Is there an E-6 Home Kit as Flexible as my C-41?

eharriett · Apr 8, 2018

I’m actually getting pretty good with home development. I really like it. I found a b&w I like, and I finally found the C-41 I like, too. It’s the Rollei kit. The colors have that unique look to it I was going for, the kit is not as finicky as the Unicolor I’d been using prior to this batch, and I’m getting excellent longevity out of my mix. Aside from Rollei’s kit being the most expensive of the options, which is really a minor complaint, considering it’s longevity, i have found my perfect color negative developer.

Time for me to learn and experiment anew. I now want to try home processing E-6, which I have been told is much more difficult than C-41. But I want to tackle the challenge. My question is, is there an E-6 kit that has the same flexibility and somewhat different look to it that the Rollei kit has for C-41?

I like Rollei being a bit more forgiving on its temperature control, and when I develop my film, the colors are bit bit more unique to my eye than the Uni C-41 kit was. I want to duplicate this result with E-6. Does that make sense? Do you understand what I’m asking? Does an E-6 version of this result exist?

mshchem · Apr 8, 2018

Tetenal and Arista kits from Freestyle. If you want the good stuff Freestyle has a genuine Fuji 5 liter chrome 6X kit as well. Slide film is intolerant stuff. Best to mind temperature and instructions carefully. The Tetenal kits work well as long as you don't try to wring too much capacity out of them. But if you are looking for weird or offbeat, use outdated film and over worked chemistry. Since the demise of Kodak's 5 L kit, I spend the extra money for real Fuji chemistry.

eharriett · Apr 9, 2018

I was thinking of that Fuji, but there’s no way I’d use up 5 liters before it went bad. Shame I can’t get in smaller quantities.

thuggins · Apr 14, 2018

The Tetenal kits are great. Very easy to use and the results are indistinguishable from a professional lab. You can easily get 40 rolls/kit, which puts the cost at less than $2.00/roll.

eharriett · Apr 14, 2018

OK. I'll look at that one. Thank you. I might be losing my nerve a bit on E-6. If I overdevelop on C-41, or underdevelop, the shots still come out. If I do the same with E-6, they may be gone for good.

thuggins · Apr 17, 2018

eharriett said:
OK. I'll look at that one. Thank you. I might be losing my nerve a bit on E-6. If I overdevelop on C-41, or underdevelop, the shots still come out. If I do the same with E-6, they may be gone for good.

You would really have to try to screw up the developing. I use a water bath to maintain temperature, but it is probably the same for your C-41. You have to be off by a minute or more on the first DEV to see any difference. The color developer and blix go to completion, so you can't really mess either of those up. I've done over 60 rolls of E-6 (including cross processing Ilford XP2 as B&W positives), and none of them came out bad.

Unspooling the reel and looking right at the wet chromes is always a wonder experience. Not at all like a strip of orange blobs.

Joel_L · Apr 19, 2018

Definitely don't get nervous. I have used the old Kodak 6 step kits, Tetenal 3 and 6 bath kits, Arista 3 bath, and others. They all work well. These days I use a Jobo, in the past, I have used the old UniDrum, and tanks in a water bath, all with success. I didn't see what you process in, some kits have temperature compensation some don't. What ever the kit, I always do one shot. I purge my open bottles with Argon. Unused chem has always lasted over a year.

To wet you feet, get the small Arista kit ( I think it's still the cheapest ) and try a few non critical rolls.

I've been doing E-6 for decades and can only recall one batch of failures that ended up being a bad E-6 kit I got.

Ko.Fe. · Apr 19, 2018

I'm not an expert on Rollei named chemicals. I use 1L cheap Telenal C-41 kit and it is on 23d roll now, started in 2017.
My E-6 is one quart from Argentix.ca, easy to mix and just as C-41 easy to use.

Joel_L · Apr 20, 2018

Just for grins I ran out and shot a roll of Provia 100. I just processed it and it looks fine ( waiting to finish drying ). I will scan a few and post a sample. The kicker is, I just looked and I bought the kit ( Arista 3 step ) May 2014.

Samples, dust continues to plague me.

eharriett · May 2, 2018

Out of curiosity, has anyone had luck sourcing an E-6 kit of Bellini chems in the US? I contacted them in Italy and they haven’t responded. Only sellers I know of are in Europe and they cannot ship their stuff overseas.

pentaxuser · May 2, 2018

eharriett said:
It’s the Rollei kit. The colors have that unique look to it I was going for,

I cannot help with E6 matters but I have used a few different C41 kits. I think you are saying that the Rollei kit produces colours in the negatives that are unique to the Rollei kits and that the same colours in the same film will not be produced by other C41 kits. What are the differences in colours?

Thanks

pentaxuser

Richard Man · May 2, 2018

I shot many hundreds of rolls of chromes. may be even over a thousand, and did my own processing.

It is a very robust process, especially since I use a Jobo. However, in the last 4+ years, I have been shooting mainly C-41 for its dynamic range. I have to say, in terms of ease of scanning re: colors, E-6 is MUCH better. Sometimes Fuji tends to be slightly blue, but it's nothing comparing to the C-41 color cast.

eharriett · May 2, 2018

pentaxuser said:
I cannot help with E6 matters but I have used a few different C41 kits. I think you are saying that the Rollei kit produces colours in the negatives that are unique to the Rollei kits and that the same colours in the same film will not be produced by other C41 kits. What are the differences in colours?

Thanks

pentaxuser

Sure. After going through two of the Unicolor kits (my first), one of the tetinol’s, and one of the artistas (that was a bomb - I blame my mixing), I discovered Rollei. What made it different was the older, vintage color look to me that it has. The Unicolor made my photos look closest to digital and color accurate. The tetinol was actually really close to the the Unicolor. But Rollei’s made my photos look like FILM! I can make a case from the others that they look like either digital or film they are so close. But Rollei, there is no doubt it is a film shot. Even with a Fuji roll, which, in my opinion, looks closest to digital anyway, looked more like a distinctive film roll than it did under the uni. This is, of course, all an opinion.

That’s why I asked about Bellini. Sounds like I might have a similar result with their e-6, although I have never developed e-6 before, so I can’t qualify that.

pentaxuser · May 3, 2018

eharriett, thanks for the reply. I have used several kits and cannot say I ever noticed any one of them being different. Mind you I do not and never have shot digital so I may be unaware of what distinguishes Rollei from other makes in terms of how close to what a film should look like it renders film compared to other kits

I presume that either you see it or you don't

pentaxuser

eharriett · May 3, 2018

Yeah. I hesitated to mention it because it is subjective. I have a very distinctive picture in my mind of what film looks like vs digital. And both can cross over. But always making film look like film to me is what I want.

Is there an E-6 Home Kit as Flexible as my C-41?

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