Help Printing Cross-Processed Film

[bvy]

I'm trying to print (RA-4) a cross-processed frame of Fujichrome T64 onto Fuji Crystal Archive paper. I need some direction as it relates to filtration. Attached is a test strip using my regular starting filtration of 50M+50Y. Also shown is a full frame scan of the negative, which is what I'm trying to match as closely as possible. So I'm, of course, expecting a red or magenta cast in the final print, but not to the degree that I'm getting with this filtration. The window, for instance, should be in black shadow. Intuition tells me to boost the magenta filtration. But I feel like I should be doing something with the cyan filtration since I'm not dealing with the usual orange mask. The negative, when viewed in hand, is green.


50M+50Y, each frame 1 stop


negative scan

Thanks.

 

[labyrinth photo]

you might find that a strip of blank negative will help it take about 30 points of red out of the print. would generally avoid cross processing fuji film except the provia 400x (unhelpfully not being made anymore). or try and find some kodak slide film on ebay.

 

[Bob Carnie]

I have always found that on an enlarger printing crossed processed negatives that I need to be using the Cyan filter and one of the others.

Try taking out all filtration on yellow and magenta, add to that a starting pack of 20 cyan.

I always found that this process gave me a very high contrast look and to tame that a bit I would use a second enlarger and establish a base flash and put desired
colour into the highlight regions.
For fashion work this is very nice technique.

 

[Xmas]

well a grey card shot scan and manual balance on computer screen might have been an easier way to get close to the filter pack you want.

But the casts in high lights or shadows may distract.

If you wanted extreme partial holding of the bleach is another option...

 

[bvy]

Thanks everyone. I'm running lots of test strips, and at one point, I thought it might be hopeless -- that the scanner software did something that I wouldn't be able to reproduce optically. In that case, I might have had to go to the Dark Side.

But I'm getting closer. At the moment I'm in the neighborhood of 150M+135Y. Clearly I needed to dump a lot of red, but the print is looking more like the scan. This is for a juried show that opens in February.

 

[Dr Croubie]

and at one point, I thought it might be hopeless -- that the scanner software did something that I wouldn't be able to reproduce optically.

Unfortunately, you may be right. Scanners do weird things with negatives and masks and such. I get great results scanning Slides because I've calibrated to a colour card. B+W negs look good, but there's not much to go wrong scanning them, just blackpoint, whitepoint, gamma and done.
But i've never been able to scan orange-mask negs properly. I've tried with-rebate, without-rebate, i've tried scanning as pos and inverting colours in GIMP, it just never works. (and for the record, it's a v750 on Silverfast, so it should work, but it doesn't).
I've heard people crap on about Ektar being beautiful and saturated, but it looks flat and dull on my screen; I'm blaming the scanner not the film.
I've tried scanning x-pro as well, both pos in c41 and neg in e6, they're both just as bad as scanning normal negs.
Actually, my total frustrations scanning negs is making me seriously considering trying RA4 now that I've got an enlarger, otherwise I may as well give up shooting colour negs all together.

For your problem, i'd suggest maybe scanning as a positive including the orange (green?) mask around the edge (or even just scan the leader). Then import into your editor of choice. invert the colours, and use the eye-dropper to get an RGB value of the mask. From there you should be able to calculate a rough CMY value to use in your enlarger, and tweak accordingly.
One question though, do you want to cancel out the mask exactly? Part of the fun of cross processing is the overall colour tint. So if you want to keep some of that then there's nothing else to do but keep on burning through test-strips...

 

[bvy]

Actually, my total frustrations scanning negs is making me seriously considering trying RA4 now that I've got an enlarger, otherwise I may as well give up shooting colour negs all together.

I feel your pain, and this is exactly the path I've taken. I was able to get up to speed with RA-4 printing rather fast, such that I have the process down to a routine now. I still scan all my film, but only for reference (digital contact sheets, if you will). Anything I want to share, I make a print of and scan the print.

For your problem, i'd suggest maybe scanning as a positive including the orange (green?) mask around the edge (or even just scan the leader). Then import into your editor of choice. invert the colours, and use the eye-dropper to get an RGB value of the mask. From there you should be able to calculate a rough CMY value to use in your enlarger, and tweak accordingly.

I did exactly that -- actually scanned the negative alongside a "regular" C-41 negative that I printed and knew the filtration of. I did some math, which got me closer.

One question though, do you want to cancel out the mask exactly? Part of the fun of cross processing is the overall colour tint. So if you want to keep some of that then there's nothing else to do but keep on burning through test-strips...

No, I don't want to cancel it out completely. Cross-processed T64 has a nice pink tint to it. I want to preserve it, but it should be overwhelming or garish. The shadows should be black.

 

[bvy]

I always found that this process gave me a very high contrast look and to tame that a bit I would use a second enlarger and establish a base flash and put desired
colour into the highlight regions.
For fashion work this is very nice technique.

I read about the technique in Horenstein's book, and actually, I'm looking for an opportunity to try it. Do you have sample of this from your own work?

 

[Bob Carnie]

No , I did this commercially in the 80's and 90's for fashion work for others.

I read about the technique in Horenstein's book, and actually, I'm looking for an opportunity to try it. Do you have sample of this from your own work?

 

[MartinP]

Just a thought, was this tungsten balanced film filtered for daylight when it was shot? That could be another thing which will throw off the 'expected' colour filtration. I haven't tried the cross-processing experiments yet, but am watching the thread for future reference

 

[Roger Cole]

You could try sandwiching the negative with a blank frame from masked neg film to just add back the orange mask. But that does totally remove the unmasked effect and give you twice the surfaces to keep clean if dust.


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