Help troubleshooting color development

Jim Bennett · Feb 26, 2014

Hi all. So last night was my first time developing C-41. One of the rolls turned out fine, the other, abysmal.

Two rolls were developed in the same tank/chemistry: One roll of new Kodak Ektar 100, the other was a found roll of ancient Kodak Gold 200. I developed in a patterson tank using the Jobo/Tetenal C-41 press kit. The Ektar roll was shot with a known good Minolta Hi-matic 9, the Gold 200 was shot with a new (to me) Yashica Electro 35 GSN that I just got on ebay.

The Ektar roll shot with the known good Hi-matic turned out fine. Here is an example frame:

The Kodak gold roll shot with the Yashica is the bad one. Here are some samples. Most of the shots have an extreme green cast in the shadows, but a couple have reasonable color reproduction but still underexposed with a green cast. Since there are at least 2 variables besides the chemistry I am not sure if its the film that was bad, or the camera. I dont think my development is the issue as the other roll developed in the same tank was fine. The Kodak Gold film is at least 15 years old, maybe older. I will probably run another roll through this Yashica to see how that turns out but would be interested to hear your feedback.

I did have another, kinda funny question. When I finished developing these two rolls last night, I went to pour the blix back into its container and accidentally poured some into a nearly full container of developer. It overflowed right away and I realized my mistake. Is that developer toast now? thanks!

Kodak Gold 200 results below:

fretlessdavis · Feb 26, 2014

Looks similar to my results with ancient Fujicolor 200 I got. Shadows were a greenish/greyish tint and had no detail. highlights had good color. I tried overexposing the next roll of expired Fujicolor 200, which helped a bit, but not much. I just tossed the last couple rolls. Your developer is likely toast-- especially if you were using a small press kit.

Photo Engineer · Feb 26, 2014

The 3 frames of Gold 200 vary in the type of defect suggesting uneven development or bleaching. The press kit is rather weak on bleach action and fix action. Try re-bleaching and fixing (I know it is a blix) but redo it anyway and then wash and stabilize and see of things improve.

And, BTW, the other problem suggested by the type of defect is that the film was kept poorly or is out of date.

PE

Jim Bennett · Feb 26, 2014

Photo Engineer said:
The 3 frames of Gold 200 vary in the type of defect suggesting uneven development or bleaching. The press kit is rather weak on bleach action and fix action. Try re-bleaching and fixing (I know it is a blix) but redo it anyway and then wash and stabilize and see of things improve.

And, BTW, the other problem suggested by the type of defect is that the film was kept poorly or is out of date.

PE

Thank you, I didnt realize I could redo the blix /wash/stabilize so I will give that a try. Out of the 24 frames I think 2 or 3 show semi acceptable color, whereas the Ektar roll in the same tank all turned out pretty nicely. Do you think the camera itself is ok?

Jim

Jim Bennett · Feb 26, 2014

fretlessdavis said:
Looks similar to my results with ancient Fujicolor 200 I got. Shadows were a greenish/greyish tint and had no detail. highlights had good color. I tried overexposing the next roll of expired Fujicolor 200, which helped a bit, but not much. I just tossed the last couple rolls. Your developer is likely toast-- especially if you were using a small press kit.

Thanks for the reply! Bummer on the developer

Photo Engineer · Feb 26, 2014

Yeah, that press kit is tiny and low in capacity and slow in action in the blix.

I cannot judge the camera from these results.

PE

fretlessdavis · Feb 26, 2014

Jim Bennett said:
Thanks for the reply! Bummer on the developer

The press kits are relatively cheap, so it's better to toss and replace it than chance it with film (doing a test you'd want fresh film). I got 15 rolls out of my last batch (1 liter) before results tapered off. I got a 2 liter unicolor kit, and am on roll 14 with no significant change in result, with some minor adjustments in development time.

Also, +1 on what PE said. My first couple rolls came out a little bit weird, and I ran it through the Blix and stabiliser again. Came out fine. Blix is done to completion, so I'll usually extend by about 25% what the kit says, and add a bit of time as the kit gets exhausted.

Jim Bennett · Feb 26, 2014

Thanks again guys!

CatLABS · Feb 26, 2014

"found" films are often ones that might have been left our in the sun/left in glove box in a car/just simply very old and you did not mention what the base looks like - super dense base means an old and exposed film. The low contrast and lack of shadow detail is another part of that. In any case if the ektar came out OK this most likely means this was just a bad roll of film.

As for your developer - one drop if bleach in a large amount of developer will destroy that developer. I would recommend tossing it. The results of a bleach contaminated developer cannot be corrected or recovered.

Jim Bennett · Feb 26, 2014

CatLABS said:
"found" films are often ones that might have been left our in the sun/left in glove box in a car/just simply very old and you did not mention what the base looks like - super dense base means an old and exposed film. The low contrast and lack of shadow detail is another part of that. In any case if the ektar came out OK this most likely means this was just a bad roll of film.

As for your developer - one drop if bleach in a large amount of developer will destroy that developer. I would recommend tossing it. The results of a bleach contaminated developer cannot be corrected or recovered.

It was a very dense base, when I pulled it out of the tank compared to the Ektar I instantly knew something was amiss; as they looked completely different. Thanks for the confirmation on the developer, a sad mistake

CatLABS · Feb 26, 2014

Jim Bennett said:
It was a very dense base, when I pulled it out of the tank compared to the Ektar I instantly knew something was amiss; as they looked completely different.

Its always a good idea to use new fresh film, that you you limit the amount of things that can go wrong, and you support the industry while you are at it.

Jim Bennett said:
Thanks for the confirmation on the developer, a sad mistake

It happens to everyone - good thing you noticed this before running more film through that dev.

Athiril · Feb 26, 2014

You're not rinsing with water between developer and blix are you? Go either straight to blix (no rinse), or at least use some kind of acidic stop, even if it's just white vinegar diluted in water.

I use to water rinse between the dev and bleach to conserve the bleach a little bit longer, all was fine until I moved house that used a different water source. I got base fogged film and took forever to track it down to that one step.

Jim Bennett · Feb 26, 2014

Athiril said:
You're not rinsing with water between developer and blix are you? Go either straight to blix (no rinse), or at least use some kind of acidic stop, even if it's just white vinegar diluted in water.

I use to water rinse between the dev and bleach to conserve the bleach a little bit longer, all was fine until I moved house that used a different water source. I got base fogged film and took forever to track it down to that one step.

Thanks, no I went straight to blix after the developer.

Photo Engineer · Feb 26, 2014

The Gold family of films looks denser when wet than Ektar and Portra. Take that from a guy who used to coat Gold 400 at EK, doing R&D on - keeping among other things.

PE

Rudeofus · Feb 27, 2014

Jim Bennett said:
Thanks, no I went straight to blix after the developer.

Going straight to BLIX worked ok for me with 35mm format, but created nasty yellow splotches in medium format. These splotches never showed up again since I use a stop bath between CD and BLIX. But even the worst instance of these splotches did not resemble the issues that you brought up here in this thread. I would point my fingers at expired and poorly stored film here, not at faulty developer or dev procedure.

Jim Bennett · Feb 28, 2014

So after re-doing the blix/wash/stabilizer steps (didnt improve things) and doing some more checks on the camera, I've determined that my Yashica Electro 35 GSN has the dreaded POD (pad of death) issue. While looking through the back of the camera and trying various aperture settings and exercising the shutter, the speeds do not change at all no matter what setting I use (seems to default to 1/500 when you have the POD issue) so I need to get my camera fixed or attempt the repair myself.

Help troubleshooting color development

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