What is wrong with either developing or chemicals?

Hey guys

I develop C41 film for quite a while now, but nothing seriously yet. Mostly shooting b/w though. I'm using a CPE2 to develop my C41 negs and I have this problem that occurs once in a while, espcially on Kodak Portra.

What I do
I'm using the digibase C41 kit and I prewarm my chemicals for 2 hours minimum so the temps are stable. I also do a 2 minute rinse between every chemical step, except after stabilizer I hang the film to dry.

All steps are done at 37.8°C

Prewet: 2min
Dev: 3m15s
Rinse 2min
Bleach: 4m20s
Rinse 2min
Fix: 6:30s
Rinse 2min
Stab: 1m20s
Hang negs for drying

The problem
On most 1 films I shoot like Ektar, Agfa Vista etc I don't have the problem that much but on Portra I sometimes have a very green or magenta negative, not really color shifts but just a layer on top of the picture that makes the colors very weird.
When I put the white balance back to a good position it's better but I still have some weird magenta hues on skin tones or darker spots in the back.

An example
I added an example of what a raw scan looks like when things gone bad, normally the raw scan justs look fine and a little flat, a bit of contrast does the job and nothing to be done... but this time it happened again.
On the right side I made my color corrections, as you can see, there's still a bit of greenish/blueish hue where the hair starts. Which I can't get rid off... but it's just bad anyways. I must also say that the roll has been overexposed too much by accident. So maybe that got to do something with it too?

The solution?
I already found out that my developing is quite consistent with other films where I have no adjustments to make in scan progress.
I scan 35mm with a Plustek Opticfilm 8200i SE with Silverfast. 120 with Epson v550 and large format with Epson 3200. I tried the same negs on every scanner with different software; Problems stays, so I bet it's the negative and not a scanning problem. I can correct it with MUCH color correction and it's taking awfully long to do. So I'd like to know what I'm doing wrong.

Do NOT use a water rinse after the developer. Either use a stop or go directly into the bleach. (Provided that this is not a ferricyanide containing bleach.)

PE

Photo Engineer said:

Do NOT use a water rinse after the developer. Either use a stop or go directly into the bleach. (Provided that this is not a ferricyanide containing bleach.)

PE

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Thanks. I heard your name here that you are kinda good with this stuff!. So what should I use as stop bath?
I started using a rinsing process because I felt that my bleach was contaminated by the developer and got color shifts due to that.

Jessestr said:

Thanks. I heard your name here that you are kinda good with this stuff!. So what should I use as stop bath?
I started using a rinsing process because I felt that my bleach was contaminated by the developer and got color shifts due to that.

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You should use acetic acid.

zehner21 said:

You should use acetic acid.

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Same as black and white stopper?

Thanks

I use Kodak Indicator Stop Bath (Liquid) for 30sec. B&H carries as many others. not expensive last forever.

Jesse, Photo Engineer is not "kinda of good" ... he is a retired Kodak Photo Engineer. He is more like THE MAN ! LOL .

Jessestr said:

Same as black and white stopper?

Thanks

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Yes, same working solution!
Of course, it has to be warmed as the others chemicals.

lhalcong said:

I use Kodak Indicator Stop Bath (Liquid) for 30sec. B&H carries as many others. not expensive last forever.

Jesse, Photo Engineer is not "kinda of good" ... he is a retired Kodak Photo Engineer. He is more like THE MAN ! LOL .

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Wups, didn't know that! Eccuse me!

zehner21 said:

Yes, same working solution!
Of course, it has to be warmed as the others chemicals.

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Alrighty thanks!

Have two more questions though
- Can you reuse the stop bath?
- What's the difference between stopping the C41 developing with Acid or water.. In b/w I never use sotp baths, just water. I'd like to know how the process works.
- So can pre-rinsing be bad too?
- Can you bleach for too long?

Many many thanks!

Jessestr said:

Wups, didn't know that! Eccuse me!




Alrighty thanks!

Have two more questions though
- Can you reuse the stop bath?
- What's the difference between stopping the C41 developing with Acid or water.. In b/w I never use sotp baths, just water. I'd like to know how the process works.
- So can pre-rinsing be bad too?
- Can you bleach for too long?

Many many thanks!

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Bleach goes to completion.
Pre-rinse is useful for avoiding a temperature drop when you pour the first bath.
Water doesn't stop the developing stage as fast as an acid stop. I think that water has a neutral ph, the development is basic and for stopping it you have to lower the ph of the solution soaked in film's emulsion. Hence, an acid stop works faster.
Yes, you can reuse the stop bath. It should have an exhaustion indicator (usually a change in colour)

I blush. There are many like me here and most of them are better, but I try to help.

And here is a piece of help for you-a water rinse is NOT a stop bath. It slows development a bit (not much at 100F) and it lowers carryover of developer into the next processing solution.

You can re-use a stop bath until it changes color (yellow to purple -indicator stop baths only) or it loses its vinegar smell. For a stop use 1 - 2% acetic acid.

Pre-wet is not bad. It tempers the film and film tank and promotes uniformity.

You cannot bleach or fix too long in the C41 process.

PE

Many thanks guys. I'll give it a go next development run and see how it goes!

Still waiting for my negs to dry. I made 249.5 + 0.5ml (acetic acid) solution. and used that between developer & bleacher. How many times can I use it, There is no indicator with my stop bath and it turned pinkish because of the dyes that were still in the film emulsion.

Hope the negs are better today.

Will let you know

It is so inexpensive that you can throw it out, but if you wish, you can use it until the vinegar odor vanishes.

Did you use Glacial Acetic acid? If not, then the stop is probably too dilute.

PE

It's Adostop from Adox. It's for paper but it says it's Acetic Acid, it smells horrible but oh well. Just started scanning the negatives; No shifts on the 6 first frames. So I guess the whole roll will be perfect.

Is it possible to re-bleach, fix & stabilize the previous negatives to give them a longer bleaching time? I bleached for 7 minutes now instead of 4m20s

Many thanks PE and others!

Edit just have to edit the white balance a bit after scanning, bit blue-ish but other than that no color shifts or things. Is this normal?

I have to adjust the white balance with every negative I'm working with, included the ones processed by a lab

And, I don't and this is over a period from 1950 through present. The film is built to an exact color balance standard and so something is wrong in your workflow.

PE

Photo Engineer said:

And, I don't and this is over a period from 1950 through present. The film is built to an exact color balance standard and so something is wrong in your workflow.

PE

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I don't know what to say, just that it seems that I'm not the only one that experience this with scanned film

Ahhh, scanning, and what a wonderful thing it is, changing balance on its own.

With real printing there is no problem, nor is there a problem with my particular scanner. I've been doing wet color printing since about the mid '50s and have had little or no problem. Scanning for over 10 years, and again little or no problem.

PE

I use a Minolta Dimage Scan Multi scanner. I can confirm that when a negative is correctly processed it will be almost effortless to scan it. There will no need to adjust color balance in particular. Scanning has become a simple validation of my processing for me. I also found that negatives processed with overly reused developer will need a bit of color balance adjustment. I now restrain myself from over reusing the developer. I believe the scanner software was very well done by Minolta. It makes scanning very easy if the negative is correctly processed. This includes very long expired Kodak Pro-100 negatives that expired in 1999 and have been cold stored by me for more than 10 years. Just process it properly and the colors will come out perfectly.