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Home Made C-41

pentaxuser

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Thanks both for answers

Andrew, your negs looked OK to me as well and I feel that way about such negs after using your home-made recipe the same 4 tímes as you

Koraks based on your answer about re-use it looks like it requires a "suck it and see" approach such that each user has got to decide if what he subsequently gets from re-used developer in terms of RA4 prints meets his and any of his viewers judgement of what is satisfactory

pentaxuser
 

koraks

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Yes. I think that's true for most things in life, though, isn't it? Although perhaps we'd best not elaborate too much on what things in life need to be "sucked" and what we get to "see" as a result of that.
 
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Andrew O'Neill

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I'm not too particular about what happens to the colour, as long as it's not off too much. I have tri-colour prints in mind, and can tweak in PS if needed. Now off to the grocery store to buy all Canadian! Hopefully those oranges from Ecuador will be there. Cheers!
 
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Andrew O'Neill

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@koraks
I'm going to try Ilford Rapid Fix for fixing out colour film. Recently, you recommended adding ammonia (I think it was!) to get the pH up. Could you tell me again at what pH I should get it to? Thanks!
 

aconbere

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I tried the full dev, bleach, fix set today. Proper inversions will need to wait until I can actually scan them. But there are definitely images! (note the last half are wonky because the camera was having issues)
 

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koraks

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Andrew O'Neill said:
Could you tell me again at what pH I should get it to?
Click to expand...

Aim for 6.5-ish; it's not very critical though. Have fun and let me know how it turns out!

aconbere said:
But there are definitely images!
Click to expand...

At first glance contrast seems to be very high for C41 (after adjusting the photo for white balance of the backlight). But this could also be due to the photo of the strips. I'm sure they can be scanned alright though!
 

aconbere

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Oh! One wrinkle might also be that I used a rotary developer with continuous agitation, but did not adjust the dev times. So it could be quite over developed.
 

pentaxuser

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aconbere said:
Oh! One wrinkle might also be that I used a rotary developer with continuous agitation, but did not adjust the dev times. So it could be quite over developed.
Click to expand...

The strange thing about C41 development time is that it seems to be standardised at 3mins 15 secs irrespective of whether rotation or inversion agitation is used. Inversion agitation for C41 appears to be a recent phenomenon but seems to have been used with success. I say strange because the usual recommendation for trad b&w film is that for rotation the recommendation is for a 15% or so reduction on inversion times.

The one b&w film that is processed in C41 is XP2 Super but even that "obeys" the 3 mins 15 secs rule as far as I know

There may well be good reasons for the above but what they are I don't know

Comments anyone?

pentaxuser
 

koraks

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aconbere said:
Oh! One wrinkle might also be that I used a rotary developer with continuous agitation, but did not adjust the dev times. So it could be quite over developed.
Click to expand...

This will not make much of a difference.
For your homebrew C41 developer, did you adjust the pH to the target value? One of the common issues with homebrewing C41 developer is the pH ends up not exactly right, in which case the developer will end up significantly over- or underactive.
 

aconbere

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I didn’t, I have a ph meter and could test the dev. I’ve attached three good frames from the roll. The half of the roll from the hula turned out excellent other than blurry shots from difficulty hand holding at very low speeds.

Oddly the other half of the roll ended up with a pretty extreme blue cast. The camera itself was showing signs of capping and given my low amount of experience with the dev I’m having a hard time guessing what could be at fault.

Happy to post examples of the failures but I’ll need to shrink and convert them
 

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koraks

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aconbere said:
Oddly the other half of the roll ended up with a pretty extreme blue cast.
Click to expand...

You're mostly looking at the effects of different shooting/lighting conditions. I'm going to guess that the dancing was shot under relatively warm (Tungsten-comparable, in terms of color temperature) artificial light. The 'cool blue' shots look like daylight, partial shade etc. - overall a much higher color temperature. Overdevelopment can be a contributing factor as it'll emphasize such differences.
 
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