So Home E-6 is not Economical?

Hi, I'm new here, I'm also interested in E-6 developing at home (have been developing B/W for years). Unfortunately, there's no source for chemicals in my country and I have to order it online. Get away with that issue, I'm wondering what I could invest to start developing color films? I shoot almost 120 roll film only. I'm on budget so mini-lab is not an option. Can I use my rotating base for drum? Thanks.

A9tm said:

Hi, I'm new here, I'm also interested in E-6 developing at home (have been developing B/W for years). Unfortunately, there's no source for chemicals in my country and I have to order it online. Get away with that issue, I'm wondering what I could invest to start developing color films? I shoot almost 120 roll film only. I'm on budget so mini-lab is not an option. Can I use my rotating base for drum? Thanks.

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Critical to E6 is temperature control. I only started it when I got gifted a Jobo CPE2+Lift, or I wouldn't even think about it.
Some people get away with just regular inversions and keeping it the rest of the time in a sink full of water with an aquarium heater. But do note that all times (that I've seen) are for continuous rotary jobo-like processing, if you invert-and-wait like for B+W you'll need to adjust times accordingly (by what factor? I don't know). If you can set up a manual-roller in a sinkful of water and keep it constant enough temperature, you might get something decent.

Oh pshaw. It's easy enough without a Jobo.

The way I used to do it was this: I'd pour the solutions (temporarily) into well labeled aluminum cans and set them in a big dish pan with water of close to (within a degree or two) the right temperature. The metal conducts the heat. Put your steel film tank in there too. For the first developer, which is the only one that's really critical (the color developer or CD/reversal for three bath, is "semi-critical" and needs to be within a couple of degrees, the rest just go to completion) put your thermometer into the solution and run hot or cold water over the can as needed until the temperature is where it should be. Pour it into your film tank and agitate per instructions, setting the tank in the water bath between agitations. When you're getting ready for the CD you can tweak its temperature the same way in between 1st developer agitations.

It's a bit of a PITA, granted, compared to warming up my Jobo and just letting it run and pulling the lift handle when the timer goes off then pouring in the next bath, but it's not really difficult and it works fine.

You don't need to keep a heater in the water bath if it starts out right or no more than a couple of degrees cooler. It will only cool very slightly and the 1st developer in the tank (the only critical one, remember?) will cool even less during the development time. It will be close enough (they say 1/2 degree F but I found a degree wasn't so bad.) Just a hot water tap mixed with cold to the right temperature works fine. The directions give times and they work fine for inversion.

Don't make it sound harder than it is. It isn't hard, just a bit...busy.

having done more e-6 than I care to remember, I can attest to a few things.

1: fairly critical temp and chemistry balance. - That is if your running control strips, using a densitometer, and doing this for customers so your process is within kodak limits. The kodak chems used to continually drift cooler with use and replenishment requiring the addition of NaOH solution to keep it balanced. if you went too far, you had to add sulfuric acid solution. 1ml per liter of color developer, per .05cc shift. Never used fuji chems, imagine they are the same.

2: Doing it yourself - at home - easy. Your not having to thread a needle with the balance.
If you can do black and white - bake a cake or souffle - or drive a car in rush hour traffic you can do this.

You should aim for CONSISTENT time, temp, and agitation. You don't have quite the latitude so just don't be sloppy. But you will get lovely images. And if you did not run a control strip, you don't know or care how far "off" from the reference strip you are. You will get decent imaged. And if they seem to get little cooler with chemistry use, add a bit of sodium hydroxide solution to the color developer. if they go a bit too yellow, add some sulphuric acid solution. ( Cant remember how infrequent that was )

Keep from cross contamination, and you will be happy. You can get quite a bit out of 5 liters, just try and use it all up in a few months, and keep it well sealed or even refrigerated. You will likely have to adjust the first developer times as you use it. That's just like b&w cause it IS. The color developer is less finicky, and the bleach fix and other steps are to completion. Once out of the reversal bath it's light safe. Way back in the day e-3 used light reversal, and e-4 ( and e-5, ea-5, and ar-5) was almost identical but with chemical reversal, differing temps, and pre-hardener. One was considered for "amateur films" and the other for professional and (E-5 variations) aerial films. The e3 and e4 used a rather powerful ferricyanide bleach compared to the edta based one used today. iirc.

easiest course is just bite the bullet, order it and process. You will be hooked as soon as the trans hits the light box.

What Blaine said. I never used mine enough to get a noticeable drift. I'd wait until I had enough film for the listed capacity of 8oz (the smallest amount that would cover the film in my tank that used the least chemicals) which I think was three 36x 35mm rolls (I didn't do 120 or LF in those days) but may have been two, it's been a long time. Then I'd just run one after the other and discard. I bet you could get more by re-using it further and maybe adding the sodium hydroxide he mentions but I didn't know that then.

It's harder to describe than to do, though plan a practice roll or two. Once you get it, you'll be good.

blaine.minazzi said:

2: Doing it yourself - at home - easy. Your not having to thread a needle with the balance.
If you can do black and white - bake a cake or souffle - or drive a car in rush hour traffic you can do this.

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No, I can not do black and white, bake a cake and drive my car in rush hour, all at the same time. Mainly do to the fact that my car lack a good oven to bake!


I develop my E6 at home also, decided to do after seen the costs here to develop a c-41 and a slide film. Since I do love the colours and seeing the positive image after taking out the film from the tank. Use Tetenal 3 bath 1L. It mainly costs me 50 euros (+/-), with shipping cost included. I do not use enough slide film for going to the 5L kits.

I temper my chemicals in a 20L plastic bin filled with hot water from tap ('bouts 40 degrees Celsius). They heat up in 5-7 minutes and I start always one degree above the required temperature and prolong the development by 20-40 seconds, much is relied on feel and experience, I don't much care for standards and such. Home processing of pretty much anything is easy if you have common sense and don't mess about. Don't worry, you can do it. You don't need a fancy Jobo or anything like that if you do it just for fun. I'd get a Jobo and proper chemicals if I would be needing repeatable and professional results.
Bear in mind I have no real E6 chemicals and most of my color processing is motion picture negative but heck, I ended up with some pretty neat slides last time.



My routine includes 42-degree paper developer for 4-5 minutes (takes some test strips to learn how the specific developer works and ages after every roll), followed by 3-5 minutes fogging in sunlight (of course, there is a citric acid stop bath and wash in between), then modified ECN2 developer (with added alkali and sodium sulfite) for 6-10 minutes, depending how well seasoned the soup is. Rest of processing is done in C41 back end, bleach time is tripled, fix time is doubled. Stabilizer has formalin added, 40ml of 10% solution. Considering how easy the C41 tail end is to obtain (esp. if you know a minilab clerk/owner) and how ridiculously easy and cheap ECN2 developer is to make - especially if you live in USA, this could be a real alternative to E6. There can be a magenta cast due to the pH being off from E6 standard and the tones might be not right but I am quite happy with the results. You can get rid of the magenta if you soak the film in water with 2 teaspoons of baking soda added per liter but that messes up shadow density a bit but the slide remains scannable and usable. If there is enough interest I might post my recipes and exact routines.

VPooler said:

and how ridiculously easy and cheap ECN2 developer is to make - especially if you live in USA, this could be a real alternative to E6. There can be a magenta cast due to the pH being off from E6 standard and the tones might be not right but I am quite happy with the results. You can get rid of the magenta if you soak the film in water with 2 teaspoons of baking soda added per liter but that messes up shadow density a bit but the slide remains scannable and usable. If there is enough interest I might post my recipes and exact routines.

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Or you could simply mix some E6 recipes which are very close or right at the real formula. See examples of such formulas (there was a url link here which no longer exists) and (there was a url link here which no longer exists). You get the rough stuff cheaply from Keten in Poland and the fine stuff from Suvatlar in Germany, both ship at least within EU boundaries.

It's not cheap, but neither are the film rolls. Color slide film offers an incredibly beautiful color palette, yet might well disappear from the market within the next ten years, if not earlier. It's time we do it justice with the right chemistry.

Rudeofus said:

Or you could simply mix some E6 recipes which are very close or right at the real formula. See examples of such formulas (there was a url link here which no longer exists) and (there was a url link here which no longer exists). You get the rough stuff cheaply from Keten in Poland and the fine stuff from Suvatlar in Germany, both ship at least within EU boundaries.

It's not cheap, but neither are the film rolls. Color slide film offers an incredibly beautiful color palette, yet might well disappear from the market within the next ten years, if not earlier. It's time we do it justice with the right chemistry.

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Meh, I can't be bothered to buy the extra stuff. I can do both positives and negatives with the same soup and with same degree of success. The method works very well with Ektachrome and Agfa Precisia - the latter cost me some 4,50€ per roll, making it cheaper than Ektar for example.

Just describing my method, maybe there are some other boneheads here who are interested in both ECN2 and E6 and well now you know that you can use the same extremely cheap and simple developer for both of them.