First time developing 35mm, please help me diagnose color issues

Evilash1996 · Aug 27, 2018

I tried C-41 developing for the first time. Did everything just as the kit told me to do it. All of my photos look "off". I can't tell if there are "flat", or the color temperature is off as I am inexperienced. Other photos I had professionally developed came out much better in detail both color wise and sharpness wise. Any one have any idea what I am doing wrong?

The method of development I am using is as follows:

Pre soak with 102F water for 1 min
Developer at 102F for 3.5 min. Agigate for the first ten seconds then agitate every 30 seconds
Blix at around 102F for 6.5 min. Agitate for the first ten second and then every 30 seconds.
Wash with running water around 102F for 3 minutes
Stabilizer for about a minute at room temp.
Air dry

The positive you are seeing here is after being scanned with a Canon 9000f. The pictures that I had professionally developed were also scanned with my scanner (Canon 9000F) and the quality was still much better than the negatives I developed myself. This is why I suspect the issue lies within my development process. I am thinking maybe the developer is too cold or maybe I am not leaving it in the developer for long enough. The troubleshooting guide in the C41 kit says if your pictures are "too flat" this is an issue if underdevelopment. I don't know if the pictures I have are considered "flat" but that's what they seem like to me. I can provide more scans if that helps.

RPC · Aug 27, 2018

What kit are you using? The C-41 standard is 3.25 minutes at 100F. If anything the film should be overdeveloped. Hard to trust scans, but it looks like you may have some crossover, a difference in contrast of the three emulsion layers, which results from improper temperatures and other causes. How do the negatives compare with lab negs when viewed directly?

I would not trust any kit that told me to develop at 102F, or one that used a blix instead of a separate bleach and fix.

btaylor · Aug 28, 2018

They look underdeveloped or underexposed to me. Or maybe a scanning issue, have you gone back and scanned a commercially developed film to compare?
On the 3:25 vs 3:30 issue, 102 vs 100 temp and blix vs separate bleach and fix, I don’t think that will make a noticeable difference. I use the Arista C41 kit with blix, I drift from 102 to 99 degrees in my Unicolor Film Drum for 3:15 development (constant agitation) and I get great negatives that wet print easily. C41 is forgiving. Something is more wrong here than a couple of degrees or a few more seconds in the developer. I do wonder if the developer has gone off— maybe try another kit from a different seller and see what your results are.

Evilash1996 · Aug 28, 2018

I have scanned the negatives developed by the commerical lab with the same scanner and the color is better. So I definitely think this has to do with my development process. The kit I am using is called FPP C-41 Development kit (filmphotographystore.com/products/darkroom-supplies-fpp-c-41-development-kit-1-liter)

I'll attach a picture of one of the pictures that was commercially developed for comparison

RPC · Aug 28, 2018

Temperature does make a difference, but what a person sees and the level of acceptability varies from person to person.

In this case of your pics, I don't think the temperature or blix is the major problem per se, but a quick look at this kit online shows it to be a non-standard process. As I said earlier, I would not trust any process that uses 102F, and the description of this kit and your results seems to justify this lack of trust. I always use Kodak chemistry for optimum results. On the other hand I would suggest developing another roll as a test, being very careful with your processing.

Is the pic in your last post the lab's pic? If so, it to doesn't look quite right to me, but could be the scan, or a simple color balance issue. Is your film fresh?

MattKing · Aug 28, 2018

I would be concerned as well by the apparent non-standard nature of the kit.
But I would also point out that your comparison between your scans of a lab processed roll and your home processed roll may not be as revealing as you think.
It is possible that your home processed film may yield similar results to the lab processed film if you adjust the settings in your scanning software and/or post-process the files differently.
While C41 is a standard process that should yield a single optimum result, there is still a range of near optimum results that can be very useful.

pentaxuser · Aug 28, 2018

RPC said:
Is the pic in your last post the lab's pic? If so, it to doesn't look quite right to me, but could be the scan, or a simple color balance issue. Is your film fresh?

Is this a reference to the beach scene pic in #4? If so what is wrong with it?

pentaxuser

Evilash1996 · Aug 28, 2018

Both sets of negatives are scanned with the same settings on my scanner with no post processing. They are exactly how the scanner scanned the negatives. What do you think is off about that beach picture? Looks fine by my standards and if all my pictures came out like that I would be more than happy.

Maybe if someone has had experiance with this specific kit before I would be able to get a better answer as to what is going wrong here.

To me it seems like the contrast is too low. Is that what a "flat" image means?

MattKing · Aug 28, 2018

Evilash1996 said:
Both sets of negatives are scanned with the same settings on my scanner with no post processing. They are exactly how the scanner scanned the negatives.

The fact that you used the "same settings" may be the problem.
Scanning software uses internal profiles and algorithms in an attempt to give good "automatic" results. If your kit develops film to a slightly different standard than the lab process, the scanning software's profile that works well with the films developed by the lab will not give the same "automatic" results with the kit processed film. You will need to adjust the scanning software's settings to get better results. For some that means creating a customized film profile.
You may find that

Evilash1996 said:
What do you think is off about that beach picture? Looks fine by my standards and if all my pictures came out like that I would be more than happy.

To me it looks a bit blue, but it certainly is better than your scans from the kit processed film.

Evilash1996 said:
To me it seems like the contrast is too low. Is that what a "flat" image means?

Yes
Just as an illustration, I copied one of your images and spent a half minute doing some quick post-processing on it. I see some crossover problems, but this may be closer to what you want, and should be easily obtained with some minor adjustments:

RPC · Aug 28, 2018

As Matt King says, my screen shows post #4 to have a blue or blue/magenta appearance compared to what I normally see on my screen, but could be largely fixed by simple color balancing. Contrast and density look good.

pentaxuser · Aug 28, 2018

OP, not to put too fine a point on all this but it seems to me that if you are a hybrid worker and do no darkroom printing then once you have learned how to make adjustments in scanning you can produce acceptable prints even if your negatives are less than ideal as demonstrated by Matt king here and others in threads dealing with similar problems

It may be that your negatives are flat( cause as yet unknown) and no matter how clever anyone is with scanning, no-one will get the same deep super saturated colours that I presume the beach negative is capable of but I don't know as I don't scan. On the other hand, had you scanned like Matt and then asked us about the ancient building shot, many of us, especially those who prefer muted colours such as I, would have asked what was problem you saw with the finished article, namely the print.

It does make me wonder if it is worth a coroner's inquest into C41 problems and causes such as 1-2 degrees too hot/cold, too much, not enough agitation, bleach and fix v blix, 5 second more/less than the stipulated developing time etc

If it is still a problem you wish to pursue, can I suggest you show us a camera( not scanned) shot of the flat negative and the same shots of the good negatives processed by the labs. Then we can genuinely compare.

Warning : Don't necessarily expect a complete consensus as to the cause and solution - well not in the first few responses anyway .

pentaxuser

Evilash1996 · Aug 28, 2018

MattKing said:
Yes
Just as an illustration, I copied one of your images and spent a half minute doing some quick post-processing on it. I see some crossover problems, but this may be closer to what you want, and should be easily obtained with some minor adjustments:

What minor adjustments did you to this photo to get the color issue corrected. Also what do you mean by crossover problems?

pentaxuser said:
If it is still a problem you wish to pursue, can I suggest you show us a camera( not scanned) shot of the flat negative and the same shots of the good negatives processed by the labs. Then we can genuinely compare.

How do I go about taking this picture? Straight from my phone camera or something else?

MattKing · Aug 28, 2018

Evilash1996 said:
What minor adjustments did you to this photo to get the color issue corrected. Also what do you mean by crossover problems?
How do I go about taking this picture? Straight from my phone camera or something else?

I used Fast Stone Image Viewer to do my adjustments.
In the "Adjust Colours" mode I tweaked the gamma and contrast and brightness - just using the sliders until it looked better.
In the same mode I added small amounts of blue and green. Then I adjusted the saturation to taste.
The crossover problems - crossover happens when the contrast of the different colour layers goes out of synch. Note how the sky (a highlight area) has gone just a bit yellow green, while the shadows are slightly blue. While some of that is common when parts of a scene are illuminated by sun while others are illuminated by (blue) open sky, it looks to me like the mismatch is greater than that.
The standard C41 process is calibrated to avoid crossover - the colour layers develop in synch. If you, for example, develop with different temperatures the layers develop differently and crossover happens.
Crossover is tough to correct, even with digital controls. True correction requires very laborious work because you have to make different adjustments to different densities.
And yes, a phone camera pic works. Its best to backlight the negative strips with something like a window or blank computer screen. Please show us a strip with both the edges and at least a couple of frames. If you include a strip from your lab developed negatives for comparison, that would be useful too.

Evilash1996 · Aug 28, 2018

Okay I will post the negatives when I get home. Thank you to everybody helping me diagnose this problem I greatly appreciate it.

Carriage · Aug 28, 2018

I did some quick adjustments to all of them. I'm not sure what's going on with the Eiffel Tower but the trees look right. I think it's most likely that the red and a little bit of the green channel are clipped in the highlights.

Have a look at this. http://www.coltonallen.com/getting-the-most-from-color-negative-film-with-your-epson-flatbed/
Basically all I've done is used GIMP (photoshop will work) to crop to just the image and then brought the edges in on the levels tool to the edge of each colour channel's histogram. One has a bit of an s curve added.

This looks most likely a scanning issue, but posting a pic of the negatives will still be useful to confirm.

Carriage · Aug 28, 2018

foc · Aug 28, 2018

When you are posting the shots of your negs can you include the lab processed negs as well, please.

Evilash1996 · Aug 28, 2018

Hope these pictures are adequate. The last two pictures are from the lab processed results.

Carriage · Aug 28, 2018

Based on the edge markings being similar, yours like fine. I'd wait for a more experienced opinion though.

Evilash1996 · Aug 28, 2018

Carriage said:
Based on the edge markings being similar, yours like fine. I'd wait for a more experienced opinion though.

Can you explain what you mean about the edge marks being similiar?

Carriage · Aug 28, 2018

The text on the film in the rebates (the frame numbers, barcodes, etc) is put on by exposing the film with that pattern using light at the factory. If we assume there's no quality control issues, these should be consistent between rolls. Therefore, any difference between them as seen on different rolls can only be attributed to developing, not the camera. In your case, it doesn't look like the colours are different if at all, which leads to my conclusion that your developing is fine. Obviously, the white balance of your phone/digicam could affect it but given the very similar/almost identical conditions you took these photos in, its unlikely that the white balance is having an effect.

In other words, if there was a colour cast issue in developing, you should see the cast in the rebate markings too.

RPC · Aug 29, 2018

I do not believe the edge markings show enough information to determine if there is any crossover. Crossover is unwanted shifts in color with density changes, so one will observe or measure the color shifts only when such density changes are present as is the case with a typical image. The ideal subject is a gray scale. The rebate colors seen between the films are very close, so that is a good sign, but it does not tell all.

pentaxuser · Aug 29, 2018

I can only base this on my negatives from which my darkroom prints are made but these negatives look very similar to mine. Frankly I can see no reason other than scanning why such negatives would not produce good prints, properly scanned or RA4 printed. If anything your lab processed beach negative looks to be slightly over exposed in comparison. In summary it looks as if your home processing is fine

Have a look at a July 2018 thread by someone called ekkybedmond. It is Help film exposed - 3 stops. Ignore the thread's title but look at the bad negs and the good neg. Your negs resemble his good neg from which a nice bright proper contrast and colour print was made.

pentaxuser

Evilash1996 · Aug 29, 2018

Excuse my ignorance but it is normal to post process every negative before printing? Should I always edit the saturation, sharpness, contrast. etc before making any prints or with a scanner that is properly set up this is not necessary?

Wallendo · Aug 29, 2018

Evilash1996 said:
Excuse my ignorance but it is normal to post process every negative before printing? Should I always edit the saturation, sharpness, contrast. etc before making any prints or with a scanner that is properly set up this is not necessary?

My personal workflow is to scan each negative/slide with no adjustments and then correct each image by adjusting the red, green and blue level with the "Levels" control in Photoshop. It seems like a lot of work, but with experience takes less than a minute per image. I can scan another image while processing the first.

Essentially I load the image.
Hit cmd-L
Hit cmd-2 - adjust markers to bottom and top of histogram
Hit cmd-3 - adjust as above
Hit cmd-4 - as above
Click OK
cmd-S - and I'm done.
This works for most images, but I have to modify my technic for sunrises and sunsets where the color balance is not uniform.

First time developing 35mm, please help me diagnose color issues

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