Weird Cast to pushed 250D (500) Negs

jad3675 · Sep 29, 2023

@koraks asked me to start a new thread for my issue, which I mentioned and shared here: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/color-negative-ecn2-processing-problem.201939/post-2727635

I tried my best to scan the emulsion side of a strip of negatives that had the particular issue - and by scan, I mean photograph them with a potato on a light table.

Bad 250D

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koraks · Sep 30, 2023

My first impression is a problem with light leaks somewhere in the process.

Are you using a flatbed scanner, a dedicated film scanner or a camera and a light box to digitize your film?

More importantly: do you see the lighter anomalies (in the positive image) as higher densities on the actual negatives? Do these higher density areas extend outside the image frame? You should be able to see this on the actual film if you look hard enough.

jad3675 said:
photograph them with a potato

Not bad for a potato! Also not bad for phone shots, but not quite good enough to answer the question above, so we have to rely on your judgement of the actual negatives. Or, if you have a flatbed scanner with a transparency unit, please try and scan an entire negative strip including sprocket holes etc. and see what that gives you.

Note that especially in photographing film using a light box and a digital camera, but also with flatbed scanners, there may be problems with uneven lighting, flare and light bleeding past film strips. This is the first thing you'd need to exclude, so that's why I press on the question if the defect is visible in the actual negatives.

jad3675 · Sep 30, 2023

koraks said:
My first impression is a problem with light leaks somewhere in the process.

Are you using a flatbed scanner, a dedicated film scanner or a camera and a light box to digitize your film?

More importantly: do you see the lighter anomalies (in the positive image) as higher densities on the actual negatives? Do these higher density areas extend outside the image frame? You should be able to see this on the actual film if you look hard enough.

Not bad for a potato! Also not bad for phone shots, but not quite good enough to answer the question above, so we have to rely on your judgement of the actual negatives. Or, if you have a flatbed scanner with a transparency unit, please try and scan an entire negative strip including sprocket holes etc. and see what that gives you.

Note that especially in photographing film using a light box and a digital camera, but also with flatbed scanners, there may be problems with uneven lighting, flare and light bleeding past film strips. This is the first thing you'd need to exclude, so that's why I press on the question if the defect is visible in the actual negatives.

Yeah, I was thinking light leaks also. The cassette I used on the first roll was a 30 year-old relic from my days on the newspaper staff in High School. Thinking that was the issue, I haven't used that cassette since. I purchased new screw top cassettes and have been using those.
Other than that, it's a NIB Alden 74 bulk loader and a brand new Paterson tank. My darkroom bag is a zipper/double velcro affair.
I did successfully dev 5 rolls of store-bought fuji film using the same bag and the Paterson Tank.

I've uploaded a scan of the entire negative strip to the shared album. I used an Epson v600 scanner. Looking at, I don't see any evidence of a weird cast. I'm going to re-scan a few strips.

koraks · Sep 30, 2023

jad3675 said:
I've uploaded a scan of the entire negative strip to the shared album.

I looked for it just now, but couldn't find it. That is to say, I do see the photos (?) of the pieces of film strip on a light table, but not something that looks like a flatbed scan. Could you point me to it, please?

jad3675 said:
I used an Epson v600 scanner.

Are you using the Epson film holder with it? As far as I can tell, that should work without flaring etc. since it's conceptually similar to the one that came with my 4990 and that works pretty much flawlessly. If you scan film directly on the glass plate without anything to keep it flat, there will be all manner of reflections and focus issues. Not sure if this applies to your workflow, though.

jad3675 · Sep 30, 2023

koraks said:
I looked for it just now, but couldn't find it. That is to say, I do see the photos (?) of the pieces of film strip on a light table, but not something that looks like a flatbed scan. Could you point me to it, please?

Are you using the Epson film holder with it? As far as I can tell, that should work without flaring etc. since it's conceptually similar to the one that came with my 4990 and that works pretty much flawlessly. If you scan film directly on the glass plate without anything to keep it flat, there will be all manner of reflections and focus issues. Not sure if this applies to your workflow, though.

Whoops. I put it in the wrong album. It should be at the link I provided in the first post.

I do use the film holders with the epson. I've tried with both the bare frame and using a piece of ANR glass over the negatives.

Thanks again!

koraks · Sep 30, 2023

Thanks - I hate to nag, but it's kind of small, though. I find it hard to make out anything on it. Specifically I'd like to try to:
- compare a few frames that you posted as positives with clear defects to the negatives as they appear in the scanned strip
- see if the defects stretch into the sprocket hole area and/or adjacent frames.
Maybe I'm just not using the Google gallery right, but it seems only a very low-res scan of the entire strip is present. I tried playing with it in a photo editor, but it's really too small to make out much on it.

The very red base color is certainly out of the ordinary. My own ECN2-developed Vision3 film has a base color that's a lot closer to regular C41 film; it's a little different, but not that much. I've had really red base/mask colors on occasion when grossly overdeveloping. C41 cross processing also gives a red mask in my experience, but yours looks extreme even taking that into account. I would have ventured that it might be down to scanning settings, but your light table shots also show a remarkably dense and red mask.

jad3675 · Sep 30, 2023

koraks said:
Thanks - I hate to nag, but it's kind of small, though. I find it hard to make out anything on it. Specifically I'd like to try to:
- compare a few frames that you posted as positives with clear defects to the negatives as they appear in the scanned strip
- see if the defects stretch into the sprocket hole area and/or adjacent frames.
Maybe I'm just not using the Google gallery right, but it seems only a very low-res scan of the entire strip is present. I tried playing with it in a photo editor, but it's really too small to make out much on it.

The very red base color is certainly out of the ordinary. My own ECN2-developed Vision3 film has a base color that's a lot closer to regular C41 film; it's a little different, but not that much. I've had really red base/mask colors on occasion when grossly overdeveloping. C41 cross processing also gives a red mask in my experience, but yours looks extreme even taking that into account. I would have ventured that it might be down to scanning settings, but your light table shots also show a remarkably dense and red mask.

You're not the first person to point out the dense red mask. The 250D film that did turn OK doesn't exhibit the dense red, either. It looks more like conventional C41 film.

Hm, it should be a fairly high-res scan. Sorry to waste your time, please don't apologize for nagging. I really appreciate you taking the time to look at these.

Let's see if this works.

Here's the processed image, straight from the scanner. I think the green cast is pretty evident from the tire on the silver car up into the building.

Here's the scanned (again, raw, straight from the scanner) of the same area. I don't see anything on the sprocket side

On this one, I might see a bit of something, 3 holes up on the left side.

Maybe there's bit of something on the left sprocket side in this image?

koraks · Sep 30, 2023

Thanks for posting these; I hope to have a good look at them tomorrow. One thing that's apparent is that all of these are pretty badly underexposed, and some of the problems in the film end up being magnified in the contrast increase that's needed to salvage the images. However, this is an exacerbation of a still very real underlying problem, so it's just a sideshow. But perhaps something to look into, separately.

koraks · Nov 15, 2023

@jad3675 I just ran into something that makes me suspicious of your processing chemistry. While what you get looks differently from my problem, there may be a similarity after all. Here's what I ran into the other day: https://tinker.koraks.nl/photography/how-i-broke-my-fixer/
I notice that you use the Cinestill 2-bath chemistry, which evidently uses a blix instead of separate bleach and fixer. I wonder if this works well (or at all) with ECN2 film. Based on the contents of the blog I linked to, I now suspect that ECN2 film fixes differently and with more difficulty than C41 film. This also means that a blix that may work OK for C41, may not work very well with ECN2 film. I would suggest switching over to chemistry that uses a separate bleach and fixer. At the very least, I'd try and re-blix the negatives you posted scans of above and see if that makes any difference.

lamerko · Nov 15, 2023

It was my turn, and I ruined not one, but two films in two consecutive runs, with two different color developer mixes. I haven't identified exactly where things went wrong yet, but I will run a series of tests. The two films are completely ruined - the magenta cast is so high that it cannot be compensated. There's also a good amount of noise - the negatives aren't too thick, but I've found it's in the film itself, not scan artefacts. Apparently, the negatives don't look too bad. But they are complete garbage. May be the problem has something to do with the ones in this thread - when I figure out what went wrong I'll post more info

koraks · Nov 15, 2023

Post some pics if you will @lamerko.
What do your negatives look like when viewed at an angle through the non-emuldion side and illuminated with bright light?

lamerko · Nov 15, 2023

I'll post pics when I get home from work tonight. The film is Kodak Vision3 500T - new, produced this year. After realizing that the second film was screwed up as well, I took one piece of each of the two (the films are cut 6 frames at a time) and went through them again with bleach and fixative. Absolutely no change.
I use Kodak formula ferricyanide bleach without buffering. I wash very well after the stop bath, I also go through a sulfite bath for a minute, then wash again.

koraks · Nov 15, 2023

Hmm, interesting.
To be clear - first the sulfite bath, then the ferricyanide bleach, right? Not the other way around? For posterity: the sulfite acts to scavenge oxidized developer, preventing it from coupling with the dyes as the ferricyanide bleach hits the film.

lamerko · Nov 15, 2023

I actually have a sulfite bath before and after the bleach….

koraks · Nov 15, 2023

That sounds good. Not sure if you need one after the bleach, but I can't see how it would hurt either.

jad3675 · Nov 15, 2023

koraks said:
@jad3675 I just ran into something that makes me suspicious of your processing chemistry. While what you get looks differently from my problem, there may be a similarity after all. Here's what I ran into the other day: https://tinker.koraks.nl/photography/how-i-broke-my-fixer/
I notice that you use the Cinestill 2-bath chemistry, which evidently uses a blix instead of separate bleach and fixer. I wonder if this works well (or at all) with ECN2 film. Based on the contents of the blog I linked to, I now suspect that ECN2 film fixes differently and with more difficulty than C41 film. This also means that a blix that may work OK for C41, may not work very well with ECN2 film. I would suggest switching over to chemistry that uses a separate bleach and fixer. At the very least, I'd try and re-blix the negatives you posted scans of above and see if that makes any difference.

Oh, very interesting. I retired the 2-bath chems after 6 weeks and 15 rolls. I do have unicolor 3-bath ECN2 chems that I'm going to try out, once I have more than a single roll to develop.

lamerko · Nov 15, 2023

Here's an attempt to shoot the movie with the problematic processing. I tried at an angle to photograph the emulsion, but that's all you can see through the phone. No retained silver visible.
I reversed the negative as follows:
- In ACR I applied the white balance tool on the mask;
- In Photoshop:
- invert tool;
- finding black and white point using threshold and color sample tool;
There are no other fixes.

koraks · Nov 16, 2023

Hmm, I don't know; I find it hard to accurately judge the color of the mask, but it doesn't seem very far from what I'd expect it to be. To be frank, the negatives seem to look pretty normal.

The only 'odd' thing of course is the color balance; this is 500T, so a Tungsten film, and it's shot under daylight conditions. Logically, everything turns blue/cyan as a result.

lamerko · Nov 16, 2023

At first glance, the negatives are not far from what is expected of them. After uploading to dry after development, I thought everything was fine. But not.
Yes, this film is tungsten balanced and without daylight correction it will be too cold. But digital correction is elementary, during scanning. Even with just a simple equalization of the three channels, we would get usable colors. However, it is impossible here - there is no way to correct the colors. Tonight I will post pictures from the other negative - there I had put an 85B filter on a few frames for comparison. Even with these frames, it can't be corrected to get usable colors. The example below is from a 5274 Vision 200T manufactured in 1997 and without a filter.

koraks · Nov 16, 2023

Hm, weird. On close inspection of the shot of the negatives on the light table, I see something that resembles a cyan stain in the center of the film strip. It's visible for instance here:

Can you confirm the presence of this cyan discoloration when viewing the film in real life?

The color balancing difficulties seem to suggest something funny going on with the cyan layer.

lamerko · Nov 16, 2023

koraks said:
Hm, weird. On close inspection of the shot of the negatives on the light table, I see something that resembles a cyan stain in the center of the film strip. It's visible for instance here:
View attachment 353619
Can you confirm the presence of this cyan discoloration when viewing the film in real life?

The color balancing difficulties seem to suggest something funny going on with the cyan layer.

This is very strange. It's as if the dye is "leaking" from the dark areas. It is clearly visible on the film, not an artifact.
I'm starting to think it's something with the pre (PB-2) bath. I had a pre-soak in warm water for 2-3 minutes, in PB-2 (old solution) for about 10 seconds, but maybe at a higher temperature than Kodak specified. I then had a wash/soak in water for maybe more than 5-6 min until the developer temperature reached 41.4 degrees. It wouldn't just be the temperature - if it was, I'd have this problem another time...

koraks · Nov 17, 2023

lamerko said:
It's as if the dye is "leaking" from the dark areas

That sounds like a fixer problem. Try and fix the film again and see if the cyan cast in the clear areas goes away.

lamerko · Nov 17, 2023

koraks said:
That sounds like a fixer problem. Try and fix the film again and see if the cyan cast in the clear areas goes away.

I'm going to mix a new fix, but I don't think it's from him. I had passed another cut (the first of the series) again - with no effect. I tried a piece of film in the old fix - it clears up pretty quickly.
However, I have my doubts about the pre-bath (I got a large amount of sludge, but it still works - maybe something happened there?) or the bleach. I highly doubt that my bromide is highly contaminated with something, and it is important for bleach. I am waiting for another batch to arrive and will try with a new one.
However, I think that whatever happened to the negative, it can no longer be corrected. But I need to find out what actually went wrong to know going forward.

koraks · Nov 17, 2023

If it's an actual dye stain, then indeed, the negatives are toast.

Too bad the first test with re-fixing those negatives didn't yield an improvement. FYI: I personally use C41 (Fuji Negacolor) fixer and C41 bleach (Fuji Environeg NR2). These work reliably as long as I stick to the manufacturer's recommendations...

If you suspect the pre-bath, try skipping it. Here's how I deal with remjet: https://tinker.koraks.nl/photography/rem-oval-getting-rid-of-the-remjet-on-vision3-ecn2-film/ It doesn't involve a prebath at all. I do use the developer one shot, so the remjet that ends up in it I dimply don't care about since it's discarded anyway. I did try to reuse the developer once and it worked just fine with no additional contamination to the next roll of film, so even for (light) reuse, I imagine this approach might work. One could of course filter the developer after use to remove the remjet. It'll take a fine mesh filter; something like cheesecloth comes to mind, or simply use a kitchen towel.

Weird Cast to pushed 250D (500) Negs

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