Hi everyone! I'm a new user, newbie home developer, and first time poster. I have just began developing color negative film at home over the past month, and have had less than ideal results across my first four rolls using the ADOX C-TEC 41 Developing Kit (Mixed in 500ml batches) and a Paterson universal developing tank.
My first roll turned out decent with some very slight color shifts and uneven development, but overall passable and better than expected for my first attempt.
For this roll, I followed the directions for 38°C exactly as written in the ADOX dev kit datasheet. I maintained a water temperature of 38°C using a sous vide and measured the temperature of the chemicals to make sure they had reached the desired temp before beginning development. The tank was be agitated for the first 30 seconds continuously inside the water bath, and then inverted once every 15 seconds. The tank went back into the temperature controlled water bath after each agitation.
My second roll came out with heavy magenta casts, even though I followed the same procedure as the first roll and stored the chemicals in accordion containers will all of the air removed.
Below is an example of the difference in the negative base color in a roll developed by a lab and my roll developed at home, as well as a scan showing the magenta cast. What would cause the drastic difference in base color and magenta color cast? I am scanning with a Nikon Coolscan 5000 and can get accurate colors when scanning lab developed negatives.
I originally thought that it was due to poor temperature control and temperature fluctuations during agitation and pouring the solutions in and out of the Paterson tank. Before I developed my next roll of film I ran through the developing process using water in place of active chemicals and logged temperature measurements at different points. I found that from between removing the bottle from the water bath and pouring the solutions into the tank, I was losing ~0.5°C. Then after agitating via inversion once every 15 seconds, and the completion of the 3:15 dev time, I was losing almost 1°C. To remedy this, I increased the temperature of the water bath to 40°C and only started developing once the chemicals had reached 39°C so that dev would start and finish at 38°C ± 0.5°C.
This also did not help so I went on to mixing up a new batch of chemicals. Surprise, surprise, I still have heavy color casts and different colored film base when comparing to the same film stock that had been developed at a local lab.
Any insight would be greatly appreciated!
My first roll turned out decent with some very slight color shifts and uneven development, but overall passable and better than expected for my first attempt.
For this roll, I followed the directions for 38°C exactly as written in the ADOX dev kit datasheet. I maintained a water temperature of 38°C using a sous vide and measured the temperature of the chemicals to make sure they had reached the desired temp before beginning development. The tank was be agitated for the first 30 seconds continuously inside the water bath, and then inverted once every 15 seconds. The tank went back into the temperature controlled water bath after each agitation.
My second roll came out with heavy magenta casts, even though I followed the same procedure as the first roll and stored the chemicals in accordion containers will all of the air removed.
Below is an example of the difference in the negative base color in a roll developed by a lab and my roll developed at home, as well as a scan showing the magenta cast. What would cause the drastic difference in base color and magenta color cast? I am scanning with a Nikon Coolscan 5000 and can get accurate colors when scanning lab developed negatives.
I originally thought that it was due to poor temperature control and temperature fluctuations during agitation and pouring the solutions in and out of the Paterson tank. Before I developed my next roll of film I ran through the developing process using water in place of active chemicals and logged temperature measurements at different points. I found that from between removing the bottle from the water bath and pouring the solutions into the tank, I was losing ~0.5°C. Then after agitating via inversion once every 15 seconds, and the completion of the 3:15 dev time, I was losing almost 1°C. To remedy this, I increased the temperature of the water bath to 40°C and only started developing once the chemicals had reached 39°C so that dev would start and finish at 38°C ± 0.5°C.
This also did not help so I went on to mixing up a new batch of chemicals. Surprise, surprise, I still have heavy color casts and different colored film base when comparing to the same film stock that had been developed at a local lab.
Any insight would be greatly appreciated!
