Home brewed E6?

[Nick Zentena]

http://www.opie.net/orphy/photo/dr/wkft-e6.html

Anybody have any comments? I'm not interested in burning enough film to justify commerical chemicals. How about a chemical reversal step instead of the light one?

 

[jimgalli]

I tried for a couple of years. I combined and modified 2 formulas that had been published in days gone by in the old Darkroom and Photo Techniques magazine. I bought and maintained ph meters etc. All dry chems. There is a wild card chemical in the mix that I never did get a handle on and every time I thought I had a good repeatable formula.........I really didn't. I'm enjoying black and white and hate to admit it on this forum but the better the little digi cams get the farther I get away from doing anything wet color again.

 

[Ian Grant]

There are published reversal baths. Here's one from the 1988 BJP Annual

Reversal bath (pH: 5.8 +/- 0.1)

Propionic acid 12m1
Stannous chloridc 1.65g
p-Aminophenol 0.5g
Sodium hydroxide 4.8g
BDH Calcium Complexing Agent No 4 5ml
Water to 1000ml

Notes:
1 The very mall quantity of p-Aminophenol can best be measured by making a 0.1% solution (1g/1000ml)in 1% (10ml/1000ml) of propionic acid. This solution does not keep well can should he discarded after a week or so.

2 If the solution, particularly when made up as a 20x concentrate, does not clear on adding the calcium complexing agent in the above quantity a little more should be added slowly until it does.


But don't try Hogg Laboratory Supplies (as suggested) for your chemicals they closed a few years ago. They ceased selling Photochemicals sometime before that. I went in to get a new price list, was told they'd stopped selling them so when I asked what had happened to the stock they found Mike Hogg who said make me an offer. I had their entire stock for almost nothing. Loads of Pyro, Amidol, CD-2,3 & 4 etc, Pinacryptol Yellow. wetting agents restariners the list was long.

 

[Nick Zentena]

I'm going to make up the developers one shot. I'll be able to avoid pH drifts. I actually find I enjoy colour work. I don't know how to put it but it's less demanding in some ways. Relaxing in a mindless way-)

Ian I have a copy of an older BJP which I think includes different E-6 formulas. Have you tried them?

 

[Ian Grant]

Nick while I've used a couple of E6 formulae I've found it so easy to do the Reversal exposure method which I was used to from E-4 processing and a horrifically complex Ferrania process about 35 years ago.

If you want to use a small economic E-6 kit I can thoroughly recommend the Paterson Chrome 6
http://www.patersonphotographic.com/chemistry/colchem.html
I used these kits extensively in the late 70's and through out the 80's when I used to shoot a lot of live concerts and needed to uprate and push-process my films.

While it's relatively easy to make your own E6 chemistry I found that I hadn't the time to test each batch before processing critical films, hence relying on the Photocolor (now Paterson) Chrome 6 kits.

Nowadays I don't shoot E6, I think the last time was about 4 or 5 years ago. Most of the professional labs near me no longer do R3 or Ilfachrome(Cibachrome) prints.

 

[Nick Zentena]

The kits are too big-) The nice thing about mixing up one shot is everything is fresh for that one roll or a few sheets. I picked up a bunch of 4x5 film awhile back for not much money with the intention of cross processing it to C-41 but I might just make some big E6.

Would a fluorescent light fixture work for reversing the film?

 

[Ian Grant]

Yes flourescent would be OK as long as you expose for long enough reasonably close.

Remember your exposing essentally Black & white by this stage

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

The Tetenal 3-bath kit isn't a bad way to do small quantities. The stock solutions last a fairly long time, and even used one-shot, it's less costly than commercial processing.

Even though they give instructions for pushing and up to three uses, I don't recommend pushing more than 1 stop, though, or reusing chemicals after push processing, or using the chemicals more than twice for regular processing.

 

[Nick Zentena]

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:MXSObo-Rhv8J:www.frii.com/~jkbl/reversal/reversal.html+&hl=en

I found a simple reversal bath. The website seems down so only the google cache is available. Easy enough.

Locally my only real choice for pre-mixed chemicals are the small Agfa kits or the 5litre Kodaks. The Agfa kit would be okay if I wanted to wait for enough exposed film.

 

[Jordan]

I had good results with the Tetenal kits. Pushing one stop and re-using three times were no problem. Their usefulness went way down for me when they stopped selling the 500ml versions.

Nick, I'm pretty sure JD Photochem sells their own 'line' of E6 kits. I just bought one of their C-41 kits but haven't yet had a chance to use it. The instructions are a little lacking but they filled the details in by e-mail when asked. It may be worth a try. Shipping to Toronto from the West Island (Montreal) is pretty quick.

 

[rjr]

Jordan,

Tetenal still makes the 3bath E6 in 1l size, it´s available in Germany. It´s probably just your national distributor who is vary to sell it.... tell them that you want it, and that may change.

Look, there is the listing in a german mailorder house:
http://www.phototec.de/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1578

OTOH, the 5l kit version costs slightly more than double the money (77EUR) they ask for the 1l kit (34EUR). Even if you don´t use it up, you may end up saving some bucks... I know that once the seal is broken the chemistry lasts some 14months, a lot longer than most other kits available on the market.

 

[Nick Zentena]

Nick, I'm pretty sure JD Photochem sells their own 'line' of E6 kits. I just bought one of their C-41 kits but haven't yet had a chance to use it. The instructions are a little lacking but they filled the details in by e-mail when asked. It may be worth a try. Shipping to Toronto from the West Island (Montreal) is pretty quick.

They have the Agfa 500 ml kit for E-6 and I think that's it. Henry's might actually be cheaper for the Agfa kit. Definetly save on the shipping.

If things haven't changed the C-41 instructions are on the back of the RA-4 sheets. Short and to the point.

 

[Jordan]

Hmm, I could have sworn that they (JD Photochem) sold their own E-6 kit. Oh well. The C-41 instructions were fine until I got to the part about "usable for X rolls based on 4 oz per roll." -- not too helpful for those of us using regular inversion agitation in small tanks.

Roman, I have never seen any Tetenal products in any store in Canada. When I lived in the USA I used to buy the 500 ml Tetenal E-6 kits from B&H Photo, which were perfect for processing six rolls in pairs (so as to not have the chemicals lingering around too long). In the USA the 500 ml kits are no longer available and you can only get the 1L kits (about $25 at B&H, I think). In Canada the only small kits available are from Agfa. On my last trip to Henry's (downtown Toronto) I don't remember seeing any of them in any case.

 

[GeorgesGiralt]

Hi !
May I add my 2 c ?
First, forgot about the 3 bath kits. If you shoot the latest Kodak of Fuji things, they will give you bad results. (ugly with Velvia !)
1) the Agfa 0.5 l kit is very good but expensive (it's for 4 films only) it comprises a blix so there are only 5 baths (but the 3 more important, say 1st dev, rev, and color dev ) are standard so you are able to tweak them to suit your color balance tastes ....
2) I use the 5 litre one shot Kodak E6 kit.
http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/products/chemistry/e6Kit/e6Index.jhtml
It is the _real stuff_ but tweaked a bit for the occasional shooter or low volume lab. You can mix as low a 250 cc chemistry to the full 5 litre. And you use the chemsitry mixed one shot. If you're consistent enough in your mixing, results are good and sound. If, as I do, you use a Jobo to process your slides, have a look here :
http://www.bonavolta.ch/hobby/en/photo/e6.htm
If you plan to keep the kit for quite a long time once open, split the first dev concentrate in small glass bottles tipped to the brim in order to prevent oxydation. I do this for the color dev also. It is still good after a year. Bear in mind that Kodak keeps two CAT # depending on which side of the pond you live .... The European one I use costs about 55 € a kit.
3) A long time ago, I've tried to mix my own kit, having access to the arcane chemicals needed. It was a total mess. Once bitten, .....
Hope this helps.

 

[Nick Zentena]

I think they sell the RA-4 and C-41 chemicals to mini-labs that's the reason they make thier own up. I've seen both the Agfa E-6 and C-41 kit at the Steeles Henry's store. Only one or two kits at a time so I'd guess it would be very easy to have it sold out at any time. BTW Agfa uses different names for the stuff so the box won't read E-6/C-41.

George I've been mixing up C-41 for awhile and that's pretty easy. The E-6 formulas don't look any harder really. Between all the formulas I have I think I can avoid buying too many extra chemicals.