Ektachrome 64T Coming Out Blue

[Caleb Hauge]

I bought a 100 foot roll of Ektachrome 64T that expired in November 2005 a few weeks ago. The seller claims it was cold stored. I ran a few rolls through my SLR without any filters, and it looked roughly as expected. Under tungsten lighting, things looked fairly normal. Under daylight, things looked blue. However, I did not develop these rolls properly. I used D76 (undiluted) as my first developer, a flashlight for reversal, and an exhausted CineStill Cs41 kit for the color dev and blix. This made for some interesting color shifts. Yesterday I got both the CineStill DynamicChrome kit and a new (to me) Bolsey Model B2, which came with a Series V Kodachrome-A daylight filter, which I assume is roughly equivalent to an 85B. I ran a few rolls through the Bolsey and then through the new dev kit, and.... they were blue. Very blue. And dark. The rebate came out the same dark blue. What's up with that? Is it the film? Is it the DynamicChrome, which is apparently a non-standard developer? Is it the filter?

Crappy pic of EPY from Bolsey w/DynamicChrome

Crappy pic of EPY from SLR w/D76 dev

 

[xkaes]

My GUESS would be the development, but there are too many variables in this plate of spaghetti to be sure. I say try the proper chemicals appropriately without any filters before you decide it's the film.

 

[Caleb Hauge]

Yeah, it's definitely a bit of a mess. I thought DynamicChrome would work well with all E-6 films, but apparently it only works well for E100 in most cases. I'll send a roll to The Darkroom to see if it'll come out normal, and I'll keep tweaking the DynamicChrome dev time/temp to see if it helps at all. Longer first dev will give lighter positives, right?
Also, what should the rebate look like on Ektachrome 64T normally? Should it look the same as any other E-6 film, black?

 

[Sirius Glass]

Ektachrome 64T works really well for night time available light photography. I used it for years.

http://www.cppdh.org/download/jiffy-calculator-for-night-light-exposures.pdf

 

[Caleb Hauge]

Ektachrome 64T works really well for night time available light photography. I used it for years.

http://www.cppdh.org/download/jiffy-calculator-for-night-light-exposures.pdf

I actually used it for that last night! I took some pictures downtown with all of the lights glowing. My city uses Edison-style LEDs, so they're very pretty. They turned out pretty well. I think they had the least color cast of all the ones developed with DynamicChrome, but they were very underexposed.

 

[Oz Etkin]

I've never had good results with any of Cinestill's E6 chemistry. Every time I've used DynamicChrome the film has come out about 2 stops underdeveloped. Even with their DaylightChrome developer it looks 1-1.5 stops under. I haven't noticed any color shifts, though, only underdevelopment.

 

[Caleb Hauge]

I am thoroughly confused now. I developed another roll in the DynamicChrome kit. I've heard that other films work better with longer development with that kit, so I did 10 minutes at 115 F. It worked pretty well... sorta. The rebate looks normal. The top and bottom edges of each photo look normal, maybe a tad overdeveloped. However, there is a long strip of purple running through the middle of the film, and it goes along the entire length of it. The leader shows it best. The rebate on the leader is clear (mostly) - as you'd expect on slide film - but the center is purple. Interestingly, the frames that were the most overexposed (especially an accidental double exposure) have the least visible purple in the center.

Pic of the leader

Low-quality phone pic of one of the photos

 

[Caleb Hauge]

I think this'll be the final update for a bit. I did another roll yesterday, and I had the opposite problem. I heard that the problem with the CineStill kit was that the first developer wasn't active enough, so I tried a stronger dilution. 8ml first dev, 6ml water. I did it for 12 minutes at 115 F, which is a time and temp I'd done before. After all was done, the film was heavily overdeveloped. I shot half the roll at box speed and half the roll 2 stops over, since 2 stops over looked almost good at normal dilution. The photos 2 stops over were completely blown out, but the photos at box speed had some detail in them. Colors were very washed out and reds were almost totally absent, but there's no heavy purple cast! I've had great success with using D76 (undiluted, ~11 minutes, 110 F) as a first developer with only slight color shifts, so I'll be using that from now on with the rest of the CineStill kit for everything else.