Dear all,
I´m not new to all sorts of color shenanigans, but this left me thinking. A while ago, I acquired quite a bit of old Fujichrome CDU II duplicating slide film in 70mm format with Type II perforation on 30m rolls.
Since I didn´t intend to use the film for its original purpose, I thought I should test the limits of the film in terms of cross/push capabilities.
The film works fine in E6 and has practically no grain, provided it´s being shot at it´s intended speed of around ISO25.
I´ve successfully pushed the film to 3200 in C-41* (*successfully meaning being able to see a clearly defined subject shape with remotely accurate colors amongst a desert of grain).
Last week I shot another 50 exp. canister of the film and intended to push it to 320. Usually quite grainy, but acceptable - Gives a pleasantly "retro" feeling to the image.
Out in the field, I noticed that I had forgot my light meter (Autometer IVF) and exposed my images by judgement of the eye, with a tendency to overexposure to give enough leeway for possible misjudgment.
Back in the darkroom, I took the film out of the cassette and cut it in half to develop 2 strips in approximate 220 length, because I lack a reel that fits a whole length of 50 exposures (I use a modified Jobo reel to accommodate the extra width of the 70mm film). After having developed the first half of the film I was shocked: My color chemistry had seemingly gone overboard - judging from the almost clear negatives with next to no density. To be fair, the chemistry was on its last leg and I decided to give it a try, because the images were not that important and wouldn´t have been a huge loss.
After having disposed of the old batch of chemistry the next problem arose. Due to a prior mixing mistake I didn´t have the necessary amount of fresh CD concentrate for 500ml of working solution. In the end I tried to develop the film with diluted developer and compensated with prolonged development. CD working solution dilution was 1:1 and so I decided to double development time. This resulted in quite overdeveloped negatives with high but managebale density.
An hour ago I scanned the batch of mistake ridden film and just to see how bad it was I scanned 2 frames of the seemingly too underdeveloped negatives, too. What a surprise I got.
Usually, CDU II in an N+4 Cross/Push is understandably quite grainy, contrasty and doesn´t offer too much detail, provided I shoot 6x7s with it.
The overdeveloped portion of the film is grainy - as expected, super contrasty due to the overdevelopment and without a striking amount of detail. Everything nominal - kind of.
The really striking development (sorry for the joke here...) is that the practically undeveloped film has better color, better detail and less grain. Obviously, density is problematic, but apart from that.... Have a look.
(the reason for the amount of dirt and dust on the underdeveloped negatives is that I thougth they were unsalvageable and just tossed them in a drawer after drying, only to get them out there out of curiosity how bad they really were. Also, I didn´t care to clean them yet.)
The images on the right are clearly underexposed/underdeveloped, but have more neutral colors and a lot more detail. See crops below.
The petal on the underdeveloped frame has a lot more detail while the overdeveloped one seems to be blocked up.
Both shots are from the same roll of film and only a few moments apart.
Can anybody help me draw conclusions out of this accident ridden mess on how to improve development and expsorure for this very film type since the degree of detail in the underdeveloped shot must be reproducible with correct density ?
Thanks for your help -
Cheers, Ludwig.
I´m not new to all sorts of color shenanigans, but this left me thinking. A while ago, I acquired quite a bit of old Fujichrome CDU II duplicating slide film in 70mm format with Type II perforation on 30m rolls.
Since I didn´t intend to use the film for its original purpose, I thought I should test the limits of the film in terms of cross/push capabilities.
The film works fine in E6 and has practically no grain, provided it´s being shot at it´s intended speed of around ISO25.
I´ve successfully pushed the film to 3200 in C-41* (*successfully meaning being able to see a clearly defined subject shape with remotely accurate colors amongst a desert of grain).
Last week I shot another 50 exp. canister of the film and intended to push it to 320. Usually quite grainy, but acceptable - Gives a pleasantly "retro" feeling to the image.
Out in the field, I noticed that I had forgot my light meter (Autometer IVF) and exposed my images by judgement of the eye, with a tendency to overexposure to give enough leeway for possible misjudgment.
Back in the darkroom, I took the film out of the cassette and cut it in half to develop 2 strips in approximate 220 length, because I lack a reel that fits a whole length of 50 exposures (I use a modified Jobo reel to accommodate the extra width of the 70mm film). After having developed the first half of the film I was shocked: My color chemistry had seemingly gone overboard - judging from the almost clear negatives with next to no density. To be fair, the chemistry was on its last leg and I decided to give it a try, because the images were not that important and wouldn´t have been a huge loss.
After having disposed of the old batch of chemistry the next problem arose. Due to a prior mixing mistake I didn´t have the necessary amount of fresh CD concentrate for 500ml of working solution. In the end I tried to develop the film with diluted developer and compensated with prolonged development. CD working solution dilution was 1:1 and so I decided to double development time. This resulted in quite overdeveloped negatives with high but managebale density.
An hour ago I scanned the batch of mistake ridden film and just to see how bad it was I scanned 2 frames of the seemingly too underdeveloped negatives, too. What a surprise I got.
Usually, CDU II in an N+4 Cross/Push is understandably quite grainy, contrasty and doesn´t offer too much detail, provided I shoot 6x7s with it.
The overdeveloped portion of the film is grainy - as expected, super contrasty due to the overdevelopment and without a striking amount of detail. Everything nominal - kind of.
The really striking development (sorry for the joke here...) is that the practically undeveloped film has better color, better detail and less grain. Obviously, density is problematic, but apart from that.... Have a look.
(the reason for the amount of dirt and dust on the underdeveloped negatives is that I thougth they were unsalvageable and just tossed them in a drawer after drying, only to get them out there out of curiosity how bad they really were. Also, I didn´t care to clean them yet.)
The images on the right are clearly underexposed/underdeveloped, but have more neutral colors and a lot more detail. See crops below.
The petal on the underdeveloped frame has a lot more detail while the overdeveloped one seems to be blocked up.
Both shots are from the same roll of film and only a few moments apart.
Can anybody help me draw conclusions out of this accident ridden mess on how to improve development and expsorure for this very film type since the degree of detail in the underdeveloped shot must be reproducible with correct density ?
Thanks for your help -
Cheers, Ludwig.