beware of the YouTube videos showing idiots slopping chemicals around all over their kitchen.

The RA4 prints I have been making from these negatives for the last 5 years are beautiful.

 

[removed account4]

hi Kirks518

i can't speak for much about what you are asking
i have kept away from color processing for a long while
but eventually may buy a cat labs kit or 2 ...
but what i would worry about is using color chemistry
anywhere where you might be preparing food.
from what i understand color processing ( e6 or c41 )
is not the friendliest of chemistry, and it probably isn't the
best thing to do the exercise in the sink or the counter
and when i was doing my research and watching the youtube videos
there was a guy doing his thing in the sink and dumping the chemistry down
the drain and every comment that followed his video was about
how that wasn't a good practice ...

good luck with your processing, its something i look forward to doing one of these days
john

 

[railwayman3]

hi Kirks518

i can't speak for much about what you are asking
i have kept away from color processing for a long while
but eventually may buy a cat labs kit or 2 ...
but what i would worry about is using color chemistry
anywhere where you might be preparing food.
from what i understand color processing ( e6 or c41 )
is not the friendliest of chemistry, and it probably isn't the
best thing to do the exercise in the sink or the counter
and when i was doing my research and watching the youtube videos
there was a guy doing his thing in the sink and dumping the chemistry down
the drain and every comment that followed his video was about
how that wasn't a good practice ...

good luck with your processing, its something i look forward to doing one of these days
john

I obviously agree with the above, particularly as regards food areas, but, OTOH, don't get too obsessive, particularly if you have proper experience with B&W chemicals. There are any number of equally harmful chemical substances in daily use in household situations, bleach, cleaners, spray polishes, even medical substances come to mind. Just use common sense.

 

[Kirks518]

Just need to add - I'll be doing the color in a bathtub in a bathroom, not anywhere near the kitchen or food. I do the B&W in the kitchen, but take precautions before and after each developing session when doing so.

I ended up ordering the above mentioned Unicolor kit from Freestayle, as I figure it'll be a cheap way to 'get my feet wet' with some test rolls I've had sitting around. If I feel I've done those well, I may move to another kit. I'm very consistent in my B&W processing, so I'm not too concerned there with the color.

It'll probably be a couple of weeks before I use the kit, but when I do, I'll update here with my results and opinions.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Get a Jobo CPP2 processor or similarly capable machine for maintain the processing temperature.

 

[Dr. no]

Do it and have fun! C41 chemistry is easy and a couple of degrees or 15-30 seconds are not noticeable--I do 4x5 film, and it takes longer than the correction factor for used chemicals to fill or empty the tanks.
While I would not drink the chemicals, at the mixed strength you would need to drink quite a bit to hurt yourself (unmixed is different, obviously). There is very little in out darkrooms that is half as dangerous as typical cleaning chemicals: bleach, ammonia etc.

 

[mtjade2007]

I think 15 - 30 seconds of development time is very significant. Even 5 seconds makes a difference. The most critical step of C-41 process is the first step, the color development step. It will prove to be rewarding for keeping the temperature and the development time as accurate as possible. I used to overlook how important it is for pre-warming the film before pouring in the developer. When I realized that I have already wasted too much film and chemical down the drain. It was a very serious problem when I developed 2 220 rolls at a same time. That much of film really lowered quite a bit of the developer temperature. The result was disastrous. With that problem corrected my C-41 development has been very satisfactory.

The bleach and fix temp and time will be easy. Just do it longer than the instruction says. The temperature can be off 10 degrees or even more. As long as the bleach and fixer are not exhausted the film will some out good.

 

[OzJohn]

Do it and have fun! C41 chemistry is easy and a couple of degrees or 15-30 seconds are not noticeable--I do 4x5 film, and it takes longer than the correction factor for used chemicals to fill or empty the tanks.

What ever floats your boat but not many people who have processed colour film to any sort of repeatable standard would agree with you. OzJohn

 

[zehner21]

I think 15 - 30 seconds of development time is very significant. Even 5 seconds makes a difference. The most critical step of C-41 process is the first step, the color development step.

I wouldn't be worried for 5 second of overdevelopment... You are introducing an error equal to 2% or you can think it as if you are developing for a 1/6 stop more.