How does "color timing" E-6 with the first dev work?

I think it's very likely that an average at-home C-41 kit will do a better job than someone trying to maintain replenishment and controls when they aren't shooting enough for it to work the way it's designed. That said, I'm just about to switch to Flexicolor for home C-41, one-shot developer and separate solutions for bleach and fix. Home E-6 isn't something I see myself doing a lot of (due to the expense of the film as well as projection being much less practical than it used to be) so I'll stick with kits for that.

earlz said:

so this is only somewhat related to first developer formulation, but can you give any kind of documents or info for how that works? I assume PEG influences how developer penetrates an emulsion? I've been doing some other stuff (lith developer formulation) that I've been really struggling to include controls for how a multilayer paper emulsion is developed. I've been using triethanolamine and "standard" food grade PEG (no listed molecular weight) and keep running into problems that are very difficult to understand. My basic hypothesis is that the PEG I have decreases penetration, glycerol would increase penetration, iso-alcohol massively decreases penetration, and triethanolamine slightly increases penetration... However, hard to be very sure especially when working with non-scientific grade stuff

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From Ron's emulsion making book & other sources various 'polymeric extenders', polyglycols etc are cited as emulsion addenda that can act as development accelerators - I think one of the mechanisms being that they enable the gelatin to swell better, which when combined with HQMS-K being able to work more evenly across a multilayer coating structure, adds up to being able to get an even rate of development across a multilayer structure and full development of the silver. This Agfa patent, which seems to disclose the Scala process, might give you some useful routes for exploration.

Regarding your lith formulation, I think the higher molecular weight of PEG might help - the Agfa patent talks of HQMS wanting lower molecular weight PEG than the 'commercially available' MQ first dev they cite. So with an HQ containing lith dev, a higher molecular weight might work better - it's a test to be done. However, I think the problem you are running into isn't really multilayer construction - Adox/ Agfa MCC is multilayer and liths, but Ilford's MG products seems to be single emulsion layer. I suspect the answer is in the ballasting agents used to prevent emulsion cross-talk & which are necessary to get a proper G00-G5 if single layer coated. It's noteworthy to me that the emulsions that seem to cross-talk more (Fomatone for example) can potentially lith better. I suspect the answer may lie in overpowering those ballasting agents - I do have Easylith and quite a bit of PEG-1500 on hand...

FYI: Got this this message this morning.. and CineStill states you can ask them anything about this new kit ~

"It's time for another #CineStillDevDays! We're so excited to have our new Cinestill Cs6 "Creative Slide" E6 Processing kit out in the wild, we can't wait to see what you all make with it! We're going live on Friday May 22nd, 4pm PST on Instagram Live for a CineStill Cs6 specific AMA!"

Hi. I tried the CS D9 kit with both e100 & fuji velvia 50. E100 was very good but a somewhat yellowish warm cast. Fuji 50 was off to my eyes, very much more blue green than usual. Fuji Ei was best about 32-40 while the Kodak E100 was ei100. I tried CS “standard” as well and found the results fine with both films at their rated Ei. E100 seemed patricularly and nicely neutral.

That's interesting! I had a bit of the opposite experience, albeit in sheet form. I was getting more yellow cast from E100 but, wow, one of my Provia sheets was absolutely stunning with Dynamic. Blew my mind but yep I think next time I use the CS kit I'll probably use the Daylight (normal?) one most of the time. One thing I noticed is that the deep shadows tended to have more a cast to them which I wasn't super jazzed about.

The approach of the kit itself I think is fantastic though given you can buy the chemicals separately. I think for serious work I'll continue to use a lab but I really enjoyed using the kit and will do so in the future.

(Also hello fellow South Texan!)