wonky effects when using different C41 dev without checking the doc

removedacct2 · Mar 6, 2021

I went to test a Jupiter-12 I suspect to be seriously off focus probably a previous bad servicing, against a correct industar-61. Took a colour film (Lomography-400).

I took 17 photos.
Drive back home and instead of grabbing a 1 liter bottle of dev, I took a 40/50 cl of a developer I got last summer from a guy I bought couple old developing tanks from. He tried home development but lacked time and interested, so he gave me along the small kit he had used, split in two half liter bottles. One was used, brownish and with precipitates, the other almost fresh used once.
Had never used it because I had always been developing at least two rolls at once, so needed more that 0,5l dev. But now with these 17 frames I could use a compact tank with 0,3/0,4 l.

I buy C41 chemicals from Germany, the 3 baths kits (dev/bleach/fixer) of Fuji X-Press or Compard.
The chemicals I got from the guy were bought he told me on Ebay from Israel and are an unknown brand to me: Unicolor. This, the half liter was in plastic bottle, squeezed to keep air out:

anyway, a C41 developer is a C41 developer, right?

so there i went with my usual routine, but I got very psychedelic results:
overview of the whole strip:

crazy

1st frame:

2nd frame:

3rd frame:

the 10th:

the 14th better but still these dark points:

so I was scratching my head. Never seen this. Only fails I have ever experienced were colour shifts when trying to squeeze yet another roll out of overused chemicals, ie. exhaustion.

here, to the left a bottle of Fuji X-Press used 17 times, to the right the Unicolor I just used, and it looks fresh and without precipitates:

the Fuji X-press is still strong, so what was the problem with the Unicolor ?

and no, the bleach and fixer are ok, so it was the developer ... or the development.

that's when I had a look at the Unicolor instructions sheet, and it says.
- 10 sec initial agitation
- 4 inversions every 30 s

but with Fuji x-Press it's:
- 30 s continuous first
- 2 inversions every 13s.

so in order to check that, I shoot few frame of the same film, and developed with the Unicolor as per its agitation instructions. Bingo:

so, no, all C-41 developers aren't equal...

koraks · Mar 7, 2021

The different agitation scheme does not explain the different results. Looking at th initial series of photos, it seems you have a variety of defects and problems occurring at the same time.
I wouldn't know where to begin troubleshooting this given the systematic overuse (abuse) of developer. All bets are off when trying to extend the lifetime of a c41 developer beyond any reasonable limit.

Bikerider · Mar 7, 2021

My bets were first were on the film developer being well past its best, but when that happens the image is usually evenly developed but very faint. If the developer was made up from a powder I wonder if: - the developer when it was mixed was done incompletely, or with age, are the seperate elements separating out or acting in an uneven way. I just don't know what else to suggest.

eatfrog · Mar 7, 2021

There's just no way that the difference is due to the difference in agitation schemes.. How does the negatives look from the first roll? What film was it? Was it expired?

removedacct2 · Mar 7, 2021

koraks said:
I wouldn't know where to begin troubleshooting this given the systematic overuse (abuse) of developer. All bets are off when trying to extend the lifetime of a c41 developer beyond any reasonable limit.

the dev used with the wrong pictures and the good ones at the end of the post is the same fresh Unicolor, but with different agitation, The older Fuji is shown just for comparison and it is still good.

removedacct2 · Mar 7, 2021

Bikerider said:
My bets were first were on the film developer being well past its best, but when that happens the image is usually evenly developed but very faint. If the developer was made up from a powder I wonder if: - the developer when it was mixed was done incompletely, or with age, are the seperate elements separating out or acting in an uneven way. I just don't know what else to suggest.

yes, but the two last pictures, part of a strip of 6, are ok, yet same developer than the bad ones.

Wayne · Mar 7, 2021

The only significant difference between run 1 and run 2, or between the different developer runs for that matter, is the initial agitation is less in run 2, 10 vs 30 seconds.

And your wonky results are not due to excessive agitation in run 1. 2 inversions every 13 seconds is 4 every 30. The problem lies elsewhere. I suspect uneven mixing of the old developer in the first run, but who knows, Consider it the cost of ultra-cheapness.

removedacct2 · Mar 7, 2021

eatfrog said:
There's just no way that the difference is due to the difference in agitation schemes.. How does the negatives look from the first roll? What film was it? Was it expired?

it's the same roll of Lomography-400, of a 3-boks pack with expiration 07/2020. I took 17 shots, then cut and develop with the fresh Unicolor. After seeing the result, I did shot and develop another 6 frames with my good current developer (the Fuji) and these are good. Then I shoot the remaining of the roll and develop again with the Unicolor, but with the agitation times of the notice coming with it.

the boks:

the whole roll (minus unused blank ones at head and tail):

the 3 first strips are the bad ones, with Unicolor dev but with Fuji X-Press agitation (Fuji is my usual developer)
the 4th strip is with the Fuji developer and is good
the last 3 strips are with the Unicolor again, but this time only difference is agitation times, as per the Unicolor instructions that I didn't read before.

only the 3 first, bad ones:

I totally agree that the bad first 3 strips are totally cuckoo, and I was left puzzled.
the only alternative I see is that there was something else in the tank/water, yet water was fresh, development sink was rinsed, tank was clean ....

grat · Mar 7, 2021

Having used the Unicolor kit, there was something off with yours, and it wasn't the agitation. I don't remember the developer being particularly dark.

removedacct2 · Mar 7, 2021

grat said:
Having used the Unicolor kit, there was something off with yours, and it wasn't the agitation. I don't remember the developer being particularly dark.

just to be clear, the Unicolor used is the small bottle on the right, the bigger one on the left is a used Fuji X-press, still good, and for comparison:

and the second run with the Unicolor went well.

what I am suspecting now is the tank. A compact AP that was part of a set i bought couple days earlier from yet someone else who tried home development, didn't get hooked and sold all very cheap: changing bag, digital thermometer, squeegee, hanging clips, tank, and Adox (BW) chemicals (almost full bottles of Rodinal, Adoxfixer, Adoflo). Means he had used the tank with BW development. It did look clean, yet I rinsed it before use. But who knows there may have been small sticky remains of whatever, that were loosened with the 1st run of Unicolor, and no longer there for the 2nd run.

Wallendo · Mar 7, 2021

The density of the rebate on the “bad” images is not consistent. Could there be a light leak somewhere in your process.

removedacct2 · Mar 7, 2021

Wallendo said:
The density of the rebate on the “bad” images is not consistent. Could there be a light leak somewhere in your process.

not one I can think of.... it was the first time I used that tank, but it's an easy one, the top is screwed down until it is thigh and there's a strong gasket pressed in the end, the thread of the lock is thick enough, you can't screw if it's askew.

yes it looks like a festival of all kind of fails possible included light leaks, all gathered across a single strip of film...
i thought for some of these defects, of light leaks and pin holes in the curtain of the camera, but I used it recently without issues, and checked the curtain again closely with a lamp and it looks good.

Donald Qualls · Mar 7, 2021

The "waves" of greenish fog on those negatives look a lot like what I got last weekend when i loaded two 120 rolls end to end, processed in replenished Flexicolor, and agitated by "swizzle stick" rather than inversion (which I've been doing trying to limit oxygen exposure of the developer). One roll shifted in the groove and wound up overlapping the other by about 50% (or else I did a really, really bad job pushing the first roll to the center before starting the second -- pretty sure that's not the case, I've done this many times with good success, even in swizzle stick processing -- but I'll be trying inversion from now on, and watching to see if that affects the developer).

I got images in all frames, but the overlapped frames on one roll (the on where the overlap was on the emulsion side) came out of the tank with fixer residue and retained silver; after rebleaching and refixing (with fresh fixer, due to a bottle swap that got 300 ml of color developer into the fixer storage bottle), that residue was gone, but there was evidence of incomplete development and/or fogging in the same area, in the form of a green "haze" that scanned as reddish/yellow. I'd have said it was a light leak, except it was the exact same area that had the silver retention and fixer residue.

Is there any possibility you could have had a loading problem with that new-to-you tank and reel set, leading to insufficient space between layers?

removedacct2 · Mar 7, 2021

Donald Qualls said:
Is there any possibility you could have had a loading problem with that new-to-you tank and reel set, leading to insufficient space between layers?

the tank only is new, not the spiral, the opposite: it's an AP spiral. For colour with the short C41 dev time, I use Paterson plastic tanks because they load/unload much faster than steel ones. . But the Paterson spirals are a PITA often, so the couple i have are never used, instead bought long ago few AP ones.( For BW I use Kinderman like steel spirals and tanks.)
See left the damn Paterson, right the AP. In this case it was the AP in 35mm that came with the tank:

BUT you are right, I may have squeezed two spires into one track when loading the strip without noticing because the strip is short (17 frames)...

otherwise, I hadn't time today and now it's night, but I grabbed the Zorki, loaded another roll of the same Lomography-400 roll, and took few shots with two different lenses, an Industar-61 and a Jupiter-8, just here indoors with a couple strong daylight lamps. Chemicals are in the sink and I am going to develop the film with another run of this Unicolor....

Donald Qualls · Mar 7, 2021

antonio_b said:
Chemicals are in the sink and I am going to develop the film with another run of this Unicolor....

Yep. Get right back on the horse. Even if you have to let the stirrups down a bit...

removedacct2 · Mar 7, 2021

Donald Qualls said:
Yep. Get right back on the horse. Even if you have to let the stirrups down a bit...

yes, besides today i was so busy with other things, some even called "duties" that I didn't have my dose of shooting/developing/scanning. I will go to sleep late after I am done with the strip I am going to develop in a little moment, but if I don't i will not sleep at all

Tel · Mar 7, 2021

This is a puzzle. I do a lot of C-41 developing, usually with the Unicolor powder kits, though sometimes I buy them from FPP (and they come with the same instruction sheet, so make your own conclusions from that). I typically get 15-20 rolls from a litre of developer and routinely discard the dev only when it is almost black. I'm anything but rigorous too--sometimes I invert three times, sometimes four, and I agitate more or less every 30 seconds with a 5-10 second margin of error if I get distracted, As the dev gets older I add a few seconds but never time it for accuracy. And yet it still works fine. I've never gotten results like yours from a Unicolor kit with anything like new film. I have seen a green or a magenta shift with expired films: a 20-year-old Agfa stock and some similarly old Konica film. But your first roll looks like there's more than just agitation wrong there--I see some ugly big flecks that say "contamination" to me, so I'm inclined to agree with the dirty tank diagnosis.

removedacct2 · Mar 7, 2021

Tel said:
your first roll looks like there's more than just agitation wrong there--I see some ugly big flecks that say "contamination" to me, so I'm inclined to agree with the dirty tank diagnosis.

yes that's my conclusion, as well as the possibility suggested by Donald Qualls of two spires into one track of the spiral when loading (yet I should have felt resistance when pushing the film in...).

I will believe that the seller did wash the tank with some detergent and didn't rinse or little, so it went loose when developer was poured in, and some very small particles did the black points and strokes, the uneven distribution of the detergent in the volume with agitation caused the random areas of colour havoc.

anyway, I wanted to be sure the Zorki I used with the industar-61, when I took the "bad" shots are both ok. These outdoors pictures were taken with cloudy late evening sky. For this test this night I have put couple 12.000lm 5500k lamps in the room, loaded the same film (Lomography-400) and shot few frames. Developed in another run of the same Unicolor. I have just scanned and it's all ok:

few frames:

----------

Tel said:
I typically get 15-20 rolls from a litre of developer and routinely discard the dev only when it is almost black.

same here. I do 20 rolls with one liter until dev turns black. But I don't discard, just keep it in my chems and films fridge for use with non-important shots once in a while, and I mix another liter for the usual "good" rolls.

now, unrelated, but to tell the tolerance of bleach and fixer, here is a shot of the ones used right now with these frames. They are Fuji X-Press. I put a sticker with the date of the mixing, and then a stroke every time it's used.
So the Fixer here was mixed the 31 mai 2020 and was used 44 times, the bleach mixed 04 july 2020 and used now 49 times...
Fuji X-Press instruction sheet tells nothing about bleach and fixer capacity, but the Compard kit says up to 28 uses by liter.
That said i am an obsessive "washer", i do change water few times and wash four to five minutes after bleach and I even do a short wash after the developer, basically three/four prolongated rinses, which I am sure it's not orthodox but I never had problems.

and oh, I do a strong oxigenation of the bleach before use: pour it all into a big jar, agitate couple minutes strongly with a spoon deeped in, makes a foam, so I am sure air is injected, wait few minutes then pour back into the bottle.

Tel · Mar 8, 2021

Looks like you've solved the problem! Those last results look good. I am very happy with the results I get from the dry Unicolor kits; the powder chemicals seem to have an unlimited shelf life and the solutions work well. I'm much less careful than you--the only precautions I take are to store the mixed solutions in a dark (ish) cupboard and to clean my utensils and containers to avoid cross-contamination. I'm still using (as of this morning) a batch of developer I mixed on October 4.

YoIaMoNwater · Mar 8, 2021

Hmm interesting. Does this mean if I add a drop of detergent in my developer I can get these psychedelic effects?

foc · Mar 9, 2021

YoIaMoNwater said:
Hmm interesting. Does this mean if I add a drop of detergent in my developer I can get these psychedelic effects?

I don't think detergent. unless in a very concentrated form, will affect your developer or film developing.
Many years ago, I often had customer's films that were in the jeans pocket and put through the washing machine. When I processed the film they weren't that worse for the experience. A few marks more from the film sticking together in the cassette.
I think the OP unorthodox processing method is not helping matters. Yes, you may get away with it for a while but why have so many variables in a process that is fairly straightforward and easy to do. C41 has a simple set of rules, for a reason, so why not follow them.

removedacct2 · Mar 9, 2021

foc said:
I don't think detergent. unless in a very concentrated form, will affect your developer or film developing.
Many years ago, I often had customer's films that were in the jeans pocket and put through the washing machine. When I processed the film they weren't that worse for the experience. A few marks more from the film sticking together in the cassette.
I think the OP unorthodox processing method is not helping matters. Yes, you may get away with it for a while but why have so many variables in a process that is fairly straightforward and easy to do. C41 has a simple set of rules, for a reason, so why not follow them.

you may have been distracted by long posts... there is nothing "unorthodox", I used the word in my former post on a side comment about chemicals longevity, which in my case I think is helped by the short wash I do after developer, before bleach. That's what I called "unorthodox", should have written "uncommon", because it seems most people don't do one. But it doesn't affect the film, and in fact is mentioned as an option by Compard in their instructions. Anyway that was an off comment.

back to the point:
I used a developer new to me, that I got from someone, not bought from a shop. The developer was from powder kit called "Unicolor" and it was already mixed in a small bottle. I stored it in the fridge for a while. It looks clean and fresh. I use it and got the bad pictures.
I wondered if something was wrong with the developer. I always believed C41 is so standard that all developers are more or less the same, yet I had a look at the instructions, and noticed different agitation times than the ones of the developers I use (Fuji, Compard).

Unicolor agitation: 10s then 4 inversions every 30s
Fuji agitation: 30s then 2s every 13s

I did use the Unicolor with the agitation scheme of the Fuji. That's why I believed I got wrong results.
So I shot few frame of the same film and develop again with Unicolor but this time with the Unicolor agitation scheme, and pictures were good.
But i have been told here that the Fuji agitation done on the Unicolor can't cause such bad results.
Tank doesn't leak, bleach is good, fixer is good, washing water was clean from tap at 38C, no light leaks in camera, no defects in lens, film is good, so I induce something may have been in the tank (in this model inside the lock) , which I used for the first time after I got it 2nd hand.
If it's not detergent, mystery.

YoIaMoNwater · Mar 15, 2021

foc said:
I don't think detergent. unless in a very concentrated form, will affect your developer or film developing.
Many years ago, I often had customer's films that were in the jeans pocket and put through the washing machine. When I processed the film they weren't that worse for the experience. A few marks more from the film sticking together in the cassette.
I think the OP unorthodox processing method is not helping matters. Yes, you may get away with it for a while but why have so many variables in a process that is fairly straightforward and easy to do. C41 has a simple set of rules, for a reason, so why not follow them.

foc, I understand how C41 works and have processed many rolls. The reason I asked was to find a way to reproduce those effects. Even if it's something else other than detergent in the developer, it would still be interesting to test this.

So that's why I'm wondering if anyone else had experience this other than OP. As for your customer's film that went through the washing machine, the residual detergent would have been removed at the end of the washing cycle, otherwise his jeans would also still be covered in laundry detergent.

antonio_b said:
If it's not detergent, mystery.

Are you planning to reuse the Unicolor developer a lot more? If not could you try experiment with adding detergent into the developer tank before adding in the developer? I'm inclined to try this since my Tetenal C41 developer is almost at the end of its usage.

Donald Qualls · Mar 15, 2021

YoIaMoNwater said:
So that's why I'm wondering if anyone else had experience this other than OP.

As I noted, I got similar swatches of color shift when I had two rolls overlap in the tank. All frames had images, but there was a wave-shaped region that had a green cast (in the negatives, orange in the scans). same region that had to be rebleached and refixed.

ChristopherCoy · Mar 15, 2021

I like them, especially the 3rd and 14th frames. Probably not the point of the thread, but interesting anyway.

wonky effects when using different C41 dev without checking the doc

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