Rodinal Pre-Treat for C-41 Again.

[Lamar]

I just developed my second roll of Portra 400 using a Rodinal Pre-Treat. I love the results. Grain seems less obtrusive. The pre-treat does seem to result in a little extra green on the bottom end. I have found this with both rolls I've done. It's easy to pull out in digital post process but I'm not so sure how you would compensate with normal printing. The shots in the flicker album were scanned with no grain reduction and ICE set on it's lowest setting. A little bit of sharpening was applied to the re-sized image. Download the original to get the 2000 px wide image.

Here is the album on Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/lamarlamb/sets/72157649126917440

P.S. - I just posted some of these to the Rodinal group on Flickr..... They sort of stand out...... A splash of color amongst all that black & white....... Wonder how long it takes them to kick them out....



Details:
Roll 20150320-01; Kodak Portra 400 at EI 1600; Rodinal Pre-treat; Tetenal / Jobo / Unicolor C-41 Process; Nikon F2SB; 50mm f/1.4 Nikkor-S;

1. Portra 400 exposed at EI 1600.

2. Pre-Treat with Rodinal 1:100 at room temperature (~75F) for 10 minutes. 15 second initial agitation with a gentle swirl at 1' 30" only. Rinse at Pre-heat temperature of 102F for C41 process and continue to process as normal C41.

 

[Chrismat]

This is really interesting. Have you shot the same subjects with two cameras with the same film processing one roll this way and the 2nd roll with normal c41 processing to compare?

 

[Lamar]

No. Athiril came up with the 10 minute time for the pre-treat and it seems to be right on the mark. I've shot quite a bit of Portra 400 at higher than rated EI's though and I like the results of this process best. No scientific method to it, I just like it better because it seems to give me the least obtrusive grain. The trade off seems to be a little color aberration. But where I'm shooting this stuff is typically weird color and/or mixed lighting anyway so it doesn't bother me too much.