How to (consistently) make positive E-6 transparencies with C-41 chemicals

Photo Engineer · Jul 20, 2018

The C41 developer when used in a reversal process does go to completion, ie. when all of the silver is used up, but this forms too much dye and at the wrong levels in the 3 layers. Thus you get crossover and blocked up shadows.

The Citrazinic Acid does form a dye which is greenish in hue, but the dye washes out, and is therefore called "colorless".

IDK if there are any good texts on this subject. I learned it all at our internal "school" at EK. We had our own "textbook" compiled by experts in each area, and we had lab sessions to run experiments to do this kind of work in preparation for the design of products.

The only cross processes that I know that yield reasonable results are E6 in C41 to make a negative, and Endura in a reversal RA process. I got my best results with EPP in the former, and iffy results with many E6 films. Results with Fuji CA paper in a reversal process have been reported by others to be iffy as well.

PE

flavio81 · Jul 20, 2018

thuggins said:
In fact, it looks like the Rollei negative and positive films are the same film. I've also cross processed dozens of rolls of XP2 and it makes a beautiful monochrome slide.

Wow w.r.t. the rollei dilm!!

Regarding XP2, doesn't it have a sort-of gray or pink gray mask? How can it give clear slides?

Minoltafan2904 · Jul 22, 2018

To be honest it looks surprisingly good, but still far from being as good as a proper E6 process.
Although i can see it being an option for people who can't get access to E6 processing or chemicals.

grainyvision · Aug 2, 2018

So I had this... ridiculous, idea of shooting slide film in a disposable camera for shits and giggles. Problem is of course that slide film exposure latitude is very narrow... so, I need to change something so that I can significantly widen the exposure latitude. I decided to try stand development for the first development. I did 1 stop brackets from ISO 25 to ISO 1600 on two strips of film and developed them as so:

1. HC-110 A, 102F, 30s initial agitation, 2x agitation at 15m, 30m total
2. HC-110 A, 102F, 1m initial agitation, 2x agitation at 15m and 30m, 45m total

When pulling the film out of the tank, the 2nd roll looked about right as far as what I expect from slide film, 1st roll looked a bit under developed. Everything seemed proper, leader was dark black, unshot portions looked silvery and unexposed. So, I put both strips into a tank and developed as normal with fresh C-41 chemicals. The results were... well, probably the worst yet. It came out almost completely transparent. There is only the clear base and a tiny bit of yellow dye. Unexposed portions are a very mild yellow, and all the shots are complete transparent except for ISO 800 and 1600, where you can kinda make out the shape of the picture, but of course, only yellow dye so no color, and it is incredibly thin. The 1st strip looked just barely better than the 2nd strip. It had slightly more detail in the 1600 and 800 shots, and if you squint you could maybe see a tree outline in the 400 shot. Diagnosis: Massively over developed and a surprisingly high amount of fog, since even completely unexposed portions were almost clear. I think next round I'll try to shoot for 10m development time, once using HC-110 A, and again using HC-110 B. I could use a more dillute solution, like H, but I think that E-6 film requires quite a significant amount of B/W developer, and I don't want to mess with processes where 1L of dillute developer is needed for a single roll of film. I know stand development like this will completely compromise the high contrast look that is what makes slide film great, but I'm crazy so I'm going to keep trying it.

grainyvision · Aug 12, 2018

Maybe a new way of shooting expired film? Over expose to hell and pray for the best. I tried it with Kodak Gold 200 expired 2004 that was VERY badly stored (tons of base fog when processed normally). Color crossing is definitely present, but looks like it could make for some cool pictures. I have a freely acquired 10 pack of this stuff and figured I'd sacrifice a roll to see what the behavior was. Here is some brackets of 50, 100, and 200. Grain is significantly more controllable than standard negatives from this expired film, but I think this would've benefited from a push in first development, maybe extended development to 8 minutes or even 10

(All images color balanced by setting white point and black point. Using gray point gave weird results due to the color crossing. No further adjustments were made except for automatic exposure by my DSLR while scanning)

grainyvision · Aug 12, 2018

Also, for fun, here is what Portra 400 (not expired) looks like at ISO 100... Don't ever use Portra 400 or 160 with this process, there is something weird about the film that causes strange fog and bubble issues (despite other rolls having no problems in the same tank). Haven't tried Portra 800 yet.

mard0 · Aug 13, 2018

I've tried it with Provia 100f. It works good enough for scanning. But there is a yellow cast, making the slides unusable for projecting.
I wonder what would happen if one would use RA4 developer instead of C41 developer.

Anon Ymous · Aug 13, 2018

mard0 said:
I've tried it with Provia 100f. It works good enough for scanning. But there is a yellow cast, making the slides unusable for projecting.
I wonder what would happen if one would use RA4 developer instead of C41 developer.

For the most part, colour balance is affected by the FD. The CD also affects it, but to a lesser extent. Even when using E6 CD, pH drifts can cause casts. The RA4 developer uses the correct development agent, but isn't what is meant to be used. In other words, if you want projection worthy results, stick to proper E6 chemicals.

mard0 · Aug 13, 2018

Anon Ymous said:
For the most part, colour balance is affected by the FD. The CD also affects it, but to a lesser extent. Even when using E6 CD, pH drifts can cause casts. The RA4 developer uses the correct development agent, but isn't what is meant to be used. In other words, if you want projection worthy results, stick to proper E6 chemicals.

I did not expect to achieve projection worthy slides. My last post was only an account of my results/experiences.
I will stick to B&W slide for projection.

grainyvision · Aug 13, 2018

mard0 said:
I've tried it with Provia 100f. It works good enough for scanning. But there is a yellow cast, making the slides unusable for projecting.
I wonder what would happen if one would use RA4 developer instead of C41 developer.

Interesting, I've never seen any Fuji film with a yellow cast, it's always blue or purple for me.

Anon Ymous said:
For the most part, colour balance is affected by the FD. The CD also affects it, but to a lesser extent. Even when using E6 CD, pH drifts can cause casts. The RA4 developer uses the correct development agent, but isn't what is meant to be used. In other words, if you want projection worthy results, stick to proper E6 chemicals.

I've been really curious to get a projector or somehow rig one up just to see what the better results from this process look like. I don't understand how color balance would be affected by FD, other than the penetration rate of the developer between each color layer. In my research, many homebrew FDs are quite similar to HC-110 with phenodine and HQ, but there's also many references that it's not an HQ based developer, though it does have phenodine in it... Regardless, I could see this affecting speed, contrast, and sharpness.. but how does this affect the color balance at a chemistry level? I have some (probably ruined... but maybe not) E-6 concentrates and I'm curious how the results would compare with substituting the first developer (I would probably also have to hand-fog though, since the fogging agent relies on a bit of FD to be present) and doing the rest of the E-6 process by the book.

I have heard using RA-4 is possible, but the pH balance is way off for what is needed for proper E-6, whereas with C-41 the pH of fresh developer is only slightly off.

Also, is there any safe way of adjusting the pH of color developer without ruining it? I can't seem to find much reference for if pH of kit chemicals can be adjusted like homebrew stuff. When my current developer is exhausted I want to try adjusting the pH balance (though without a pH meter, not sure how useful that would be) to see if that restores the freshness of C-41 developer with this process.

Anon Ymous · Aug 14, 2018

earlz said:
... I don't understand how color balance would be affected by FD, other than the penetration rate of the developer between each color layer.

Well, you basically answered it yourself. Using a wrong FD can cause casts and/or crossover. Not only can development rate differ between layers, but also between highlights and shadows as well. Halide content, especially iodide can alter the colour balance towards blue or yellow. But this is only one of the parameters.

earlz said:
In my research, many homebrew FDs are quite similar to HC-110 with phenodine and HQ, but there's also many references that it's not an HQ based developer, though it does have phenodine in it...

HC110 is a Phenidone - Hydroquinone - Catechol developer. E6 FD is a Dimezone-S (phenidone derivative) - Potassium Hydroquinone Monosulfonate (Hydroquinone derivative) developer. It also has some Potassium Thiocyanate, quite different pH etc.

earlz said:
I have heard using RA-4 is possible, but the pH balance is way off for what is needed for proper E-6, whereas with C-41 the pH of fresh developer is only slightly off.

Actually, the RA4 developer and C41 developer have very similar pH values (10+) and they're far from the pH of E6 CD (~12). This document lists pH values for various chemicals and processes. They also don't contain citrazinic acid, nor any silver solvent. They will definitely give a colour image, but balance will be off, although probably correctable in digital processing.

earlz said:
Also, is there any safe way of adjusting the pH of color developer without ruining it? I can't seem to find much reference for if pH of kit chemicals can be adjusted like homebrew stuff. When my current developer is exhausted I want to try adjusting the pH balance (though without a pH meter, not sure how useful that would be) to see if that restores the freshness of C-41 developer with this process.

Yes, FD/CD pH is adjusted using either Sodium Hydroxide, or Sulfuric Acid solutions. This definitely requires a pH meter, otherwise you have no way to tell when to stop. BTW, adjusting the pH of a developer doesn't restore freshness. It won't remove any byproducts, nor replenish any used up compounds.

Photo Engineer · Aug 14, 2018

The pH of the C41 and RA4 CDs is nearly the same, but the pH of the E6 CD is much higher.

PE

ludwighagelstein · Aug 18, 2018

I couldn´t resist to try this. Everything done according to OP´s recipe, except I used Rodinal and a Tungsten Light source. Apparently Tungstenslidefilm (FUJI CDU2) shot in Daylight and reexposed with Tungsten creates a daylightish balance.

grainyvision · Aug 18, 2018

Nice! Looks great. What kind of recipe did you use for Rodinal? I've been especially curious to do stand development with this, but all of my experiments thus far either result in extreme amounts of fog, or massive under development.

ludwighagelstein · Aug 19, 2018

earlz said:
Nice! Looks great. What kind of recipe did you use for Rodinal? I've been especially curious to do stand development with this, but all of my experiments thus far either result in extreme amounts of fog, or massive under development.

I used the Rodinal in 1:15 dilution at 38°C/102°F for 6:30mins and agitated with rotation rather than Inversion for every 30 Seconds with 10sec initial rotation. The fog was quite intense but my 2nd exposure was about 3 minutes directly iver the lightsource ans about another 2-3 minutes in the dimly illuminated darkroom because I had trouble getting the Film Back Into the reel. If the First negative is too dense just expose longer, basically you can so almost No harm in this step, Maybe 2-3 more minutes are sufficient enough to compensate for too high neg density. After that everything was done according the Tetenal Manual +1stop of push and 2 x blixtime.

ludwighagelstein · Aug 19, 2018

earlz said:
Nice! Looks great. What kind of recipe did you use for Rodinal? I've been especially curious to do stand development with this, but all of my experiments thus far either result in extreme amounts of fog, or massive under development.

This is the Rodinal I used. Studional and Adonal should Work similarly.

grainyvision · Aug 19, 2018

ludwighagelstein said:
This is the Rodinal I used. Studional and Adonal should Work similarly.

Was there any apparent color casts when you scanned it? It looks very slightly blue from the picture you posted, but that could be that you used tungsten balanced film for daylight. Also, I'd be curious to know in a more objective way if longer fogging times can help dense first-development negatives. Did you do any A/B testing on it to compare with extra fog vs without?

ludwighagelstein · Aug 19, 2018

I didn't have time to scan ist properly yet. The Images you See are Just crappy Cellphone Pics. The light Blue Cast comes from the Film, but its usually much worse than this when its Shot in daylight. So i think the tungsten reexposure remedied that issue. I didn't do any objective testing yet, since this was the first slidefilm i developed with this process. But in my understanding of the process longer exposure should Help with a too dense negative. Maybe PE has an opinion about the issue.

Photo Engineer · Aug 19, 2018

Re-exposure does not change any color cast if done to completion, which is the aim of re-exposure. It also does not help with the density overall. It is merely a step to expose the remaining positive image which is left after the FD does its job. Then the CD takes over with that silver and creates the final color positive.

PE

grainyvision · Aug 19, 2018

ludwighagelstein said:
I didn't have time to scan ist properly yet. The Images you See are Just crappy Cellphone Pics. The light Blue Cast comes from the Film, but its usually much worse than this when its Shot in daylight. So i think the tungsten reexposure remedied that issue. I didn't do any objective testing yet, since this was the first slidefilm i developed with this process. But in my understanding of the process longer exposure should Help with a too dense negative. Maybe PE has an opinion about the issue.

I think PE is staring on in amazement like when kids cobble together something out of ductape that really shouldn't work, but somehow it does

Photo Engineer · Aug 19, 2018

It doesn't really "work".

After all, you kids can fly paper airplanes and even big ones made from Balsa wood - with propellers and everything, but you can't build the real thing unless you - build the real thing.

These are (to me) barely acceptable. But, congratulations are still in order.

Sorry.

PE

ludwighagelstein · Aug 20, 2018

I had time to scan the slides this morning, have a look:

grainyvision · Aug 23, 2018

Well, today I learned it is possible to "skip fix" (rather than skip bleach) and end up with dense, but scannable images. Over a fairly bright lightpad, my DSLR scanned this at 3s and f/8, to give an idea of how dense this is. Also, only tried it with a single (apparently blurred) exposure since I wasn't sure what would happen, so sorry for a low quality example.. Also, no idea why anyone would want to do this, since it's clearly not capable of being projected, and a real pain to scan properly (a. Maybe for archiving, since the silver will keep longer than the dyes? Also, this really warmed up the image with a base red cast in the shadows; previous pictures in the same light/scene were on the cool side.

grainyvision · Aug 29, 2018

For people using this process for C-41 films, I have a project underway to experiment with the whole x-pro look. Seems like something the lomo crowd would be interested in as an alternative to standard X-Pro.

I've discovered that C-41 film needs around 7m30s in the first developer, otherwise it needs around 1.5 stops of over exposure to look best. This would be equivalent to around a 1 stop push with E-6 film, if you're wanting to develop these films at the same time. However, I also get better results with C-41 films using the exact C-41 times for everything in the color development etc, so it might just have to be recommended to process the two types of film separately. Sometime soon I'm going to try to trick a C-41 lab to process this and see if the results match my home development. In theory I should just need to do first development, fogging, and then stuff it into a canister. Unfortunately it's not reasonable to do this with E-6 film since it needs a longer bleach time. You might be able to convince a lab to work with you though by turning off the machine in the bleach step.

Right now I'm working on a project to test every C-41 film that is available in non-expired form in this process. I'll shoot a few color chart tests, and then real world usage to see how useful this is out in the field. I'll update here as I make progress and when I have it complete and written up

Photo Engineer · Aug 29, 2018

There are ways to get better results from this process.

PE

How to (consistently) make positive E-6 transparencies with C-41 chemicals

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