DIY Redscale E-6 for underwater, can it be done.

[bblhed]

I have seen some news and information about Redscale film, and some investigating shows that it is just regular C-41 35mm film exposed on the wrong side. People make their own redscale film in a dark-bag or darkroom by pulling the film out of the cassette, cutting it, flipping it, taping it back together, and then winding the film back in, re-cutting the tab then loading and shooting two stops overexposed from box speed. Doing this reverses the order the layers are exposed and filtered so the photos have a shift to the red side.

With that background out of the way, I would like to know if this will work for E-6 film for shooting underwater?

I know Kodak made underwater film years ago, but that stuff is long gone. I am mainly looking to see if this might be a better way to shoot underwater because while they make underwater corrective filters, they don't make them for all of my lenses. I have filters for the lenses that I can get them for, but I can't get filters for my Nikonos 15mm, and that is my go to lens for underwater.

So will it work or should I just learn to live with the overly blue photos?

 

[michaelbsc]

Just try it. Shoot a roll in the back yard and see if the red shift is as pronounced as you get with the C41. I suspect it will be less pronounced because there is no orange mask. But there should be some shift.

Obviously the amount of red absorbed varies with depth if you depend on surface light, so no filter or the filter effect of the film will give you a "proper" color balance. You would need lighting at depth to get that.

But it ought to help despite the fact that it won't be exact true color. The heavy blue cast you get now isn't true color. So better is better.

 

[bblhed]

Yeah, I'm going to go for it, I will make up a roll and see what happens. I figure that the worst that can happen is that I tear the tape holding the film together when I get to the end of the roll and will have to unload the camera in a dark bag.