Fuji slide film with heavy red shadows

armadsen · Nov 30, 2022

I just got back a roll of 120 Velvia, and a roll of 120 Provia that I shot in the forest near Portland, Oregon last week. Both rolls of film were fresh (expiration dates in 2024). Both have a heavy red color to the unexposed parts of the film (e.g. between frames) as well as the shadows of the images. The highlights and midtones look ~normal. The issue is less pronounced on the Provia than the Velvia. I talked to the lab about it and the guy running the line said he had no idea what was going on. He showed me today's and yesterday's control strips for the E6 line, and they looked normal (no red). He said he assumed my film had gone through an airport scanner (it hasn't).
I can only assume it's a processing issue, but with the lab itself (a long-standing, busy lab, FWIW) not knowing what could cause it, I figured I'd turn to the experts here.

See a couple of the scanned images attached, but note that it is *not* a scanning issue. I noticed it looking at the film itself in the parking lot of the lab after picking it up.

Provia:

Velvia:

Film itself (Velvia):

cramej · Nov 30, 2022

I realize that wasn't what you were expecting, but it looks pretty neat! The upside-down is real.....

Anyway, looks like it could have been some sort of light exposure part way through the process.

railwayman2 · Nov 30, 2022

It looks something like solarisation does on a B&W film ? Which would be consistent with cramej's suggestion of a light exposure part way through the process ?

John Salim · Nov 30, 2022

That looks like an exhausted bleach bath to me !

John S

armadsen · Nov 30, 2022

I'm skeptical that it was exposed to light partway through, but anything's possible, I suppose. The red is consistent across the entire surface of both rolls. The lab is processing another test roll for me right now (they're reimbursing me for it), so we'll see what happens with that one.

armadsen · Nov 30, 2022

I went back and my test Velvia roll (from the same box as the bad roll) came out fine. The guy who runs film processing there took me for a full tour of the facility. He has worked there processing film since 1977.

He was still at a loss as to the cause of the problem. He agreed that it looked like exhausted reversal bath or bleach, but he couldn’t figure out how it happened.

They’re using Refrema dip and dunk machines, and the E6 line is run every day. Replenishment is automatic, and he hadn’t done anything special before or after processing my rolls.

They gave me three rolls of film as replacements. Still frustrated that my rolls are ruined, but came away with a good experience anyway.

abruzzi · Nov 30, 2022

someone opened part of the roll in a red darkroom?

koraks · Dec 1, 2022

railwayman2 said:
It looks something like solarisation does on a B&W film

Yeah, that was my first thought as well. Fogging with a green light at some point halfway through the first developer ir something weird like that. I imagine this could be conceivable in a dip & dunk system where a green status led on some device that wasn't supposed to be there went on.

John Salim · Dec 1, 2022

armadsen said:
I went back and my test Velvia roll (from the same box as the bad roll) came out fine. The guy who runs film processing there took me for a full tour of the facility. He has worked there processing film since 1977.

He was still at a loss as to the cause of the problem. He agreed that it looked like exhausted reversal bath or bleach, but he couldn’t figure out how it happened.

They’re using Refrema dip and dunk machines, and the E6 line is run every day. Replenishment is automatic, and he hadn’t done anything special before or after processing my rolls.

They gave me three rolls of film as replacements. Still frustrated that my rolls are ruined, but came away with a good experience anyway.

Why don't you ask if they'll re-process that 'red' strip. The re-bleaching should improve things.

John S

koraks · Dec 1, 2022

Worth a try, but by the looks of it, these are already formed dyes. Reprocessing isn't going to remove them.

jtk · Dec 2, 2022

Perhaps the lab was using the Refrema in E3 mode? Or perhaps this was an example of initial, widely reported, problems with Fuji E6: It was necessary to adjust E6 processing for Fuji Vs Kodak and yes, the problem reportedly had to do with red.

Refrema is simply a machine...it can't cover for operator errors.

koraks · Dec 2, 2022

jtk said:
Or perhaps this was an example of initial, widely reported, problems with Fuji E6: It was necessary to adjust E6 processing for Fuji Vs Kodak and yes, the problem reportedly had to do with red.

AFAIK the difference was/is a difference development time in 1st developer. Not something that would explain these oddly solarized red shadows.

Joel_L · Dec 2, 2022

I had that happen once when I accidentally mixed one of the blix components into the color dev.

jtk · Dec 3, 2022

koraks said:
AFAIK the difference was/is a difference development time in 1st developer. Not something that would explain these oddly solarized red shadows.

You're probably right. On the other hand, the Fuji-vs-Kodak problem was reported by top NYC labs decades ago.

Personally, I did quit Fuji about that time because of a similar (and obvious) problem...the only local E6 lab was barely hanging on (in Santa Fe) at the time and I had zero interest in shooting film of dubious character. I tossed a few years-out-of-date rolls.

koraks · Dec 3, 2022

jtk said:
On the other hand, the Fuji-vs-Kodak problem was reported by top NYC labs decades ago

I don't doubt it was/is very real. What I don't know is to what extent it still exists with today's films. I don't shoot any E6 anymore anyway; haven't done so for a few years. Before that if shoot whatever I could get my hands on; never noticed any particular problems in color rendition, but I sent all my E6 off to a major lab here that processed probably half of the film exposed in this country. I guess they knew what they were doing, at least back then. Lat time I used them, all rolls had small patches of green gunk stuck to the emulsion. That was the last E6 I shot.

armadsen · Dec 4, 2022

I’ve taken a roll of Ektachrome in to the same lab since this happened, and it came out just fine.

At this point I have to assume it was operator error of some sort. As I said, the person that processed the film has been at it full time for 45 years. Everyone’s capable of mistakes, but it’s not a straight up “doesn’t know what he’s doing” situation. I’ve used this lab for ~15 years without a problem, so at this point I’ll cross my fingers that it doesn’t happen again.

The good news is that the images of my son that I took on the Provia roll were affected lightly enough that I’ve been able to correct them reasonably well in Photoshop.

foc · Dec 4, 2022

koraks said:
I imagine this could be conceivable in a dip & dunk system where a green status led on some device that wasn't supposed to be there went on.

Could the darkroom operator have had their phone on in their pocket?

koraks · Dec 4, 2022

Yeah, something like that. Or, well, whatever. I mean, there's so many little status LEDs and displays around us all the time that it's not a far-fetched idea that one has slipped through the cracks even in a professional operation. If there happens to be some piece of industrial equipment and it has a LAN, MODBUS or whatever other kind of interface module in it, it's bound to have some LEDs on there as well. Normally that's not an issue, but in a film processing outfit you have to blind, remove or somehow darken all of those little LEDs. It takes just a single service operation on a Monday morning "after the night before" to forget a little status LED somewhere.

Huss · Dec 10, 2022

Lab error. It happens, but at least they made it right by you.

Just because someone is experienced and has been doing it for years does not mean they cannot mess up.
Last week, the first time ever in my 40 years of taking pics, I opened the back of my camera before I rewound the film…. Eesh!

ekaterina_milan · Jul 13, 2024

I recently ran into a similar issue with three rolls of film
Did you try editing the scans to fix the shadow issues? Any tips or tricks you could share would be greatly appreciated. I've tried several methods, but I haven't been able to remove the redness without impacting the rest of the image.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

koraks · Jul 14, 2024

Welcome aboard @ekaterina_milan !
I'm sorry to hear about your problem with this film. Is it indeed slide film as discussed earlier in the thread, or color negative?

Have you tried re-bleaching and re-fixing the film? Is there a possibility of posting some photos of a strip of affected film against a backlight (i.e. no scans)?

Alan Edward Klein · Jul 14, 2024

Is the lab in Utah?

_T_ · Jul 14, 2024

ekaterina_milan said:
I recently ran into a similar issue with three rolls of film
Did you try editing the scans to fix the shadow issues? Any tips or tricks you could share would be greatly appreciated. I've tried several methods, but I haven't been able to remove the redness without impacting the rest of the image.

Thanks in advance for any advice!
View attachment 373965

Select > Color Range and select everything red with the eyedropper tool (This might not work as well with other images)

Create a Curves adjustment layer using the selection you just made and use it to invert the colors by dragging the end points to their opposite position.

Adjust the brightness and contrast of the image by dragging the left endpoint down until the just the edges of the selected area blend into the surrounding image.

Create a new Curves adjustment layer using the same selection you made at the beginning and drag the endpoints toward the center from the left and right hand sides until the shadows and highlights reach the correct values.

Create a Selective Color adjustment layer and adjust the sliders for Red until the reddish cast is reduced and the affected pixels blend with the surrounding layer (this will take care of any red you missed with your selection too, it may not work as well on images that are supposed to have more red tones in them which would mean you need to mask the effect)

See the results in the image I posted. I did a quick and dirty job of it so you can take your time and do it much better than me.

ekaterina_milan · Jul 16, 2024

koraks said:
Welcome aboard @ekaterina_milan !
I'm sorry to hear about your problem with this film. Is it indeed slide film as discussed earlier in the thread, or color negative?

Have you tried re-bleaching and re-fixing the film? Is there a possibility of posting some photos of a strip of affected film against a backlight (i.e. no scans)?

Yes, it's the same film — Fuji Velvia.
No, I haven't, I didn’t even think that something else could be done with film. I'll ask around in the labs, maybe they can pull it off, thank you so much for the advise!

Here are photos of the film. The entire black stripe is indeed red

John Salim · Jul 16, 2024

That's poor bleaching if ever I saw it !

John S

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