Slide film too dark (Fujifilm Velvia 50)

Hello,

I am new to color development (and home development in general) and got my hands on a roll of Fujifilm Velvia 50 (expired in mid 2019). I home-processed them using Tetenal's E-6 Kit. However, I feel that my slides have come out too dark. I see my images when I hold my film against the light, and film leader is fully transparent, but a tiny little bit magenta (so maybe not a first-dev issue). The edges are all black and apparently solid. I have never developed slide film or even color film before so I am unsure what went wrong or if the results are supposed to look like that. I posted some pictures for you so you can see what happened.

The pictures are crappy because I didn't have anything at my hand that could have made for higher quality. I hope the important things are still visible.

Anyway, I hope that you can help me and have a nice Sunday evening!

You do have images, but without seeing them on a proper light box, its hard to tell. Do they scan up ok? I know with Velvia 50, when it starts to show magenta, the film has aged a bit, usually from some heat damage or age itself

You should be able to scan those and get images.

As far as them being dark,

Underexposed, first developer time too short or too cold, first developer or color developer mixed wrong ( too weak ).

I use Velvia 50 and process it in Tetenal E6 and can confirm that Velvia 50 comes out too dark when exposed at 50ISO and processed at the recommended FD time of 6:15. Velvia 100 and Provia 100F come out fine.

There are two possibilities and i used both of them:

1) Expose Velvia 50 at 40 or 32ISO. I use 32 as comparative testing yielded this as the best result with my process. 40 also looks not bad but i found the 32ISO shots to be better.
2) Use 7:30 as FD time instead of 6:15

The advantage of 2 is that you maintain the films nominal speed of 50ISO. 32 is 2/3 slower and even 50 is not very fast to begin with.
Disadvantage: You cannot mix Velvia 50 with Velvia 100 or Provia 100F in the same processing run unless you adjust their exposure index accordingly to compensate for the longer FD.
With option 1 you can mix all films. This is what i to now, but in the beginning i used 7:30 and 50ISO and the results were spectacular. Maybe i will switch back to option 2 again to get a bit shorter exposure times.....


Additionally, troubleshoot the process itself. Timing and temperature. I found that a prewet of 2min at process temperature almost eliminates the sudden temperature drop when pouring the FD in the tank first. The water jacket
is at 38,5°C in my case to compensate for the heat loss of the rotating drum. When i used manual agitation in a big water tank, i used more like 38,2°C because the heat loss is much less when the tank is almost completely submerged in water.

Maybe you can tell us more about your setup and process?

But anyway, i dialed in my process temperature within +/-0.2°C and RVP50 is too dark with nominal time and EI, thats what i found out with 100% repeatability.
My gut feeling however tells me that the temperature maybe is not that critical but i haven't tested.

The 1st developer is where to start. As has been said, temperature/time/exhaustion.

Photomultiplier said:

I use Velvia 50 and process it in Tetenal E6 and can confirm that Velvia 50 comes out too dark when exposed at 50ISO and processed at the recommended FD time of 6:15.

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I always shoot Velvia 50 at EI 50. For 135 i usually use a Nikon camera and for 120 a Pentax, both equipped with a Matrix meter.

For processing i use Tetenal's 3 bath kit with a Cinestill TCS-1000 to keep the temperature stable at 38.2~38.5 degrees celsius throughout the whole process. I also make sure the running water during the intermediate washing steps is at 38 degrees celsius.

I don't scan to compensate for exposure or processing errors. I view my slides on two different light tables and they always look bright and vibrant. This holds for both the the image and the film edge codes that i use as a first reference to judge if the developing process went fine.

I always use the recommended 6:15 for the first developer. I suspect something else could be wrong with your exposure or processing regimen.

Photomultiplier said:

The water jacket is at 38,5°C in my case to compensate for the heat loss of the rotating drum. When i used manual agitation in a big water tank, i used more like 38,2°C because the heat loss is much less when the tank is almost completely submerged in water.

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I also got a CPE 2 recently and i am still in the process of restoring it and performing small repairs. I am also planning to install a simple aquarium pump in order to have some water circulation and a more even temperature throughout.

Whenever i use it, i plan to have the chemistry in a separate water bath with the Cinestill TCS 1000. The CPE 2 would then be free to run and perform rotational agitation at a higher temperature in order to compensate for any potential heat loss as the tank is not completely submerged in the water bath. How much higher i do not know yet as i have not done any experiments.

I do not know what should be wrong with my process because everything comes out perfect. And as i said, when exposing and processing RVP50 and RVP100 or RDPIII back to back, only and always the RVP50 is too dark when usiong EI 50 and 6:15. This matches also the experience of
many photographers. Fritz Poelking stated the same on his webpage: http://www.poelking.com/wbuch2/zeus/index_d.htm
RVP50 is said to have 50ISO when processed in Fuji chemicals (Process CR-56). This behavior is unique to RVP50 according AFAIK.
Incidentally, i met an old industrial photographer yesterday and we talked about this kind of stuff and he also had to expose it at 40 or 32 while everything else worked at box speed.

The temperature has been measured in-situ in the tank while processing, using an calibrated remote thermometer that i built for this purpose. "Normal" measurements are taken with an calibrated industrial precision thermometer.
Water bath is the same as yours, CPE-2 for agitation and TCS-1000 for temperature. I found it to be of far superior stability than the CPE-2 itself which relies on natural convection.
My measurements indicate that it holds the temperature within 0.2°C or even better.


Using two separate baths was something that i have been thinking about in the beginning, but it was found the be unnecessary. Just placing the setpoint for the bath a bit higher did the trick. I set the cinestill to 38,9°C. Then the water jacket has about 38,5..38,6°C and
the submerged bottles have 38,5°C. And i place the Jobo on a styrofoam board to reduce heat loss through the bottom.

I did many dummy processings with water and measured the temperature inside the tank either by hand at different times or with the in-situ thermometer.
The chemistry is at 38,0° or at most ~0,15°C below when pouring out.

The attached image shows several test runs. The fat red and blue lines indicate the process window.
Gray line shows what happens when the tank is neither prewarmed nor prewet. The temperature drops and then creeps up slowly.
There are also several 2-Bath runs where the chemistry was placed in an separate bath.
The "vorwässern" (prewet) curve is very good and now it is even better because i did some further fine tuning after this plots were made.



dmtnkl, did you also process other films or just RVP50?

Photomultiplier said:

dmtnkl, did you also process other films or just RVP50?

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- Agfa Precisa CT100
- Provia 100F
- Provia 400X
- Velvia 100F
- Velvia 100
- Astia 100F
- Sensia 100
- Sensia 200
- Sensia 400

I did not take measurements with a densitometer but they all look bright and vibrant to me when looking at them with the loupe on the light table. Sometimes there could be some extremes in the highlights or shadows due to very contrasty light but there is not much i could do there differently anyway.

Here is a Velvia 50 sample, photographed on the light table with my phone. The shot was taken with a Nikon camera and a matrix meter. Overall brightness and vibrance is exceptional. It matches very well how i was perceiving the landscape at the moment i took the picture. If more than 6:15 was spent in the first developer, then some of the highlights on the sunny part of the beach would really start to blow out.

TophUwO said:

Anyway, I hope that you can help me and have a nice Sunday evening!

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It would be a lot more helpful if you could show the slides on a light table or even your phone's screen with a bright white background.

Funny, mine were too dark while the other films are fine.

The sky on yours looks way darker than it usually does without GND filter. Usually i found the blue sky at +1EV looks natural, at least where i live.
I agree with you, the slide looks very good.

It would be interesting to compare things side by side, especially as we are using practically identical setups.

Photomultiplier said:

RVP50 is said to have 50ISO when processed in Fuji chemicals (Process CR-56). This behavior is unique to RVP50 according AFAIK.

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Fuji's chemistry is out of the question due to the volumes available at the moment. Too many films would be needed for efficient use. However, i ordered Bellini's 1L 6-bath E6 kit which should be very similar to the Fuji one. I still have two Tetenal 1L kits to finish though, so it will take some time to test the new kit. If i notice something different i will try to remember to give an update here.

Photomultiplier said:

It would be interesting to compare things side by side, especially as we are using practically identical setups.

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Just to be clear, and as i wrote before, i am not using the CPE2 yet as i want to perform some extra modifications (you can check this pdf for some ideas). I just use the Cinestill TCS-1000 and manual inversion agitation.

I also bought the small Eheim pump because of this pdf But i then found it more convenient to combine the Cinestill with the Jobo. But as i said, i also used the Cinestill with manual agitation during my first tries.

I never tried Fuji Hunt 6X and used Tetenal from the beginning. To increase the shelf life of the opened concentrates, i simply decant them into 50ml portions which i use one-shot with 2 films to get more yield.
Bellini however looks interesting because it is a 6 bath process, but on the other hand i never had any problem with Tetenal, quite the contrary.

Don't use expired film and expect results as if it were fresh. With V50, the shadows will have just a little bit more fall off than other slide films so meter correctly, you have to fit your scene within a 5 stop range or you will loose the shadows or the highlights.

Thanks for all your suggestions. Weird that some people have issues with Velvia 50 being too dark when processed in default E-6. I saw that Bellini's kit says that we have to increase FD time by one minute if we are developing Fuji slide film. It does not specify which one in particular, though. I will most likely switch to this kit in the future because it's the full E-6 process and I like that.

I have managed to scan them and they are a bit dark. They do look a bit underdeveloped and a bit underexposed to me. Some pictures included. Regarding temperature control, I did not have an accurate thermometer at that time (my thermometer could only give me full degrees and was, according to my later thermometer, always like one degree off (too cold)). I have not developed E-6 since but I have some E-6 to shoot that will be processed in Tetenal's until it's done for and then Bellini's E-6.

dmtnkl said:

It would be a lot more helpful if you could show the slides on a light table or even your phone's screen with a bright white background.

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I am afraid I don't have a light table or a second phone to photograph my slides with. I have posted some scans in my latest message.

TophUwO said:

I saw that Bellini's kit says that we have to increase FD time by one minute if we are developing Fuji slide film. It does not specify which one in particular, though. I will most likely switch to this kit in the future because it's the full E-6 process and I like that.

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I just read the instructions of the Bellini E6 kit. I can see two sets of times for the first developer (6:00/7:00 and 6:30/7:30) but can't find any reference to a specific film manufacturer.

dmtnkl said:

I just read the instructions of the Bellini E6 kit. I can see two sets of times for the first developer (6:00/7:00 and 6:30/7:30) but can't find any reference to a specific film manufacturer.

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The listing at retrocamera.be mentions that it applies to Fujifilm slides.
https://www.retrocamera.be/en/darkr...or-slide-film-six-bath-processing-kit-1l.html (couldn't copy the text itself). To be perfectly sure, I would also contact bellinifoto themselves -- they should know best.

Anyway, it's great that they write that in their manual but do not document it. How are we supposed to know what they mean?

When I shot Velvia 50 I used to rate it at I.S.O. 40 because I found it too dense at the boxed speed.

Last week, i had a talk with an famous aerial photographer who used Velvia 50 exclusively until 2007 when he switched to digital. He also exposed Velvia 50 at 40.

I tried 32 and 40 when i process it with standard times. Sometimes i liked the 32 more, sometimes the 40ISO images. Settled to 32, but 40 would probably be also fine and now i think about switching back
to 50ISO and use longer development times (already tested). 50 is not fast to begin with, 32 is slow and 32 with polarizer (-1 2/3) feels like making a daguerreotype sometimes

When talking about exposure differences that lie within a third of a stop, i think that it is much more important to understand what your light meter is telling you, instead of just selecting an ISO value. Such small differences may exist even between different instances of the same camera model.

If you have multiple cameras, point them all at a uniformly lit wall and inspect the readings. Write down the measurements and adjust the iso dial on the ones that might be a little bit off compared to the meter you trust the most.

Photomultiplier said:

Last week, i had a talk with an famous aerial photographer who used Velvia 50 exclusively until 2007 when he switched to digital. He also exposed Velvia 50 at 40.

I tried 32 and 40 when i process it with standard times. Sometimes i liked the 32 more, sometimes the 40ISO images. Settled to 32, but 40 would probably be also fine and now i think about switching back
to 50ISO and use longer development times (already tested). 50 is not fast to begin with, 32 is slow and 32 with polarizer (-1 2/3) feels like making a daguerreotype sometimes

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Don't forget that transparency film unlike negative film the more exposure you give it the lighter the image gets.

temp is very important with 1st developer, so make sure you keep a good water bath going to keep it a little over the right temp. that fact that you state you have no idea of the temp of the chems is the first place to figure out what you did wrong. start there then report back. FYI, the old RVP I meter at 40 while the second generation I find is spot on at 50

also, how are you metering? in camera meter or hand held meter?

High contrast scenes (especially when shooting towards the sun), can be difficult to expose properly on color slide film. It simply doesn't have the dynamic range of a color negative film.

Better results will depend on further fine-tuning what scenes you choose to photograph, metering/exposure, and processing. Good suggestions regarding the processing & exposure so far.

It might be helpful to summarize what different manufacturers are saying about the First Developer time for Kodak and Fuji E-6 films:

• Fuji-Hunt: 6:00 to 7:00 at 38 deg. C for small tanks with manual inversion, and 6:00 to 8:30 at 38 deg. C for rotary processors; film type not specified; insists that the user needs to determine the best time to use for his or her own specific circumstances (e.g., film type and metering style).
• Tetenal: 6:15 at 37.8 deg. C for small tanks with manual inversion, and 7:00 at 37.8 deg. C for rotary processors; no film type specified; again, with the caveat that the user needs to test to determine the best FD time for their set of circumstances.
• Bellini: 6:00 for Kodak film and 7:00 for Fuji film at 38 deg. C in small tanks using manual inversion; no times specified for rotary processing.
• Jobo: 6:30 for Kodak film and 7:30 for Fuji film at 38 deg. C in rotary processors (applies to both three-bath and six-bath E-6 chemistry); again with the caveat that the user should test for their specific circumstances.

The general takeaway seems to indicate that Kodak film is best souped in the FD for 6:00-6:30, while Fuji film may require 7:00-7:30, depending on manual versus rotary processing.

I similarly went through an early period of developing my own Velvia 50 in which I began metering it at ISO 32 to compensate for what I thought was an unrealistically "fast" box speed. What I eventually discovered was that the apparent problem had almost everything to do with how I was metering. Most daytime landscape scenes tend to skew to the brighter end of the tonal range, and if you're taking an "averaging" approach to spot metering, not understanding this tends to result in underexposure when you shoot at box speed. While using an ISO of 32 can sort of compensate for that problem, it's better to learn how to properly spot meter (while also making frequent use of graduated ND filters to tame the skies) while using the box speed of ISO 50. This really is the crux of transparency film, which is why metering for it requires a little more deliberation than negative film. I also discovered that the thermometer I had been using for my Jobo CPE-2 was about 1 deg. C too cold, so using a better thermometer helped, too.

For what it's worth, I now expose Velvia 50 at ISO 50 and develop in Fuji-Hunt E-6 chemistry with the Jobo for 7:00 at 38 deg. C. I've been happy with the results.

Artist-Photographer said:

There is nothing 'unrealistic' about the box speed of Velvia. What is wrong is how people expose it, and that in itself is almost an artform, not an afterthought.

[...] and if you're taking an "averaging" approach to spot metering, not understanding this tends to result in underexposure when you shoot at box speed.

This is not correct.
Averaging is how RVP50 works best! It is how you are balancing all the readings from low to high, in conditions that are appropriate for the film. Which leads me to the next observation.

The sample images appear to me to have been shot in bright point light, which is wholly unsuitable for Velvia, with its design intent skewed toward diffuse light. Shooting at ISO50 in point light will result in quite severe contrast and potential underexposure.

I use Fuji-Hunt E6 chems and the last time I did any tweaks to the methodology was 18 years ago!
There is also a useful rule of thumb to be observed regarding film formats of Velvia 50. In 35mm, rate it at EI40; process normally. In medium format, rate at ISO50 — just that, nothing else. Rating Velvia at EI32 will lighten shadows but also increase the threshold for unrecoverable loss of highlights; effectively, the film is being exposed incorrectly. Additionally, do not meter clear sky; this is only relevant if you are shooting sunsets when detail is required in the sky, provided by cloud patina etc., and even then the metering must be balanced with the rest of the image (the landscape, for instance).

The image below is RVP50 at 50, multispot metered with mean-weighted average summation; it is also under full polarisation, which is only effective on RVP50 in diffuse light. If this scene was shot in bright point light it would be a complete write-off from low to high and everything in between. Very similar, if not identical results will turn up in RVP50-specific shooting condtions when using Kodak's excellent Ektachrome 100 film.

The takeway for all this is to refine your shooting times and use more discrete and selective metering that takes into account high (but not highest) values and low (and again, not lowest values).

__________________________________________________________________
• RVP50, 50, multispot/MEAVG+ 0.5 step baseline shift
(Printed 12x16" RA-4 KEP-M)

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I find I like Velvia 50 in different lighting. These two are in bright light with lots of contrast. The first tended to darken the shadows a little too much on the right. The second seemed to work out fine.