E-2 Ektachrome Process possible ?

Hello everyone. I got an old roll of E-2 Ektachrome and wondered if it was possible to develop it in an improvised, not E-6 color reversal process. Not E-6, because I read that the emulsion does not work with high temperatures.

PE, do you have an Idea if its possible to develop that stuff in a processor at home ? Maybe a development like the improvised Rodinal FD and then a C41 color CD reversal process might work.

Any ideas ?

To give you a pointer: last week I helped a buddy develop a roll of E4 film. The film was quite old (go figure), but the buddy exposed it quite recently. We had no idea of its prior history. We spent two or three evenings mixing the E4 bathes, he even go a bottle of Benzyl Alcohol for this process. To make a long story short: the slides came out completely blank (emulsion extremely soft but was still on there, it contained no image matter, just a slightly milky white layer that came off when you touched it). Three evenings of mixing and processing work went into the trash.

And no, you can not process these old rolls in E6 chemistry, since E2 and E4 films are not properly hardened and their emulsion will float away after FD, especially if you run it at 38°C.

Your E2 roll is likely even older than this E4 roll we processed. If you have a dozen of these rolls or more, use one for experiments and clip tests, and process the rest once you are confident that they still work. If you have only one or two rolls, I'd say get a few nice rolls of recent E6 stock and enjoy the results.

You'll find some E2 information including formulas here: https://www.photomemorabilia.co.uk/Colour_Darkroom/Early_Kodak_Ektachrome.html#anchor2
However, CD3 is listed as "10ml" which seems either erroneous as CD3 is a solid compound (it may be 10g; that doesn't sound outrageously wrong for 1 liter of developer), or they refer to a stock solution of CD3 of unknown strength in presumably water. CD3 can of course be purchased.

It might be possible to process the film in E-6 chemicals with two or three possible stumbling points.

1. You will need a pre-hardener, the one published for E-4 might be suitable.
2. You will need to process at the proper temperature with the appropriate increases in processing times for all steps. As I vaguely recall E-2 was 68 degrees F, I know that E-3 and E-4 was 75 degrees.
3. You will most likely also want to us a formalin stabilizer.

An older British Journal of Photography may have alternative formulas.
E4 formulas might work fine out of the box.

I once found an exposed roll of E2 film in a camera I inherited from a grandparent. This would be in 1993. I looked around for labs who could process it and none I could find back then would touch E2 or E4...in the days before I had access to the WWW I was looking at local labs, their network in the industry. I think I also picked up an issue of Amateur Photographer to check out non-local labs...all to no avail. I ended up attempting B&W negative processing myself on the advice of a local lab and got a film which is almost completely fogged. I can make out the frames if I hold the negatives up to bright light but have never had success printing or scanning them. So even 25 years on I have no idea what the photos were...but I have kept the negs and try whenever I buy or have access to a new scanner.