Unsuccessful C41 attempt with Fuji Hunt chems help

pentaxuser · Mar 2, 2022

BMbikerider, that a very good "rescue" attempt and it's pretty clear to me and hopefully to the OP that the problem lies to a great extent with scanning and its required adjustments/ That's not to say that exposure might not be wrong and the fact that this is a strange, almost unworldly scene with a lack of a good range of colours

I did ask him for other negs which might have had a more balanced range of colours on which to judge but we've got nothing in response so far although he did say he would post pics of other negs later. Hopefully he will and has now amended his belief that it is not his scanner

pentaxuser

mshchem · Mar 2, 2022

BMbikerider said:
After a nights sleep I have had another go with fresh eyes and made a few more changes.
1. I selected the deep shadow on the bottom right and desaturated the green cast (under exposed.
2. Removed now visible shadows of artifacts that appeared.
3. Added 11 units of red from the colour balance palette
4. Selected the tree then removed as much red as I could and tried to replace it with green (not very successful)
5 took out the drying mark in the sky

Another thing just like actual old school optical prints from negatives. Make inkjet prints and view with a Kodak color print viewing filter set. Or even make ring around prints. Scanning film is an art/science. Your point about fresh eyes is an excellent one. Some negatives, like this one can be a pain.

BMbikerider · Mar 2, 2022

koraks said:
They're pretty much completely empty, so exposure is one part of your problem. The question is if there is also a problem with the processing. A side by side comparison with a good negative is usually a good indication of big issues.

I get the feeling that the exposure range is way out of the films capabilities so the photographer was on a hiding for nothing. Over expose by even one stop can only make matters worse. But with the massive colour shift in the parts that were exposed more accurately the original problem has to be the film developer.

Radost · Mar 2, 2022

lab vs mine

MattKing · Mar 2, 2022

Looks like a typical difference between Portra 160 and Portra 400 .

MattKing · Mar 2, 2022

Less flippantly, may we please see your result from scanning #31 - it is more likely to give us a reference that we can work with.

Radost · Mar 2, 2022

MattKing said:
Looks like a typical difference between Portra 160 and Portra 400 .

Dont have Lab Developed portra 400

grat · Mar 2, 2022

Honestly, they're small, and obfuscated for obvious reasons, but all of the negatives in #29 converted over fairly well under Darktable / Negadoctor. The Portra 400 images are a bit darker, but still easily corrected.

Using the same base color for negadoctor, and selecting appropriate highlight / shadow regions, the original post comes out as:

Note-- I did zero other corrections on both images-- just inversion.

Radost · Mar 2, 2022

The portra 400 images - my development have a redish cast.

koraks · Mar 3, 2022

I don't see very apparent excess cyan dye in your portra400 negatives.
This is the problem with hybrid workflows; you're often not quite sure where the problem is. In this case it seems to be primarily a scanning/post processing problem.

Radost · Mar 3, 2022

koraks said:
I don't see very apparent excess cyan dye in your portra400 negatives.
This is the problem with hybrid workflows; you're often not quite sure where the problem is. In this case it seems to be primarily a scanning/post processing problem.

As I said before it is not the scanning. All Lab developed C41 portra 160, 800 Fuji 400H look great with their Negafix preset.

koraks · Mar 3, 2022

Have you tried scanning a lab-developed and a home-developed strip with the same scene, same exposure & lighting onto the same film with a flatbed scanner side-by-side (one scan, so not two separate scans)? That's what I'd do in your place.
As long as there are other variables that differ (different film stocks, different scenes, etc.) it will remain a turkey shoot. You have to pare it down to a single variable in order to figure out where the problem lies. Isolation.

Radost · Mar 3, 2022

I do not have a flat bed scanner. I have full confidence in my XAS scanner. Also it scans raw. Does not apply any corrections. Something is deffentally wrong with my development.
I am getting some lab portra 400 film tomorrow.

koraks · Mar 3, 2022

Radost said:
Also it scans raw. Does not apply any corrections.

Sorry, but that is not the case. Scanning is a conversion process and corrections are inherent to it. Some happen in hardware (sensitivity of CCD sites, analog gain), some happen in the firmware of the scanner (ADC conversion and data interpretation), some happen in driver/application software (profiling etc.) and some can be done by the user. If you say 'scans raw without corrections', this means that only the user corrections and MAYBE (but unlikely) the driver/application corrections are bypassed.
Fact of the matter is that you have no way of knowing how your scanner interprets the different color dye densities into a digital image.
To control for this, my suggestion remains to try and directly benchmark two otherwise identical film strips by scanning them side by side (see if a friend as a flatbed etc.) or contact printing them onto RA4 paper (but I assume you don't have access to the necessary materials). The only other option would be to give it a go with color densitometry, but again, probably you don't have access to the necessary equipment.

Of course reliable scanner profile is possible with some scanners, but you wouldn't be here asking your question if you knew how to and/or your scanner allows for it. I'd also recommend in this case asking your question in a place where people know about this kind of stuff; as far as I'm aware there are maybe two regular posters on this part of Photrio who actually know this kind of stuff.

Radost · Mar 3, 2022

My scanner is calibrated. I am 99.99% sure it is not the scanner. I don’t see why it would fuck up only my development but scan every other lab developed C-41 great. Today I am getting portra 400 from the lab with their noritsu scans. Will compare both.

koraks · Mar 3, 2022

I'm not saying your scanner fucks up. But your scanner is currently standing in the way of you tackling this issue.

Radost said:
Today I am getting portra 400 from the lab with their noritsu scans.

Adding another scanner to the mix isn't going to help, I'm afraid.

The problem is that you're trying to compare apples and oranges and make sense of it. Or, more accurately: you're comparing a story of an apple with a painting of a horse and trying to fix one with insights from the other. Evidently it doesn't work.

If you want to nail this, you'll have to reduce variables. Take two rolls (or even parts of rolls) of whatever film you want to use, shoot the same scene under controlled lighting on both, then have one roll/fragment lab developed and do the other one yourself. Take the resulting negatives, put them on a light table and photograph both side by side, in a single shot, with a decent digital camera. Then reverse and color correct the image for the lab-developed negative(s) and see what goes wrong with the home-developed.

For now you have your money on a red cast, but I'm not sure that's it. Neither am I saying your scanning is the problem; all I'm saying is that what you've done so far simply doesn't allow to make any sensible observations about what's going wrong.

Radost · Mar 3, 2022

Forgot to mention my XAS and 120 pro scanners are both calibrated and both scan the same cast. All other C-41 scan perfect and the XAS scans are almost as good as Richard’s lab.
I also tried to scan on windows machine without calibration.
I think after a lot of reading I am screwing my temperature.
I do presoak 5 minutes 100F seating in 104 water and development 3:15 in 100F seating in hot water.
I read other C-41 instructions recommend 100f for jobo and 102f for Paterson.

koraks · Mar 3, 2022

Maybe. Or there's a mixing error, a cross-contamination error, light fogging problem, etc. etc.
So you could:
* try all sorts of things hoping that the problem goes away at some random point in time
* stick with lab developed negatives
* systematically analyze the difference between home developed and lab developed negs.
I know what I'd do, but your preference may be different.

I don't doubt you're seeing some sort of cast, but it's also very clear to me that you are still in the dark as to what kind of deviation it is exactly.

brbo · Mar 3, 2022

I also inverted the shot of both strips and found out the same as user grat, there is not a big difference between lab developed Portra 160 and home developed Portra 400. Well within what you can expect from two different emulsions.

MattKing · Mar 3, 2022

Radost said:
My scanner is calibrated. I am 99.99% sure it is not the scanner. I don’t see why it would fuck up only my development but scan every other lab developed C-41 great. Today I am getting portra 400 from the lab with their noritsu scans. Will compare both.

I read what you are saying as that you expect the lab processed film to scan identically to the way that your home processed film scans. That isn't necessarily the case.
You may need to use a different scanning profile with your home processed film in order to obtain scans that are similar.
It isn't necessarily that the scanner and software gives you defective results. It may very well be that the scanner and software give you results that require an adjustment to the scanning settings in order to give you scans that are similar.
A small difference in contrast due to a difference in temperature or agitation would be enough to require an adjustment.

Radost · Mar 3, 2022

MattKing said:
I read what you are saying as that you expect the lab processed film to scan identically to the way that your home processed film scans. That isn't necessarily the case.
You may need to use a different scanning profile with your home processed film in order to obtain scans that are similar.
It isn't necessarily that the scanner and software gives you defective results. It may very well be that the scanner and software give you results that require an adjustment to the scanning settings in order to give you scans that are similar.
A small difference in contrast due to a difference in temperature or agitation would be enough to require an adjustment.

Its not both scanners. Its the development/chemicals/temperature/process.

MattKing · Mar 3, 2022

Radost said:
Its not both scanners. Its the development/chemicals/temperature/process.

And the results may not be defective, but merely different and easily dealt with with a different scanner profile.
Or not - it may be the results are defective. Unfortunately the wonderful flexibility of scanning technology makes it difficult to use scanning technology to help diagnose such defects.

koraks · Mar 4, 2022

Radost said:
Its not both scanners. Its the development/chemicals/temperature/process.

That's certainly possible. But since your process consists of a quite complex set of parameters, you need a way to narrow down the search, wouldn't you say?

Radost · Mar 4, 2022

Here is a raw scan of a color checker
My scanner scanned this the wrong dimensions, but it does not matter for colors.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XOFoW3040GsCv1YbIwJvCNXdicwk8QF4/view?usp=sharing

koraks · Mar 4, 2022

The image shows a single shot of a color checker, so it doesn't allow for the kind of comparison I suggested.

Having played with it very briefly in Gimp I get what appears to be a fairly decent color checker with no very big problems. A bit of magenta/green crossover if you look at the greyscale, but nothing that looks like a gross red cast or anything. Here's what 2 minutes of Gimp gives me:

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