Xprocessing

[jd callow]

Welcome to my world please post your techniques and images so that others can also see the beauty of xprocessing.

 

[jd callow]

wow its pretty lonely in here all alone and stuff

 

[Michel Hardy-Vallée]

John, was there anything in the mail lately for you? I think I'm getting better at printing Xprocessed on RA4...

 

[Photo Engineer]

I have been abusing C-22 and C-41 since the stone age. I was there when a Life magazine cover was created with HS Ektachrome was X-processed in C-22 at ISO 400 to get the cover picture.

 

[thefizz]

Hi everyone,

It has been a few years since I did any Xprocessing but I hope to get back into it soon. I loved to soup neg film in E6 chemistry and end up with some stunning transparencies. I'll post some scans as soon as I get organised.

Peter

 

[Domin]

What about other cross processes? Negs in E6 for example? While I do mainly slides in c41, there are so many wonderful ways to abuse color film and paper.

 

[Fintan]

I'm an x-pro virgin and looking for suggestions for something gritty and vivid for a lomo lca 35mm in an urban setting. Any suggestions folkz?

 

[Michel Hardy-Vallée]

Fintan, try Ektachrome E200. It's cheap to find expired, and when cross-processed it gives you good fluffy grain and supersaturated colours. I have a stash in my fridge if you have a hard time finding it.

 

[Fintan]

very generous offer Michel, thanks for the info, i'll get searching

 

[Michel Hardy-Vallée]

Just put a few xprocessed pics in the main gallery, I'll figure out how to add them to this group...

 

[Toffle]

I'm new to this group. I've only cross-processed a few rolls, but I have to say that I really like the effect. The colours are just weird enough to catch your attention... (without looking digitally altered) I just added a shot from my backyard to the gallery.

 

[Toffle]

I just added a shot of a rose to the gallery, titled "By any other name."

I'm wondering what films you like for cross-processing. I've been using some out-dated Kodak Elite II Chrome, but I think I'm down to two rolls.
How do you like Fuji?

 

[Domin]

It all depends on what you shoot. I think the more contrast and less natural colors the film gives is harder to find suitable subject but the results may be more interesting. My impression may be somewhat biased as I shot slides usually at box speed and process in standard c41 while from what I heard people often overexpose or overexpose and pull process them to cope with contrast.

On my scale of color rendition from most natural to least the top is EPP and the bottom are daylight Fuji slides.

I like E100 - (I have impression that vs, g, gx are all quite similiar in xprocess) for very saturated but still somewhat natural colors. Maybe it is not so much natural as predictable - the relationship between what I see while shooting and what I see on prints is easier to grasp that in most other slides.

I like agfa rsx palette more, but its harder to get and to shoot. If any my favourite is rsxii 50.

Fuji are something of an oddball - when I shot it I still don't know well how it will turn out. It may be matter of some tests and practice. I suspect there is much more color crossover - it gives unnatural reddish and greenish tinge in some areas.

 

[Toffle]

With my (limited) experience, I'd have to say I'm kind of in the over-exposed/less natural camp. In fact, I'm considering employing some filters to help pull my palette away from Mother Nature's traditional offerings. (Kodak Elite renders some interesting greens and blues, but I'm after the vibrant reds, yellows and oranges.)

Just an idle thought here, but is there any film/filter/process combination that might produce similar results to Kodak's EIR?

Cheers,
Tom

 

[jd callow]

"Just an idle thought here, but is there any film/filter/process combination that might produce similar results to Kodak's EIR?"

Not as far as I know, but if you use filtration along with cast and or curve crossover you can get intersting effects. magenta w/ kodak e100 films give extra special pop to colours and lowers contrast. Cyan with EPP/EPN will give shade/sun lit scenes an intersting effect as that film has classic blue/yellow crossover (espcially shade/mid to darks going blue and sun lit areas mid to highs going yellow).

 

[Toffle]

Hey JD; Thanks for the info. I've been putting off replying because I wanted to do some reading on my own. The fact is, you've used some terms here that I think I should know.. if not through actual experience at least through extrapolation. Unfortunately, my reading just raised more questions than it answered.

"Cast" is easy enough, (I think); that would be the overall effect of cross-processing a given film. ie., a greenish cast, or pinkish, etc. (please correct me if I'm mistaken)

Curve crossover... that one I'm not so sure about. Would that be the characteristic way each dye colour reacts across the exposure envelope? I'm assuming that there would be the "normal" curve for normal chemistry, and a somewhat different curve for cross-processing. (especially at the toe and shoulder) The use of appropriate filters would emphasize these colour shifts. (I'm just thinking out loud... feel free to correct my assumptions.) This is why for normally processed films (especially slides) you aim for exposures dead in the middle of the curve, where elements are most consistent. If that is the case, would it not be preferable to target cross-processed exposures on the toe or shoulder of the curves where it is more likely that tonal responses will be out of synch? And if so, are there films that bear underexposure better than overexposure?

As I said... I'm just thinking out loud here. At worst, there are some idiotic assumptions that you can blast away at. In the end, I'll know more than when I started.

Cheers,
Tom

I'll amend my original question here. Instead of "...is there any film/filter/process combination that might produce similar results to Kodak's EIR?" how about "What known film/filter/exposure/process combination produces the most other-worldly results in cross-processed chemistry?"

 

[Toffle]

I just posted an image in the gallery, "Butterfly Migration". Shot on Kodak Elite II, processed in C-41.

Cheers,
Tom

 

[jd callow]

toffle,
Crossover is where one of the primary colours (RGB/CMY) gets out of sink with the other 2 in the set. For instance when you have yellow crossover a neutral grey midtone may result in blue shadows and yellow highlights. This is different from a cast which will be more or less consistent from highs to lows. Although the effort to remove a cast may result in crossover. A neg that has a cast, but doesn't have the exposure to absorb the quantity of filtration need to eat away the cast may wind up with neutral mids and highs but tinted shadows. This is often the case when daylight film is exposed under tungsten light. Shadows might go blue as the yellow-orange is corrected (with blues and some greens) in the mid's and highlights.

 

[jd callow]

Tom
"What known film/filter/exposure/process combination produces the most other-worldly results in cross-processed chemistry?"

I don't have an answer for this as false IR ignores actual colours and xprocessing amplifies (or drops entirely) what *is* there.


"would it not be preferable to target cross-processed exposures on the toe or shoulder of the curves where it is more likely that tonal responses will be out of synch? And if so, are there films that bear underexposure better than overexposure?"

If you worry about crossover than you need to be shooting film that has very little when crossed. With film that exhibits a cast you can use on camera filtration to minimize the cast and therefore make printing and scanning easier. An additional benefit is that on camera filtration tends to increase the latitude of the film as the filter allows the other layers to catch up with the dominant layer (this may not be the actual mechanics, but it does describe the result).

When exposing for xprocessing you need to meter what is important and maker sure it will fit the capacity of the film. in other words, if the film can adequately render 3 stops of information the important highlights and shadows need to be within that range. The important thing to remember is that transparencies are engineered to stop light in the densest areas so blocked up highlights are truly blocked up. When over exposing you can make a neg unprintable. Meanwhile, insufficient exposure will not give you enough information to wrestle the neg back in to shape when printing. If you plan on scanning your film (I know a bad word) then you'll need to bracket in 1/3s (generally toward your metering error tendencies or if you meter well 1 bracket under and 2 over will work) if you print traditionally you can bracket in 2/3 or full stops -- 1 under and 1 over -- as enlargers aren't as Dmax limited as scanners and a good neg for scanning might be a little thin for printing.

The real trick with xprocessing is to take one film at a time and test until you have it nailed. This can be done in 2 or 3 rolls. Take notes!

 

[Toffle]

Thanks for the comprehensive response, J.D. This is very much the kind of information that is needed when starting out with xprocessing.

"An additional benefit is that on camera filtration tends to increase the latitude of the film as the filter allows the other layers to catch up with the dominant layer" I find this make a lot of sense. Thanks.

One thing I am trying to do, once I have some control over my results, is to be able to (over) emphasize certain colours in a composition.

I think I understand things a little better now. Essentially then, filtering pulls a film's colour curves as it would for normally processed film, except in this case, the curves are already distorted through the crossed chemistry. I'm still wondering what role exposure would play in the spectral response, but that is something I could figure out through testing. (meticulous as I am in the darkroom, my field notes are never as good as my lab work.)

I've got some Elite II at the lab right now on which I used a Hoya G on some shots, in the hope of shifting the emphasis from green-blue to some warmer tones. (unfortunately, the girl who does my film is on vacation, and nobody else will touch my stuff... I don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. :rolleyes: )

Thanks again, J.D. Have you considered compiling your notes into an article as a primer for beginning xprocessers? I think it would be a valuable resource here on APUG.

Cheers,
Tom

 

[Toffle]

Just as a side note here, has anyone noticed the heavy imitation of xpro film on CSI Miami? I'm assuming that this is a digital filter, but the look is virtually identical to some work I've seen posted around the 'net.

Cheers,
Tom

 

[jd callow]

Yep I've seen it. It looks like it is pure post processing. I see all kinds of image manipulation on TV -- some real some digital post process. What annoys me is when it has no rhyme or reason. There is a dog food commercial here in Canada that imitates bleach bypass, xprocessing, and a few other techniques that I recognize, but can't name. The snippet's look good, and they even are somewhat cohesive from one scene to the next, but they have no relationship to the subject or message. It like the ran out of ideas so they used every trick they knew or that they didn't care if it made sense only that it looked good.

I blame MTV. They have indoctrinated a generation on a kind of visual style that doesn't require substance or meaning.

 

[Toffle]

A little bit of looking around reveals that CSI employs the services of FotoKem Laboratory, a major motion picuture processing facility in Burbank, whose "specialty processing includes push / pull / cross processing / enr / skip bleach". (quoted directly from their website) So now I'm not so sure... is it more expensive to cross-process a couple of hundred feet of Ektachrome per episode than it is to recreate the effect on a computer?

Of course we blame MTV. (so did Mark Knopfler ) It's consumerism co-opting, exploiting and ultimately destroying every critical modern culture. It has become so common place, I hardly have the energy to get upset by it anymore.

 

[jd callow]

I have no idea as to cost of post processing v. crossprocessing. I suspect if they have their technique down (and I bet they do) that it is cheaper or faster to xproc then to do it post. With TV being so limited (even HD) I don't think we'd notice too much of a difference. I watched a couple episodes of CSI and they really spent a lot of time working out their lighting for each scene. To me it was over done (tons of jelled back grounds), but it was cool that they at least thought about it. Most shows are not so concerned with using lighting for affect.

 

[rcovingt]

Very interested in xprocessing--looking forward to learning what I can from you guys.

Regards

Robert