E-6 Processing, something is wrong.

DKT · Aug 23, 2006

one thing that is confusing about your question--is that you're comparing the color balance of your process against both a scan of the film, and a digital image as well. You also mention your light table giving you another color balance also. I guess my answer to your question, is that there are too many variables...you have a whole chain of color control issues between your scanner, monitor etc. Same goes for the digital camera. The same is true, for the light table that you view your slides on as well. It all has to be calibrated for it to make any sense.

I remember a few years ago, having some E6 problems that PE solved for us (thanks--it was the reversal bath!)--but our approach to it, was to nail down everything with a color meter, and we wound up processing control strips for weeks before we even got the film straightened out--then we had to test back with CC filters to get that right. and we were shooting all the same emulsion number film as well.

One thing we discovered in this, was out of the three light tables we use, each one has a different color balance. We also discovered modifiers & different strobe heads that were causing various color shifts. But the objects/subjects we shoot--they can play tricks with how they reflect light....you say that sign is "white", but is it really? Shooting gray cards, or running control strips---these help you isolate the problems down to something tangible that you can check against. The digital image, and the scanned image are just complicating things and not really that helpful, imho.

Jacko1729 · Aug 23, 2006

Well, I can see this is going nowhere fast. I guess I will look elsewhere, or just give up on the processing.

Obviously I don't ask properly, or I didn't present this very well. I've been told everything from "learn to use your gear" to the "digital image is just complicating things".

I didn't expect to have to present credentials or to prove my level of expertise, but I've been working in a completely color managed work flow for years. I've presented a perfectly color balanced digital capture as a benchmark, nothing more, nothing less, but many want to question whether I even know how to do that. The digital capture is the constant, the benchmark in this instance. I know it's correct. My ignorance lies in film processing or maybe even in the scanning, but not in digital workflow.

The jist of my problem was "why am I getting a magenta cast with my E-6 processed film?" If it's a scanner problem, I'll figure it out. I don't think it is, because I can scan commercially processed film and I have no problem. That leads me back to processing. If that's where the problem is, I'll figure it out. So, on that note, I'll go.

Regards,

Jack

roteague · Aug 23, 2006

Jacko1729 said:
I really don't understand your point, or your attitude.

You are passing off your opinion as fact, when it is in fact, opinion.

Derek Lofgreen · Aug 23, 2006

Hey Jack,
I don't even have a clue to how to fix your problem but it sounds like Photo Engineer and others have in nailed down to your chemistry. I would start there, PE is the about the smartist one on this stuff, IMHO. As far as your digital image goes, some people are sort of sensitive about digital around here. No big deal, Robert seems to think the only film to use is Fuji Velvia 50 anyway . Everyone is just trying to help. I would love to hear what the problem is so when you figure it out let us know.

regards
D.

srs5694 · Aug 23, 2006

Jacko1729 said:
Well, I can see this is going nowhere fast. I guess I will look elsewhere, or just give up on the processing.

Obviously I don't ask properly, or I didn't present this very well. I've been told everything from "learn to use your gear" to the "digital image is just complicating things".

Remember that Web forums (and Usenet newsgroups and mailing lists and in-person clubs) are full of people with opinions. Remember also that these people don't know your experiences, expectations, skill level, etc. Between these two things, you'll get responses that you don't find helpful and that you might even find offensive. Except in extreme cases, the best approach is just to ignore the responses that aren't helpful, present additional information when necessary, and ask follow-up questions to elicit the sorts of responses you would find helpful. If you get upset over comments that you deem to be too simplistic or even mildly offensive, a thread can quickly deteriorate into a flame-fest, at which point it'll get closed (here on APUG).

Also remember that this is the Analog Photography Users Group. Some people on this group are very strident about that first word, so if you even mention digital photography (some consider those two words to be contradictory), you're likely to get some negative commentary. That's just part of the culture here. If you don't know that, you can run afoul of it, as you have in a minor way, particularly with roteague. Don't let that scare you off; just avoid hinting at digital superiority in any way. Such hints are like sticking your hand into a hornet's nest.

Now, to a more topical comment: The question of E-6 (or color generally) chemistry brand will elicit a variety of responses, opinions, and even factual posts. I suspect these responses generally reflect differing standards of excellence and expectations on the part of the respondents; some are very demanding and/or do quantitative tests, whereas others are more casual about their color and accept whatever meets their subjective and poorly-defined standards. I suspect you're in the former category, so you might want to pay more attention to Photo Engineer and others in that group. This means you may need to investigate things like the pH of your water and other factors that have been mentioned in this thread, as well as switch brands of chemistry.

Photo Engineer · Aug 23, 2006

Just FYI, the E6 first developer is a very very high definition developer that is proprietary to Kodak and uses very expensive and exotic ingredients. The rest of the process is also proprietary and some of it is patented. It is cross licensed to Fuji, as they have cross licensed many things to Kodak. Both companies have valuable properties that they exchange to mutual advantage. I am having trouble buying 2 of these myself right now. They run in the range of about $1 / gram, not a good price for making a developer yourself.

Other companies don't have this proprietary chemistry and therefore their chemistry they do supply can suffer from the effects described above as well as silver retention and bad dye stability.

PE

roteague · Aug 23, 2006

srs5694 said:
If you don't know that, you can run afoul of it, as you have in a minor way, particularly with roteague.

What I have a problem with is blanket statements of opinion. Like everything else, it depends upon various factors; and there are just too many factors to make blanket statements.

Ed Sukach · Aug 23, 2006

roteague said:
What I have a problem with is blanket statements of opinion. Like everything else, it depends upon various factors; and there are just too many factors to make blanket statements.

Amen!

What really frosts my cookie is a statement that is expected to be taken as a rock-hard, solid truth, beyond any argument. I've been around long enough to realize that NOTHING is impossible; and that most of the taken for granted "causes" in cause and effect weren't the cause.

Back in the Day, there was a well-worn statement among us Engineers, dealing with Natural Laws: "Mother Nature is a bitch."

davetravis · Aug 23, 2006

Hey Jacko,
There's nothing wrong with emoting...
Breath deep, re-read the posts, apply some wisdom, and good luck!
"The Truth Is Out There."

DKT · Aug 23, 2006

hey--I was only trying to help. Okay--you trust your light table right? Put your chromes down on that and get a set of CC filters, and start trying to figure out where the color shift is. You can use a set of Kodak CC/CP viewing filters for this as well. Flick em back & forth like you would trying to judge a color print....or since you think it's magenta, get a few green CC filters. a 5, and a 10 probably. If you're more than 10 pts. off, you have problems...under ten points is okay for E6. Then it becomes a film issue more or less, that is corrected back on your end.

If you want to do tests--shoot gray cards, macbeth charts, kodak colorbars etc. Do it under a pretty repeatable & controlled lighting and do it in such a way that you're not causing any color casts back into the shot. Run your film, and visually check it back against the gray cards etc.

If you do have a magenta problem, it could be.... well, I'm sure PE can tell you, but in my experience it could be caused by a number of factors beyond the pH. My biggest problem with Fujichrome (and the reason why at work we switched back to good old EPN) is with a magenta cast--but it was not caused by the pH directly, although that was a part of it.

To get the Fuji to match the kodak E6 control strips, was a PIA to be honest. It required a change to the preheat step, a change to the color developer, a change to the reversal bath, and a change to the final wash sequences. The changes were in specific gravity, pH and in time. All in an *automatic* processor--that was temp controlled at 102--not a jobo.... What we ultimately had to do is of no use or help to you, I'm afraid....

but my point was to help you, not criticize you for using digital (says he who is downloading 4 gigs of cards right now from an event I just shot)....it's just that the digital image is a different beast. A scanner is not a densitometer and your film is not a control strip. It's like apples & oranges.

just trying to be helpful, see what I get.

PhotoJim · Aug 23, 2006

Wow, lots of vitriol here today. Is there a parallel APUG universe?

I agree that you might be comparing apples to oranges too much - kind of unavoidable when you're comparing an analog image to digital - but I have an idea.

If your processing might be the fault, instead of comparing it to digital, why not compare it to properly processed analog?

Shoot two rolls of slide film using the same gear, in the same light, at the same place. Process one at home. Process the other at a good professional E6 lab. Compare the resulting slides. That will be as apples to apples as you can get.

Very likely, any difference you get between them can be attributed to your home processing.

I'm just starting to do E6 at home so this is an interesting thread. I will definitely use the Kodak or Fuji chemicals now.

Photo Engineer · Aug 23, 2006

Kodak and Fuji test or control strips will likely never match regardless of process. The reason is quite involved and not useful to describe here.

Just rely on the fact that both films are good, but the Tetenal kit may not give you the best results and scanning may be less than perfect, among other things.

PE

Jacko1729 · Aug 23, 2006

roteague said:
You are passing off your opinion as fact, when it is in fact, opinion.

This is what I said: "My digital captures with this same lens blows film away, so I know the capability of the lens"

I have shot res charts in testing this lens, both with my digital camera and my film camera. I have measured the results, and I have data that is factual.

I am not passing off opinion, I am "passing off" results of a controlled test, which, in fact, you can't seem to deal with it.

Just because I didn't email you the test results, or that you weren't involved in the test, doesn't make it "my opinion".

Jacko1729 · Aug 23, 2006

Ed Sukach said:
Amen!

What really frosts my cookie is a statement that is expected to be taken as a rock-hard, solid truth, beyond any argument. I've been around long enough to realize that NOTHING is impossible; and that most of the taken for granted "causes" in cause and effect weren't the cause.

Back in the Day, there was a well-worn statement among us Engineers, dealing with Natural Laws: "Mother Nature is a bitch."

Sorry your cookie is frosted, but see my post to roteague. I'm not passing off opinion or gas. I know what this Nikkor 85mm will do on both film and digital bodies as the result of tests, not opinion.

If you have taken issue with my original statement, please tell me what it is and maybe counter with something factual, instead of more opinion.

Best,

Jack

Jacko1729 · Aug 23, 2006

DKT said:
hey--I was only trying to help. Okay--you trust your light table right? Put your chromes down on that and get a set of CC filters, and start trying to figure out where the color shift is. You can use a set of Kodak CC/CP viewing filters for this as well. Flick em back & forth like you would trying to judge a color print....or since you think it's magenta, get a few green CC filters. a 5, and a 10 probably. If you're more than 10 pts. off, you have problems...under ten points is okay for E6. Then it becomes a film issue more or less, that is corrected back on your end.

If you want to do tests--shoot gray cards, macbeth charts, kodak colorbars etc. Do it under a pretty repeatable & controlled lighting and do it in such a way that you're not causing any color casts back into the shot. Run your film, and visually check it back against the gray cards etc.

If you do have a magenta problem, it could be.... well, I'm sure PE can tell you, but in my experience it could be caused by a number of factors beyond the pH. My biggest problem with Fujichrome (and the reason why at work we switched back to good old EPN) is with a magenta cast--but it was not caused by the pH directly, although that was a part of it.

To get the Fuji to match the kodak E6 control strips, was a PIA to be honest. It required a change to the preheat step, a change to the color developer, a change to the reversal bath, and a change to the final wash sequences. The changes were in specific gravity, pH and in time. All in an *automatic* processor--that was temp controlled at 102--not a jobo.... What we ultimately had to do is of no use or help to you, I'm afraid....

but my point was to help you, not criticize you for using digital (says he who is downloading 4 gigs of cards right now from an event I just shot)....it's just that the digital image is a different beast. A scanner is not a densitometer and your film is not a control strip. It's like apples & oranges.

just trying to be helpful, see what I get.

DKT, thanks for trying to help. Thanks for putting up with my frustration in this. In my digital work, I shoot in a very controlled manner and balance my color to known control values. My error was assuming that film would be close, especially considering I was doing the processing and a lab wasn't.

After reading, and reading, and reading, I've found that besides the PH, Jobo says in the CP-2 manual that if there is a magenta color shift, to increase color developer concentration by 10%. I can't find a mention of this in the Tetenal paperwork, but I may have missed it.

I'm going to take your advice and shoot my gray cards and color targets with film, but I also think I'm going to try a slight change in chemistry at the same time. For some reason, I think this is where my problem lies.

Point taken about the two different mediums, of course, that wasn't the purpose of the included digital image, I was using it as the 'control image' if you will, because it was processed with known color values.

Many thanks,

Jack

Jacko1729 · Aug 23, 2006

srs5694 said:
Remember that Web forums (and Usenet newsgroups and mailing lists and in-person clubs) are full of people with opinions. Remember also that these people don't know your experiences, expectations, skill level, etc. Between these two things, you'll get responses that you don't find helpful and that you might even find offensive. Except in extreme cases, the best approach is just to ignore the responses that aren't helpful, present additional information when necessary, and ask follow-up questions to elicit the sorts of responses you would find helpful. If you get upset over comments that you deem to be too simplistic or even mildly offensive, a thread can quickly deteriorate into a flame-fest, at which point it'll get closed (here on APUG).

Points well taken.

srs5694 said:
Also remember that this is the Analog Photography Users Group. Some people on this group are very strident about that first word, so if you even mention digital photography (some consider those two words to be contradictory), you're likely to get some negative commentary. That's just part of the culture here. If you don't know that, you can run afoul of it, as you have in a minor way, particularly with roteague. Don't let that scare you off; just avoid hinting at digital superiority in any way. Such hints are like sticking your hand into a hornet's nest.

And that's why I came here, I'm trying to do film (like I used to). I didn't realize that I had said anything about 'digital superiority', but I immediately found the film bias is as bad as the digital bias at my other home. Sheesh But, live and learn.

srs5694 said:
Now, to a more topical comment: The question of E-6 (or color generally) chemistry brand will elicit a variety of responses, opinions, and even factual posts. I suspect these responses generally reflect differing standards of excellence and expectations on the part of the respondents; some are very demanding and/or do quantitative tests, whereas others are more casual about their color and accept whatever meets their subjective and poorly-defined standards. I suspect you're in the former category, so you might want to pay more attention to Photo Engineer and others in that group. This means you may need to investigate things like the pH of your water and other factors that have been mentioned in this thread, as well as switch brands of chemistry.

After much reading, I've discovered some things to try, and some of the posts have been most helpful.

Thanks so much for your thoughtful response.

Jack

Jacko1729 · Aug 23, 2006

Photo Engineer said:
Just FYI, the E6 first developer is a very very high definition developer that is proprietary to Kodak and uses very expensive and exotic ingredients. The rest of the process is also proprietary and some of it is patented. It is cross licensed to Fuji, as they have cross licensed many things to Kodak. Both companies have valuable properties that they exchange to mutual advantage. I am having trouble buying 2 of these myself right now. They run in the range of about $1 / gram, not a good price for making a developer yourself.

Other companies don't have this proprietary chemistry and therefore their chemistry they do supply can suffer from the effects described above as well as silver retention and bad dye stability.

PE

Wow, PE, I never knew that. I'm going to do a few more 'experiments' with this Tetenal kit, and maybe I can resolve the problem. It makes sense that Kodak and Fuji would have proprietary chemistry, as well as why I'm having some of these problems.

Thanks,

Jack

Jacko1729 · Aug 23, 2006

davetravis said:
Hey Jacko,
There's nothing wrong with emoting...
Breath deep, re-read the posts, apply some wisdom, and good luck!
"The Truth Is Out There."

Thank you I have breathed, I've re-read, working on the rest.

Jacko1729 · Aug 23, 2006

PhotoJim said:
Wow, lots of vitriol here today. Is there a parallel APUG universe?

Yes, and you're in it

PhotoJim said:
I agree that you might be comparing apples to oranges too much - kind of unavoidable when you're comparing an analog image to digital - but I have an idea.

If your processing might be the fault, instead of comparing it to digital, why not compare it to properly processed analog?

I have commercially processed transparencies and I compare them to digital capture all the time. Sure there are inherent differences, but I know what they are. The digital image is a control image, it has known color values, and that is why I included it. I didn't realize at the time it was a cardinal sin to compare film to digital. Some jobs that I shoot, I shoot both film and digital. The client is looking at both, and depending on the end use, may choose digital or film. It's not a sin to use both

PhotoJim said:
Shoot two rolls of slide film using the same gear, in the same light, at the same place. Process one at home. Process the other at a good professional E6 lab. Compare the resulting slides. That will be as apples to apples as you can get.

As I mentioned, I have previously shot transparencies that were commercially processed. So, I'm fully convinced that it's in my processing. I'm making adjustments in my processing now that I've discovered what will cause a color shift. The last time I processed E-6 (about 15 years ago) I didn't have this problem, but I was using Kodak chemistry then.

PhotoJim said:
I'm just starting to do E6 at home so this is an interesting thread. I will definitely use the Kodak or Fuji chemicals now.

I may be switching real soon

Jack

Shane Knight · Aug 24, 2006

Hello and welcome Jack,

Lets get back on track with your problem.

I believe this will be a great thread for future reference as home E-6 processing will only get more popular as more labs are closing down their E-6 departments.

To understand the differences of both models you have posted regarding the halo effect; when posting images that have been scanned, there are quite a few variables.
To eliminate and/or understand some variables, I am wondering (might be a dumb question) but can you see the halo effect on your transparency using a loupe and light table.

Thanks for joining APUG and posting a great thread.

Shane Knight
www.shaneknight.com

DKT · Aug 24, 2006

The best thing to do would be to tackle one problem at a time....you could just shoot your test film and then start over. set up your process and do it like you always do, but take notes if you have to--keep a record. Make sure you have a good thermometer this time out.

Then--check your film out on a light box you trust. If you use CC filters--and you have a set actually--it could be that your film is magenta or red, or maybe even both. It could also be that your speed is off. You'll have a range for your first developer time--and try to hit whatever they list as your aim, it should be around 6-7 minutes. Try to nail this, and do your tests in brackets to figure out your film speed around that.

But you need to do one thing at a time. You can't tackle them all at once and change a bunch of things, at the same time, or else you'll drive yourself nuts. The whole thing will keep changing underneath you.

I guess maybe speed, then color.

If you want to just jump right in---try adding some sodium hydroxide to your color developer. I'm sure tetenal has some info on this for their kit. Add tiny amounts and see if that cools it off. It won't be much. You can also try diluting the reversal bath for the tube--my guess is that the chemistry is already mixed up that way, since rotary tubes take a weaker dilution of reversal bath. But in the new Kodak kit, they say you don't need to do this anymore--yet I found out we needed to with our machine. This brought the spread on our HD (control strip plots for color) within control. Before--mixed as kodak specified, the spread was too great, and by adding sodium hydroxide, we could bring the plot in control that would cause a magenta shift, but it caused all sorts of other problems that were even worse.

without the control strips--at one frustrating point, we just visually corrected our fujichrome by using sodium hydroxide and sulfuric acid to shift the film one way or the other. (we use 5 gallons of chemistry though, and it's liek a science project keeping it in control). when we did this, we would run okay 50% of the time, and the other 50 was a hair pulling nightmare. You had to really look at the film on a micro scale to see how screwed up it was....

So good luck--and I'm sure you'll get it figured out if you stick with it long enough. Just be patient, take good notes and try to do it the same way every time....

Jacko1729 · Aug 24, 2006

Shane Knight said:
Hello and welcome Jack,

Lets get back on track with your problem.

I believe this will be a great thread for future reference as home E-6 processing will only get more popular as more labs are closing down their E-6 departments.

To understand the differences of both models you have posted regarding the halo effect; when posting images that have been scanned, there are quite a few variables.
To eliminate and/or understand some variables, I am wondering (might be a dumb question) but can you see the halo effect on your transparency using a loupe and light table.

Thanks for joining APUG and posting a great thread.

Shane Knight
www.shaneknight.com

Thanks Shane, I appreciate your comments. That halo thing, it's freaking me out now... I can't see it with my 10x loupe, and I scanned it on my flatbed just to see how different it would be, and the halo wasn't there. So, I have more than one problem I am not a scanning guru, but I just can't understand what would create this type of halo in my scanner (a minolta dimage 5400). It appears as a reflection, almost like a mirror.

I've just got to figure this chemistry thing out as well, although I think there are other things muddying the water.

Jack

Jacko1729 · Aug 24, 2006

DKT said:
The best thing to do would be to tackle one problem at a time....you could just shoot your test film and then start over. set up your process and do it like you always do, but take notes if you have to--keep a record. Make sure you have a good thermometer this time out.

Then--check your film out on a light box you trust. If you use CC filters--and you have a set actually--it could be that your film is magenta or red, or maybe even both. It could also be that your speed is off. You'll have a range for your first developer time--and try to hit whatever they list as your aim, it should be around 6-7 minutes. Try to nail this, and do your tests in brackets to figure out your film speed around that.

But you need to do one thing at a time. You can't tackle them all at once and change a bunch of things, at the same time, or else you'll drive yourself nuts. The whole thing will keep changing underneath you.

I guess maybe speed, then color.

If you want to just jump right in---try adding some sodium hydroxide to your color developer. I'm sure tetenal has some info on this for their kit. Add tiny amounts and see if that cools it off. It won't be much. You can also try diluting the reversal bath for the tube--my guess is that the chemistry is already mixed up that way, since rotary tubes take a weaker dilution of reversal bath. But in the new Kodak kit, they say you don't need to do this anymore--yet I found out we needed to with our machine. This brought the spread on our HD (control strip plots for color) within control. Before--mixed as kodak specified, the spread was too great, and by adding sodium hydroxide, we could bring the plot in control that would cause a magenta shift, but it caused all sorts of other problems that were even worse.

without the control strips--at one frustrating point, we just visually corrected our fujichrome by using sodium hydroxide and sulfuric acid to shift the film one way or the other. (we use 5 gallons of chemistry though, and it's liek a science project keeping it in control). when we did this, we would run okay 50% of the time, and the other 50 was a hair pulling nightmare. You had to really look at the film on a micro scale to see how screwed up it was....

So good luck--and I'm sure you'll get it figured out if you stick with it long enough. Just be patient, take good notes and try to do it the same way every time....

Thanks DKT, these are some great pointers. I'm hoping I can find a happy medium here somewhere, but the next thing I'm going to do is shoot test films and process (with notes ). I know this has to be a solveable problem, I'm just kind of overwhelmed with the variables.

I just found in my Jobo book that my rotation speed was on slow, and should have been on the faster speed (2 vs 1). I don't know how I missed this, but that could be very key in this as well. I'm not sure, but it seems that the rotation speed is kind of a subjective thing (the book is not really that clear to me).

Anyway, I really, really appreciate the tips and thoughts. I'm anxious to get started on figuring this thing out!

Jack

E-6 Processing, something is wrong.

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