What are your wash timing and method for Tetenal E-6 slide developer kit?

Getting ready to do my first E-6 developing, in the past we would send it out, but looking over the kit, Tetenal states in its manual "Carry our rinses with running water or change water every 30 secs or rinse over longer periods."

So when we develop B&W or Flexicolor C-41 we've been using the ilford rinse method of 5, 10 and 20 (actually a little more 10, 20 and 30) successfully and wondered if there any reason this needs to be changed for developing slide film?

peter k. said:

Getting ready to do my first E-6 developing, in the past we would send it out, but looking over the kit, Tetenal states in its manual "Carry our rinses with running water or change water every 30 secs or rinse over longer periods."

So when we develop B&W or Flexicolor C-41 we've been using the ilford rinse method of 5, 10 and 20 (actually a little more 10, 20 and 30) successfully and wondered if there any reason this needs to be changed for developing slide film?

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Your inquiry is not clear.
The user guide included with the box is clear in its instructions.
where is the problem ?

All right, thanks for the feedback, that when you have used this kit, you do as instructed. That's great

The user guide is very clear, use water. So you still may be curious in why we have made this inquiry?
Here's an explanation for ya.

I'm a desert rat!
Water is precious!
So for the first two washes each wash, requires five washes each. So minimum for one roll of 35mm fill or 120 is 2500 cm x 2 = 5000. Then for the third and final wash they want you to rinse eight times. So 8 x 500 = 4000. That plus the first two washes = 9000 ml or 2.4 gallons which you want to have maintained around 100* f as you know. Lot of water to hear and maintain.
Thus ilford's rinse method of 5, 10 and 20 was created decades ago, so one did not need to use running tap water which would use way more than 3 gallons.
With there method one would use 3000 for first and second wash, and another 1500 for the last wash which = half of the suggested method for all the washes.

So hopefully, .. we have made our inquiry more clear now!
Saving water, and not having to heat much less, of it, for the rinse.

The Tetenal kit is made in Germany, a country, in which availability of tap water is a non-issue. The instruction manual will therefore not be very helpful. I am also not sure about the applicability of the Ilford wash instructions, since they are geared towards black&white film, which has much fewer emulsion layers than color film.

Based on the attached article and your specific requirements I would give the following advice:

1. BLIX is less than perfect in regard to retained silver. If you have high silver load, you may leave in the gelatin some of the lower silver thiosulfate complexes, which are hard to dissolve. Think about using a final fixer bath made from some neutral rapid fixer, such as TF-5. This should reduce silver load and thereby improve washing. Ron has written several times, how advanced fixer not only cut down fixing time, but also washing time.
   
2. in each batch of wash water try to get perfect dilution of thiosulfate in water and gelatin. If time is a concern, use a wash aid in every wash cycle except the first and the last one. If you have a septic tank, think about using Sodium Bicarbonate instead of Carbonate and/or Sulfate.
3. Washing is mostly a dilution process, especially if you use a wash aid to boost ion exchange. Think about thiosulfate level in the final active bath, think about how much liquid you carry over between steps, and how little thiosulfate is acceptable for archival results. This will give you a rough number for minimum water changes. If you run the numbers: more changes with less water are preferable to fewer changes with more water.
4. Think about deploying tests for residual thiosulfate to get some peace of mind. All my statements above are suggestions from a purely theoretical standpoint, whereas a reliable test gives you hard facts.

I developed my first e6 35mm roll during the weekend with the new small "magic box" kit. I used running water at approximately 37-38 degrees for 2:30 between the first steps and 4:00 minutes after the blix, following the provided instructions. All chemicals were mixed with bottled water. In the future i will probably switch to distilled. Temperature was controlled with the cinestill tcs-1000.

Slides look really good, better than any local lab i tried (and i tried all of them). Only some dried fluid marks on the base side that went away after careful cleaning with a q-tip. Maybe 4-5 frames seem to have some small particles that are only visible when shining light at an angle on the emulsion side (when you can also see the relief image). Not sure what this is, maybe has to do with the fact that i didn't use distilled water for the stabilizer as advised by friends.

Mind you, this was the very first roll i developed after more than decade, so i am in no way an expert. I am just sharing my latest experience from my first test. In the future i would like to avoid tap water and use something cleaner. Also in smaller quantity to avoid all the water waste, so i guess i will have one+ liter bottles in my tempered bath which i will use to wash my small 250ml jobo tank a couple of times between each step. Maybe i do it like this, maybe not. Time will tell as i gain more experience.

BTW read Washing of Emulsions pdf, WOW... phew.. oh my.. photography of unknowing is wonderful Its enough to compose, meter and develop internally as well as externally. Also, where an old 'art, and when we pass away the kids will look at all these notebooks of film negatives from 35mm to 4x5, sigh, and say oh my.. and toss them most likely. But then we will not care, will be in photography heaven. Finding out if its B&W or Color!

Rudeofus said:

not sure about the applicability of the Ilford wash instructions, since they are geared towards black&white film, which has much fewer emulsion layers than color film.

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Ahhh.. yes.. very true, one reason with doing Fleicolor C-41 developing, we increased the agitation sequence of 5, 10 to 20 to 10, 20 to 30.

Rudeofus said:

BLIX is less than perfect in regard to retained silver.

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Yes, but the non blix E-6 development is much more costly than this kit. With C-41 we went from our first developments using Blix to non Blix Flexicolor and like it allot. But since we are into a specific Tetenal Kit development at this point, .. really don't want to try something outside of that, as in suggestion of a wash aid, as it might offset the method and chemical sequence of the kit.

Rudeofus said:

Washing is mostly a dilution process,

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Yes, that makes sense, can you give a little more clarification of your statement that, for in your statement:

Rudeofus said:

If you run the numbers: more changes with less water are preferable to fewer changes with more water.

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seems to give credence to Iford's wash instructions, where you are agitating for a longer period of time, with each of the three water changing and draining cycles. Using less water.
Or do we have a misunderstanding?
Bottom line with your understanding of the this whole process... what is your opinion: Do as directed... by Tetenal or do you think we can get away with less water with the Iford method with the longer agitation spells?

dmtnkl said:

In the future i will probably switch to distilled. Temperature was controlled with the cinestill tcs-1000.

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Yes we have very hard water so we always use distilled in setting up developers, but not with wash cycles.
Love the cinestill, just got one a month or so ago.. simplifies greatly.

If you throw your BLIXed film in water, two things will happen:

1. there is thiosulfate in aqueous solution in the gelatin. This will be diluted with the wash water
2. a significant amount of the thiosulfate will be embedded in the gelatin matrix, this will only be exchanged in a tit-for-tat manner for other ions

If you wash with tap water - or worse: deionized water - process 1 will be rapid, whereas process 2 will be very slow. Assuming carryover of 20ml and tank volume of 250ml and initial fixer concentration at 200 g/l thiosulfate, you will dilute first to 200*20/250, in the second wash cycle to 200*20/250*20/250, third wash cycle will give you 200*20/250*20/250*20/250 and so on. In theory, you'd be at very low thiosulfate levels with very few water changes. However, there's this process 2, which slows down extraction of thiosulfate. This process is not so much affected by the number of water changes, but by the time it takes for ions to exchange: thiosulfate from gelatin matrix to water, some other ion from water to gelatin matrix. If this other ion has no bad effect on gelatin and dyes, then no harm is done. Thiosulfate in the gelatin, however, would be a problem, since it would slowly degrade to sulfate and yellow, elemental Sulfur.

Therefore you face two constraints: how much water do you need to dilute the thiosulfate down to archival levels? And: how long does it take to make perfect dilution happen?

The answer to question 1 would probably taking a look at Ilford's wash method as a start. Ilford's wash method is based on thinner film (fewer emulsion layers), but most carryover happens not inside the film but elsewhere. Ilford does not use a wash aid AFAIK, therefore Ilford may be a bit generous with the wash water.

The answer to question 2 would be: use a wash aid for all wash cycles except the first (wash aid doesn't help) and the last (a little wash aid doesn't hurt, but let's not overdo this). If you use wash aid, thiosulfate extraction should be fast enough to maybe save a wash cycle or two from Ilford's procedure. It's your call: if 20g of wash aid (rock salt, Sodium Bicarbonate, anything) is cheaper than one liter of extra wash water, then wash aid may be useful.

Conclusion/TLDR: depending on your actual water situation, different strategies are preferable. If water is abundant, use Tetenal's method at least twice or more. If water is scarce, use Ilford's method, but extend time in each water cycle to at least double the time. If water is really scarce, use wash aid and test, by how far you can reduce the number of wash cycles.

Use the Ilford wash you described. I add a fourth round with 40 inversions (actually, 20, set in the water bath while I tidy up and dry up spills, then 20 more and dump). After blix, the open tank goes under the faucet while the temperature is brought down over five minutes or so. I've never had any problems.

thuggins said:

I add a fourth round with 40 inversion (actually, 20, set in the water bath while I tidy up and dry up spills,

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You are referring that in actually set it in water bath ??? Then agitating for 20 more inversions with one hand while it is immersed in the water bath, to keep temperature up, while your cleaning up with other hand?
Then for the final rinse, you wash it with tap water, for five minutes, gradually making the tap water cooler before you do the stabilizer?

peter k. said:

You are referring that in actually set it in water bath ??? Then agitating for 20 more inversions with one hand while it is immersed in the water bath, to keep temperature up, while your cleaning up with other hand?

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No. It would be quite messy trying to do inversions in the water bath. It's 5 inversions-dump, 10 inversions-dump, 20 inversions-dump, 20 inversions-put the tank back into the water bath and tidy up, take the tank out of the bath and 20 more inversions-dump. BTW, I use the water bath for the wash after first developer and color developer. Just dunk the tank into the bath. After the first dev wash the bath gets replenished with a 1/2 gallon of water around 106 to 107F. This brings both the level and temperature back up. I don't do this after the color developer as the temperature of the blix is not critical.

peter k. said:

Then for the final rinse, you wash it with tap water, for five minutes, gradually making the tap water cooler before you do the stabilizer?

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Yes. I'm on community hot water so it never runs out, but the temperature can vary randomly. I use an infrared thermometer to monitor the wash temperature. As the amount of hot water is reduced this precaution is no longer required.

dmtnkl said:

I developed my first e6 35mm roll during the weekend with the new small "magic box" kit.

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Could you provide more detail on this "magic box"?

Rudeofus said:

BLIX is less than perfect in regard to retained silver.

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While nothing is "perfect", blix is in no way deficient or substandard. This dead horse has been flogged incessantly here. The Tetenal blix leaves no retained silver and is every bit as good as separate bleach and fix. Stop repeating this nonsense.

thuggins said:

While nothing is "perfect", blix is in no way deficient or substandard. This dead horse has been flogged incessantly here. The Tetenal blix leaves no retained silver and is every bit as good as separate bleach and fix. Stop repeating this nonsense.

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And I am sure you have the X ray measurements to back up your claim .... drum roll ..... drum roll .....

I tried to convert Tetenal's BX2 component to regular neutral fixer, using dilution as it would be in their BLIX. It was painfully slow compared to standard run-off-the-mill rapid fixer. The extra Ammonium Ferric EDTA you would add to make a BLIX sure as heck doesn't make it faster either. Tetenal's BLIX will probably do a decent job, if you don't overuse it, but the extra long wash sure won't hurt.

Thanks Tim.. think for the first effort we will use the Ilford method with yur extra hurrah, as Rudeofus states the extra long wash won't hurt.

Basically using this kit is to see if we want to get back into shooting slide film. When we first got back into shooting film again, some time back, that's what we shot and sent it out. Then discovered the local Walgreens developed film, but only C-41.. no postage and pick up later that day. WOW, .. So quit slide.
Then Walgreens quit developing film and we learned how to do it,.. first with B&W then blix color developer. Now the de wife is saying .. hey whats all this film doing in our freezer, so ah yes honey, um, oh yeah, slide film, ..mmm, ..120 and 35mm.. hmm ok honey will use it up.
So this kit is a test of the present. With C-41 the non blix arrangement is what were using with Flexicolor and we really like it. It has more capacity, but have to mix it up all at once. If we fall in love with slide again, most likely we will do the same with a non blix developer. Right now the size and cost of that is way out of league for were we are at the moment.
Thank all you guys for your replies.

peter k. said:

Basically using this kit is to see if we want to get back into shooting slide film.

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I have been using the Tetenal kit for years and have processed thousands of frames. It is incredibly easy to do; much easier than B&W because the process is nailed down and the same for any brand of film. I get 10 rolls per batch giving 50 rolls per kit. That's well under $2/roll (including shipping). The results are as good as any professional lab. Just use a water bath to maintain the temperature and even that is not "overly" critical. When first starting I used the infrared thermometer to monitor the temperature, but changed over to a medical thermometer dropped right in the bath. There was about a two degree difference (F) between the two, but no difference in the results.

And there is nothing to compare to unrolling that strip of trannies right out of the stabilizer. I've done both color negative and B&W; unrolling a strip of negatives is a "meh" moment when compared to positives.

Good luck!

PS: Try to keep the drinking to a moderate level. There was that one time I forgot what I was doing and left the film in 1DEV for 15 minutes...

thuggins said:

I have been using the Tetenal kit for years and have processed thousands of frames. It is incredibly easy to do; much easier than B&W because the process is nailed down and the same for any brand of film. I get 10 rolls per batch giving 50 rolls per kit. That's well under $2/roll (including shipping). The results are as good as any professional lab. Just use a water bath to maintain the temperature and even that is not "overly" critical. When first starting I used the infrared thermometer to monitor the temperature, but changed over to a medical thermometer dropped right in the bath. There was about a two degree difference (F) between the two, but no difference in the results.

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Let me be honest: without these kits I would have never even thought about processing my own film. I loved these Tetenal kits and their results! Now I home brew my stuff, and I do like the longevity of separate bleach and fixer.

Either way: the poor fixer action in Tetenal's BLIX does leave a high amount of Silver Thiosulfate in the gelatin, and the single salt is poorly soluble. Extra washing likely helps, but is undesirable in Peter's case. Therefore I recommended an extra fixing stage in neutral fixer like TF-5. Since this second fixer doesn't see much silver load, it can be used for lots and lots of rolls. My posting did not try to rag on BLIX or revive the old controversy, it simply tried to help Peter overcome its likely weakness without going full bleach&fixer.

thuggins said:

PS: Try to keep the drinking to a moderate level. There was that one time I forgot what I was doing and left the film in 1DEV for 15 minutes...

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I would love to learn at some point, what these slides FD'd for 15 minutes looked like? Did fog turn them into blank slides, or did you get some ultra high contrast images?

thuggins said:

Could you provide more detail on this "magic box"?

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I think it is the same as the old 1L/5L tetenal kits, but this time scaled down for processing just one roll (possibly more if reused in a short period of time). There is an ongoing discussion about it in this thread.

If there is anything more you would like to know and i can help let me know.

dmtnkl said:

I think it is the same as the old 1L/5L tetenal kits, but this time scaled down for processing just one roll (possibly more if reused in a short period of time). There is an ongoing discussion about it in this thread.

If there is anything more you would like to know and i can help let me know.

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Interesting, but it does not appear to be available in the US. Freestyle is the only place currently selling Tetenal E6 kits (that I know of), and it does not appear to be on their website.

Rudeofus said:

I recommended an extra fixing stage in neutral fixer like TF-5. Since this second fixer doesn't see much silver load, it can be used for lots and lots of rolls.

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Hmmm ..
I take it you would apply the TF-5 after the Blix step, with the Blix poured back into its own bottle?
Would it require another wash before fixing again with the TF-5, ..if one was to use the same 500mm of TF-5, again, from same kit for the next rolls of film? (It would have a little blix mixed with it, if not washed in between, but can't believe it would contaminate the TF-5 is why we ask.)
Also its seems that you don't believe that the TF-5 would in any way offset the normal developing chemical exchange mix.of the stabilizer, which would be the last step?

The set of process steps with your kit and the extra TF-5 step would be FD, wash, CD, wash, BLIX, short wash, TF-5, long wash, STAB. The idea behind this process sequence would be the same as the idea between two bath fixing. you'd have the first fixer step as part of the BLIX step, knowing that the fixer in BLIX is kind of weak. Metallic silver left behind by the bleach part probably won't have any effect on washing speed, but poorly fixed silver has. In the second fixer step you would achieve complete fixation.

If you go directly from BLIX to fixer, you will eventually carry BLIX into the fixer, thereby making it go bad earlier. Doing a complete wash between these steps would probably cancel out any positive saving effect on final wash step. One or two water steps between BLIX and TF-5 might do the trick.

PS: it really depends on the actual water scarcity you face, whether this extra fixing step is cost effective. In the end we're talking about less wash water per film roll than what goes down in a single toilet flush. The procedures I sketched out may help in the most extreme cases, and you may have to check upfront, whether they really do help and are worth the trouble.

peter k. said:

Getting ready to do my first E-6 developing, in the past we would send it out, but looking over the kit, Tetenal states in its manual "Carry our rinses with running water or change water every 30 secs or rinse over longer periods."

So when we develop B&W or Flexicolor C-41 we've been using the ilford rinse method of 5, 10 and 20 (actually a little more 10, 20 and 30) successfully and wondered if there any reason this needs to be changed for developing slide film?

Click to expand...

I keep 4 gallons of ~100F water in gallon jugs and do 7 full water exchanges where I pour water in and dump it. The first two fill/dumps I do back to back just get as much dilution as possible, then from there, for the remaining 5, I fill it and let it sit for 1 minute, then dump it. Depending on the tank size I'm using, this uses 2-3 gallons. I typically am processing 5-6 rolls per tank.

The process is:

first developer
stop bath
wash
color developer
wash
blix
wash
stabilize

The last wash right before stabilize is 15 minutes in a film washer with a flow rate of ~1 liter per minute.

As @Rudeofus said, the first thing that happens is dilution, the second is ion exchange through diffusion, which takes time. The way I see it is if it was able to get into the emulsion and work in less than 5 minutes, then 5 minutes where it would be diffusing back out is sufficient to get it down to levels that are low enough that it won't mess with the next chemical step, and indeed that is the case as my slides come out perfectly. The final wash in the washer is insurance to make sure everything is washed out. If you wanted to be super paranoid, you could extend the time spent in clean water, but in my experience, the first 2 fill and dumps takes care of most of the stuff, then from there, it's just spending time diffusing in clean water to get the rest of it out of the emulsion.

If you look at the C-41 process, the washes between baths isn't particularly long, and the Arista E-6 kit specifies a similar method I just described.

Adrian Bacon said:

I keep 4 gallons of ~100F water in gallon jugs and do 7 full water exchanges where I pour water in and dump it. The first two fill/dumps I do back to back just get as much dilution as possible, then from there, for the remaining 5, I fill it and let it sit for 1 minute, then dump it. Depending on the tank size I'm using, this uses 2-3 gallons. I typically am processing 5-6 rolls per tank.

The process is:

first developer
stop bath
wash
color developer
wash
blix
wash
stabilize

The last wash right before stabilize is 15 minutes in a film washer with a flow rate of ~1 liter per minute.

As @Rudeofus said, the first thing that happens is dilution, the second is ion exchange through diffusion, which takes time. The way I see it is if it was able to get into the emulsion and work in less than 5 minutes, then 5 minutes where it would be diffusing back out is sufficient to get it down to levels that are low enough that it won't mess with the next chemical step, and indeed that is the case as my slides come out perfectly. The final wash in the washer is insurance to make sure everything is washed out. If you wanted to be super paranoid, you could extend the time spent in clean water, but in my experience, the first 2 fill and dumps takes care of most of the stuff, then from there, it's just spending time diffusing in clean water to get the rest of it out of the emulsion.

If you look at the C-41 process, the washes between baths isn't particularly long, and the Arista E-6 kit specifies a similar method I just described.

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This is pretty good advice. Fill and dump, fill and dump, you've just gotten rid of 99.5% of the chemistry on the reels and on the surface of the film. Now do 4 or 5 washes by covering the reels with warm water and agitate frequently for 1 minute and dump and repeat.

In commercial C-41 minilabs there's 1 developer bath, 1 bleach, fixer 1, fixer 2, stabilizer 1, stabilizer 2, stabilizer 3, then dry. No washing. The stabilizer and fixer baths are replenished countercurrent. So the last bath gets a steady inflow of fresh replenisher, it overflows into the prior. Bleach and developer are replenished directly. If everything is going right most of the chemistry is consumed, with small amounts collected in a waste bottle, the rest evaporates as water vapor leaving a bit of anti microbial in the film.