Kodak 5360 MP Film...It's RED?

[AlbertZeroK]

Okay, so got three bulk rolls on that auction site for a buck a piece, figured the cans and spools are worth that, so I get the film, through it in a bulk loader and... IT's RED?

Oddest thing I've seen - and I'll admit, I haven't seen much. It's a low ISO film, I spooled up a reel and am going to go shoot it at ISO 6 tomorrow, but any thoughts on shooting this film for photography? Or did I wast my cash?

 

[BetterSense]

Well, TMAX is distinctly pink-colored. Neopan is plain grey and Foma is blue. I never understood how films could be such different colors and all still work.

 

[Richard S. (rich815)]

You are aware that's a direct reversal duplication film, yes?

 

[michaelbsc]

..... Or did I wast my cash?

Nah. The spools and cans are worth that much. Remember.

If you get free usable film it's a bonus!

 

[frobozz]

It's direct reversal, and it takes a whale of a lot of development - I'm still trying to find a combo I'm happy with, but using devs and temps that work on normal negative films don't develop it nearly enough.

I highly recommend a water bath before development to get rid of the red dye. I just keep filling and agitating and dumping until the water runs clear. The first batch I ran without a prewash was still bleeding red all the way into the fix part of the process.

Duncan

 

[Rick A]

It's a low speed orthochromatic motion picture film. I'll try to find an appropriate developer and time for it.

 

[AlbertZeroK]

Thanks guys!

The funny thing is by the time I've figured it out, I'll have used it all up! LOL

 

[frobozz]

Well you have something like 54 36-exposure rolls there, so you may just figure it out before using it up I've got a couple of thousand feet of it, I am quite sure I'll figure it out before using it up!

Duncan

 

[frobozz]

It's a low speed orthochromatic motion picture film. I'll try to find an appropriate developer and time for it.

I don't have my notes here with me, but here's what I think I've done, from memory.

A lot of these motion picture films I'm messing with spec D-97 as the developer, but they usually say something like "adjust developing time to give desired gamma" or whatever, without even giving a range of times. But for one of them I did find a suggested time of 3:30 at 70 degrees...

I don't have the chemicals to make D-97 but I did get my hands on some cans of Selectol, which is a close fake. I mixed a stock solution, and then diluted it 1:1 as a working solution and did various films for 3:30 at 70 degrees. Most of them came out just dandy, except for the 5360. which was very thin.

So then I tried 7:00 at 70 degrees. Better, but still very thin. So then I tried straight stock solution for 7:00 at 70 degrees. MUCH better, but still a tad thin. I think I'm going to just start over again with a more normal developer, probably ID-11. The Selectol-as-D-97-substitute was just to get a known baseline before switching developers, but since I'm failing at that in this case I might as well just switch to ID-11 and stop wasting my time with the Selectol.

Duncan

 

[AlbertZeroK]

I don't have my notes here with me, but here's what I think I've done, from memory.

A lot of these motion picture films I'm messing with spec D-97 as the developer, but they usually say something like "adjust developing time to give desired gamma" or whatever, without even giving a range of times. But for one of them I did find a suggested time of 3:30 at 70 degrees...

I don't have the chemicals to make D-97 but I did get my hands on some cans of Selectol, which is a close fake. I mixed a stock solution, and then diluted it 1:1 as a working solution and did various films for 3:30 at 70 degrees. Most of them came out just dandy, except for the 5360. which was very thin.

So then I tried 7:00 at 70 degrees. Better, but still very thin. So then I tried straight stock solution for 7:00 at 70 degrees. MUCH better, but still a tad thin. I think I'm going to just start over again with a more normal developer, probably ID-11. The Selectol-as-D-97-substitute was just to get a known baseline before switching developers, but since I'm failing at that in this case I might as well just switch to ID-11 and stop wasting my time with the Selectol.

Duncan

Well, I have a photo therm and hope to get something working with it. i have ID-11, TMax, HC110 and Rodinal in my dark room now, but I think the TMax developer is what I've got mixed now. As soon as I get my photo-therm hooked up on it's new stand and get my bottles straight, I'll try. In the mean time, what ISO are you shooting at? I was going to take a roll out today and get some shots at various speeds to see how it develops.

 

[frobozz]

Again, I need to consult my notebook, but I'm pretty sure I was using ASA 1. Which was giving me negatives that appeared correct-ish (in the context of the entire thing being too thin) somewhere near the center point of my bracketing. I'll update this once I get home tonight and consult my notes.

Duncan

 

[frobozz]

I was remembering the development specs that I have tried correctly.

I metered it at ASA 1, and the best exposure was two stops overexposed from that, meaning ASA 0.25 or so. A whole buncha light, in other words.

Here's the best image so far (note that I could probably fix it up a bit in PhotoShop but I've scanned it with no correction and it's a pretty fair representation of what the film looks like in real life.) Also note that I'm shooting 2360, which is the Estar-based version of 5360.

Duncan

 

[Rick A]

I don't have my notes here with me, but here's what I think I've done, from memory.

A lot of these motion picture films I'm messing with spec D-97 as the developer, but they usually say something like "adjust developing time to give desired gamma" or whatever, without even giving a range of times. But for one of them I did find a suggested time of 3:30 at 70 degrees...

I don't have the chemicals to make D-97 but I did get my hands on some cans of Selectol, which is a close fake. I mixed a stock solution, and then diluted it 1:1 as a working solution and did various films for 3:30 at 70 degrees. Most of them came out just dandy, except for the 5360. which was very thin.

So then I tried 7:00 at 70 degrees. Better, but still very thin. So then I tried straight stock solution for 7:00 at 70 degrees. MUCH better, but still a tad thin. I think I'm going to just start over again with a more normal developer, probably ID-11. The Selectol-as-D-97-substitute was just to get a known baseline before switching developers, but since I'm failing at that in this case I might as well just switch to ID-11 and stop wasting my time with the Selectol.

Duncan

Do you think Selectol Soft would work better as it is a reduced contrast developer. Shooting at iso 1 and souping in Selectol soft(stock) for 7-8 minutes might produce a more substantial negative.

 

[frobozz]

Do you think Selectol Soft would work better as it is a reduced contrast developer. Shooting at iso 1 and souping in Selectol soft(stock) for 7-8 minutes might produce a more substantial negative.

Probably worth a shot, but my grand plan for all of these was to switch to one of my normal film developers in the end; I was just trying the paper developer to begin with to be able to get an initial toehold on the films' characteristics by using processing similar to what they get as movie film.

Duncan

 

[AlbertZeroK]

Okay, shot my first roll today. Choose to start at 1/60 f/1.8 on my AE-1, then went one stop up at a time (1.8/2/4/5.6/8/11). Came home, threw it in the phototherm with TMAX Developer for 3:15 - the film is blank. So I went back outside and shot f/1.8 at 2 seconds, 1 second, 1/2 second ... all the way to 1/30. And I threw in a couple bulb exposures 4 seconds and 8 seconds. It's souping now in the phototherm again. We'll see how this works...

 

[AlbertZeroK]

My second run is done. I have images on the film, but they are thin. I'm going to give it a few more tries.

 

[frobozz]

If the images are thin, you need more development. The rebates should be black no matter what exposures you used on the pictures.

Duncan

 

[AlbertZeroK]

I got thin shots at f/1.8 1/15 and slower. The film actually seems to have a good bit of latitude. I'm going to try again today with a longer development time.

 

[frobozz]

I'm not sure how bright the light is where you're shooting but yeah, 1/60 at 1.8 sounded like way too little exposure to me for ASA 1 film. I'm shooting outdoors in bright light. I'm using small apertures to get lots of depth of field and then varying the times, but on the overexposed end of my bracketing I'm sometimes needing to use B and time it, since my camera only goes up to 8 seconds with the built in speeds!

Duncan

 

[Rick A]

For copy purpose Kodak recommends a 1000w bulb and ground glass for diffusion, so it must be a very S-L-O-W emulsion. It looks like iso 1 and very long development time to bring out any decent exposure.

 

[frobozz]

OK ID-11 1:1 at 13:00 gave me negatives (er, I mean positives) that were about as good as the best I had done with Selectol. So then I did ID-11 stock at 13:00 and finally I have some film that's looking pretty good in terms of density. It occurs to me that fog on this film will look like a lack of ability to achieve full black, so at this point am I looking at fogged film, or at film that still needs more development? I think I'll try another roll at something like ID-11 stock for 20:00 and see if it answers that question.

Duncan

 

[Rick A]

Maybe developing at a lower temperture for longer will minimize fog.

 

[frobozz]

That's a point I should mention - all these times are with the developer at 70 degrees, since that's what the original D-97 spec was. I'm not saying there is fog (given the film's speed, it's about as fog-impervious as they come!) it was just a thought, that fog is backwards on this film from negative film.

The 20 minute stock solution process looks to give about as dense a rebate as I'm going to get. I'll have to compare it to the 13:00 version once they're both dry, but I think it's safe to say somewhere in that range is as developed as it's going to get.

Duncan

 

[AlbertZeroK]

Well, didn't get to it today. But I will shoot a long roll and spit it up into sections for development tomorrow. I might also try the P3200 setting on my phototherm which is 85 degrees instead of 75.

I'm actually really excited about this film and about possibly using some slide duplication film to do photography of some local water fountains, I love doing it, but always stuck with huge depth of fields, this slower film should give me the shallow depth of field I"m looking for

 

[frobozz]

Yeah, if you want to shoot wide open at long exposures, this is the film for you!

So here are the results after the film dried. First is ID-11 1:1 for 13:00 at 70 degrees F. The results look pretty good, with just a touch of thinness to the black areas of the film:

(That smudge in the middle is a dog on a leash who wandered into the picture during the 16 second exposure...)

Next is ID-11 stock solution for 13:00 at 70 degrees F. I'm very happy with the results of this in terms of black density. I think one thing that threw me a bit is that black on this film (clear base) is never going to look as black as I'm used to on B&W negative film with its darker base. Plus I think the emulsion is just flat out a thinner coating. I mean, before you even expose it you can see right through it! The results here are about a half stop too dark - maybe because of more development, maybe because the light was fading... but I was bracketing full stops. Could no doubt be fixed in printing but I was scanning with no correction at all to show the actual results:

Last we have ID-11 stock solution for 20:00 at 70 degrees F. This was just flat out too much development. Even the clear sections of the film were starting to turn grey again! But the black portions didn't look appreciably blacker than the 13:00 ones, so I'd say at 13:00 I had pretty much fully developed the film to its most usable level. The exposure one stop more exposed than this was actually too thin so I'd say this was a failure in terms of getting the proper tonal range from the film too:

As in my previous tests where I had shot at a speed of 1 (well, really 1.5 because my meter only goes down to 6, and then I calculated 2 stops more exposure than that as my middle point on bracketing) my best exposures were two stops overexposed from that... meaning the film speed is "negligible" or certainly less than 1. Though I should probably try it with at least one other camera. If the one camera's meter were off at ASA 6, it's not something I would have previously noted, and the guy who did the CLA may not have tested it down there!

Given the almost certain need for a tripod and stationary subject, I'd say that bracketing the heck out of this stuff when using it isn't that onerous a requirement. And definitely do it by half-stops if you can. (My Canon FD lenses do half stops, but a lot of other lenses don't.)

Duncan