Film and Tubes

[filmandtubes]

So...I tried this twice with hc-110 (old formulation), and some Ektachrome. Worked Incredibly. Then tried tonight with provia 50 and the new hc-110, and the film came out really dark. I’m worried that the change in formulation made the hc-110 no longer good for this application. What do you think? Thanks!

Surprised you got good results out of Ektachrome, I always got a green mess with (old) HC-110. Definitely write back about how you managed this if you can. I’ve not tested the new HC-110 at all, and I was afraid that due to it’s lower amount of solvents (diethanolamine specifically) it may give worse results in this process. This is good to know for sure!  Also, just FYI for you and others, I haven’t ported the X-Pro Reversal article to it yet, but I have a website that is much easier for me to keep up with and post on now. I’ve ported the Ortho Litho reference guide and do plan on eventually doing x-pro reversal, but I want to figure out an alternative to HC-110 as the recommended developer, especially with this coming to light.  My new website is https://grainy.vision 

[filmandtubes]

Another Ortho Litho Test

This was probably the most promising for speed boosting, though I think the results are a bit harsher than I want. I used my in-development formula “D-23LC” as the developer. This is 1.5g of Metol and 15g of Sodium Sulfite per 1L of developer. I also used a chemical post-flash of Iron Out. I mixed 0.5g in 500ml of water (ie, 1g per L). Steps:

1m pre-rinse

4m in post-flash bath (30s initial agitation, 4x per minute after)

1m rinse

35m stand-style with D-23LC, with 1 minute of agitation to begin with, and no agitation otherwise

Rinse/stop

TF-4 fix for 3 minutes

Rinse

With this, there is a definite speed increase. My scans of these are kinda crap, so disregard the weird lighter edge on the left.

ISO 1:

ISO 3:

ISO 5:

ISO 10:

ISO 20:

ISO 40:

Artifacts definitely build up, but there is surprisingly still a completely distinguishable grey card at ISO 40. ISO 10 is my favorite though.

The amount of fog by the post-flash bath is a bit excessive, and may have caused some of the weird artifacts in faster exposure ranges. Next time I will stick with 4m, but instead use 0.6g per liter of Iron Out. The excessive Iron Out may be partially responsible for the speed increase, but also did hurt some of the highlight detail and exposure latitude available. The images would obviously still be usable and printable, but I think less fogging will increase highlight exposure. I also am modifying D-23LC to use 1.5g of Metol, but reducing the Sulfite from 15g to around 12g. I’ve also made this into a stock solution rather than mixing on demand. Normal D-23 is known for having great keeping properties, so I think this should be safe despite the lowered amount of sulfite.

I also intend to change the stand method slightly. At faster speeds the shadow detail is definitely there on the negative, but difficult to get into a scan, and harder still to actually print.. the shadow density is so far away from the extremely thick highlight density. To correct for this, I’ll actually reduce agitation from 1m initially, to just 30s, and extend development time to 40m. In tray tests, the highlights are clearly established by the initial agitation. Uneven development is a potential risk is my only concern.

Overall, definitely very interesting results. This is the first time I’ve seen speeds up to 10 ISO actually be “the best”, and I think the best speed in this would be around 15 ISO. 20 is just a bit thin, and 10 is just a bit thick. Grain is super fine, but actually visible in 100% crops of scans. I assume this is due to excessive fogging from the Iron Out. Iron Out also functions as a developer, which may also give this grain increase.

The color rendition and overall tones of this is unmistakably vintage, giving an old wet plate kind of feel to it. The speed increasing to around 15 though gives great promise of this being a much more general purpose film for daylight photography, allowing for hand held shots even with partly cloudy weather. It is of course expected though that this film will require compensation under warmer tungsten lights rather than daylight.

[filmandtubes]

Arista Ortho Litho Guide

Arista Ortho Litho Guide

By Earlz

 Note: This guide is not endorsed or considered “official” by the film manufacturer, Arista.

Arista Ortho Litho is a very unique film which features a number of interesting properties such as:

·        Extremely slow speed, about 1.5 ISO is nominal.

·        Extremely fine grain and high resolving power

·        Very high contrast without special development

·        Not sensitized to the color red (ie, a red Coca Cola can will appear black)

·        Can be processed under a dark red safelight

·        Extremely thin and clear film base

If pictorial results are desired, then specialized development is required. This typically is done by using a highly dilute developer for a relatively short amount of time. In addition, a pre-rinse should always be done before developing the film. Ortho Litho has a very thick anti-halation layer that may react adversarial with developers and other chemicals. Also, the fixing time for Ortho Litho should be fairly short to avoid bleaching the image. Ortho Litho will safely fix within just 2 minutes in TF-4 and Ilford Rapid Fixer.

This guide was produced for the Arista Ortho Litho film in 120, for normal hand tank development. The guide may be helpful for tray development but modifications to time or agitation may be required. This 120 film is Hand Cut. This means there may be small imperfections, such as slightly rough edges, slightly inconsistent width across the length of the film, small amounts of dust and/or scratches. Unfortunately without a clean room and significantly more expensive equipment, it’s just not possible to me to make 100% perfect film, though I’m constantly looking for ways to improve it. Because of these imperfections in cutting, and difficulty in consistent processing, I do not recommend this film for anything one would consider irreplaceable, and if so it is at your own risk. I check the entire width of each strip of film and label it as not suitable for sale if the width varies by more than 1mm, but there is always some room for error still. If there is a problem with a roll of film please contact me at [email protected] for a refund or replacement. You can also contact me for any processing questions with this film.

Recommended Developers

There are many developers that can be used on this, but for pictorial results, these are the ones I’ve had the best experience with. Times are for a temperature of 68F/20C.

Pyro PMK

·        Dilution 1+1+100 (A + B + water)

·        Develop 6m30s total. 30s initial agitation, 4x agitation per 30s after

·        A water stop bath and non-acidic fixer (such as TF-4) should be used to avoid stripping the pyro coating from the film.

·        Expose at 0.8 ISO for best results, 1.5 ISO is also useable with less shadow detail.

·        Yields visible grain, normal contrast, normal density, colorful (orange, green, and blue) tinted density, slightly decreased shadow speed, noticeable base fog, adjacent edge effects, and high over exposure latitude

·        Exposure latitude estimated to range from -8 stops to +1 stop.

·        Agitation can be reduced to 4x per 1m if contrast is too high or more over exposure latitude is needed. However, this may cause uneven development.

·        Stand development should NOT be used, it will cause exaggerated edge effects and heavy base fogging.

Ilford DD-X

·        Dilution 1+19

·        Develop 6 minutes total. 30s initial agitation, 4x per minute after

·        Expose at 1.5 ISO for more shadow detail and less highlight contrast, 3 ISO for less shadows but better highlight contrast.

·        Yields extremely fine invisible grain, “split” contrast, normal density, orange tinted density, normal shadow speed, no base fog, and normal exposure latitude

·        While shadows are normal or above normal contrast, highlights will go lower and lower contrast with more exposure. This can make highlight details visible, but difficult to print while maintaining normal shadow contrast.

·        Exposure latitude estimated to range from -3 stops to +1 stops

Modified D-23

·        This is a hand mixed developer composed of only metol and sodium sulfite. 1.5g of metol and 15g of sulfite per liter (no heating required)

·        Develop using stand method. 35 minutes total time, 60s of initial agitation.

·        Expose at 1.5 ISO, but 3 ISO also gives very good results without too much missing shadow detail

·        Yields extremely fine invisible grain, normal contrast, normal density, shiny grey density with slight olive tint, enhanced shadow speed, no base fog, normal exposure latitude.

·        Exposure latitude estimated to range from -4 stops to +2 stops.

·        Unlike DD-X this will give perfectly uniform contrast across the entire scale.

·        Shadow speed seems to be slightly helped by stand development with more detail being brought into an easily printable density. It is possible to develop for 12 minutes with normal agitation, but highlights will be blown and shadow density will still be below normal.

    Not Recommended Developers

These are developers that I had a bad experience with. They could attempt to be honed in, and may provide some unique looks, but overall are not recommended for “normal” results.

HC-110

·        Dilution 1+50 to 1+200 (concentrate + water)

·        Development varies, start with 6 minutes and 4x agitation per minute

·        Expose at 0.8 ISO for some amount of shadow detail. Slower speeds might work better

·        HC-110 was not greatly tested as it seemed to hold little promise, so I can’t give great details about it.

·        Yields very thin density, above normal contrast, significantly slower shadow speed, olive tinted density.

Dektol

·        Dilution 1+9 or 1+19

·        Dektol developed too quickly, even at 1+19 for me to consider it usable. Development should be at least 3 minutes for consistency, though most highlight detail was already blown by the 2 minute mark

·        Yields high grain, lack of mid tone gradation, high contrast, very poor exposure latitude, normal speeds (1.5-3 ISO)

 POTA

·        This is a hand-mixed developer consisting of only Phenidone and Sodium Sulfite

·        Develop for 9 minutes, maybe down to 7 minutes even. 30s initial agitation, 4x per minute after. 72F/22C temperature

·        Yields extremely fine invisible grain, reduced sharpness, high contrast, poor exposure latitude, and normal speeds

·        Expose at 1.5-3 ISO depending on if shadow or highlight detail is more important. It is difficult to achieve good detail in both

·        This developer produces very “long scale” negatives. This can make printing and scanning difficult to keep within a normal contrast range. Shadows may develop as a very faint and subtle grey, while highlights will be 100% density black. This tends to work better for scanning than printing in the darkroom

·        Exposure latitude estimated as -2 stops to +1 stop

·        If reversal (positive) processing is desired, the full scale result of this developer would probably be an ideal starting point.

·        With dilution this may be a more ideal developer, but the solution is fairly unstable as-is (requiring usage within hours of mixing) and annoying to mix

  Optional: Flashing

Flashing can be used before development in order to increase the film’s shadow speed as well as reduce the contrast between visible shadow detail and being 100% clear on the negative. I highly recommend flashing if normal contrast is desired. Flashing is typically done under an enlarger and uses a very small exposure designed to produce little or no visible fog to the film itself.

This of course, is difficult for those people without a darkroom, or even with a darkroom but without the ability to consistently expose a 34” strip of film. Luckily, chemical fogging agents can be used for this purpose in a daylight hand tank. Several fogging agents exist, but most are not greatly stable, too strong, or hard for the average person to find. However, the cleaning chemical Iron Out (in powder form, NOT “super” iron out) can be used for this purpose to great effect. Iron Out actually functions as a fogging agent, developer, and fixer to film.

A few table spoons of iron out in 1L of water can develop a film to 100% black in less than 30 seconds, so we must  use it in a very dilute way. Also, time the film is spent in the solution should not be less than 3 minutes, otherwise some inconsistency will be visible, such as the center having less fog than the edges. Ideally there would be no visible fog, but shadows would have noticeably better speed and contrast. This exact point is very difficult to reach however. Thus, I recommend aiming for slightly visible fog. This is a good indicator that the process actually worked, and can be used to ensure it was applied consistently across the entire film. A small amount of fog will do no harm to printing, grain structure, nor scanning.

Unfortunately, as of this time the ideal recipe is still being figured out and tested. A good starting point would be 0.5g Iron Out + 1L water, and processed for 4 minutes with 30s initial agitation and 4x agitation per minute after. I tried 0.2g/L and this produced no speed increase nor fog. At some point in tray testing however, around 0.5g (not exactly measured) produced the perfect light fog. Around 2.5g/L processed for 2 minutes produced thick and inconsistent fog. The solution should be used one-shot.

IMPORTANT: Always use distilled water with Iron Out. It is designed to react with any residual iron and may have adverse effects and/or bad smells. For consistency always use distilled water with this step. Note that it will not harm stainless steel hand tanks

When using this flashing technique, it should be safe to upgrade the speed rating of the film by up to 1 stop, but because of the way it brings shadow contrast into a more normal range, it may also make the speed rating of +2 look better than expected.

Testing New Developers

If you’d like to test a new developer, I highly recommend doing development by inspection to figure out precise timing. I personally buy Ortho Litho in 4x5 film size and cut it down to 120 sized single-exposures, as I don’t own a 4x5 camera but also don’t want to waste an entire 12 exposure strip of film. I then take the single exposure and develop it in a 5x7 tray. Note that you need RED and not amber or orange safelights for this film. It also seems to be more sensitive to safelights than paper typically is and will fog with just a few minutes of exposure. Thus, the tray should be covered and the film only inspected once per minute or less. If using the Iron Out flashing method, ensure to test the developer’s response both with and without flashing and always do a blank film test run at first to ensure your safelights are not fogging the film. Note that effects like developer exhaustion may show up in tank tests, but not tray tests.

[filmandtubes]

RA-4 Reversal Notes

I did both in-camera and enlarger based exposures, all on RA-4 Fuji Crystal

Room temp is around 70F/21C

Process that worked best for in-camera:

(Light level: 2s f/8 at ISO 0.8; cloudy snow daylight)

Expose without filter for 1/20s

Expose with deep green filter for 1s

Expose with deep red filter for 4s (should probably be reduced to 3s)

Develop in unmodified Dektol 1+2 1.5m, room temp

Expose to light (30s+)

RA-4 developer, unmodified, 2 minutes at room temp

RA-4 bleach-fix, unmodified, 1 minute at room temp

Process for enlarging slides:

(Exposing simple 4x5 sheets of paper at f/11 with normalish slides)

Expose using Y60 and M20 filters (this needs fine tuning, but this is a good starting point)

Develop in 400ml of Dektol 1+2 with 2.6g of pot bromide and 1g of sea salt (didn't have any pure stuff without iodine). Room temp

Expose to light 30s+

RA-4 devleoper, with "pinch" of sodium sulfide, for 2 minutes at room temp

RA-4 bleach-fix, unmodified, 1 minute

All processing is done in trays with around 400ml or 500ml of chemicals (doing 4x5 prints under enlarger, or ~2x2" 120 sized cut strips in camera). First developer should be in complete darkness. Afterwards, plunge into vinegar mixed stop bath (citric acid/indicator stop might shift colors, according to reports). Afterwards lights can be turned on. Rinse print thoroughly to avoid contaminating RA-4 developer. Make sure it's exposed to room lights for at least 30s. This is a to-completion process so further time does not hurt, though eventually it could solarize especially in sunlight. Afterwards, put into RA-4. Blue and purple tones come up quickly, followed by greens. Reds come out last. Whites will remain a dull grey until bleach-fix. Move to a separate vinegar based stop bath. Finally, put into bleach-fix. Rinse for at least 30s afterwards. Colors and contrast will shift slightly upon drying.

Too much sulfide in the RA-4 will cause non-true blacks and decrease in saturation. However, having none tends to produce very high contrast prints which will not contain all of the details on a slide. In-camera exposure seemed to be overall lower contrast than slide exposure, though it's hard to judge how good contrast is with a snowy scene. The filter stack from enlarger exposure can not simply be carried over to in-camera. I tried and it resulted in a strong cyan and slight green cast, with weak reds present. This is despite using tungsten lighting for the scene I captured. I also tried using Y50 in daylight camera exposure and there still seemed to be only cyan on the print. Also, adding the bromide and salt to the first developer might be detrimental for in-camera exposure. I'm not sure, it does seem to overall make color balance easier to achieve though. It appears to decrease the overall speed by around 1/4 stop. Bromide and salt has been reported online to significantly help with preventing color crossing when using an enlarger. It is intended to emulate "aging" the developer. The alternative reported is developing 2 8x10 prints to complete black in 60ml of the developer. This is not economical as it would require many wasted sheets of paper for a full 1L of developer. I did not compare fresh developer to the souped mix. The aged first developer seems to be more likely to mottle solid color areas. RA-4 chemicals used are all Kodak, mixed bulk style. (10L at a time)

[filmandtubes]

Obligatory copper toned print, the one toned around 6 minutes

[filmandtubes]

Copper Toning Notes

Really more for my reference than yours, but might be useful to the public..

Using Photo Formulary's copper toner kit at 68F 1:1. Paper used (unless specified) is Ilford Warmtone Pearl RC and Harman warmtone developer.

Timeline

Copper toning starts quickly. A slight tint of brown in the highlights is seen within 1 minute. This began on this paper by first going somewhat plummy, like Selenium, but quickly moves past that. Toning becomes most obvious in the highlights first, though a subtle change in midtones is also visible within the first minute. Shadows and blacks change very slowly.

At around 4 minutes, it takes on a lovely grey-bronze appearance. Highlights and midtones seem mostly tinted the same way, with only shadows lagging behind. This means even with a small amount of time, you will get a copper look on the entire print, not just highlights.

At around 6 minutes it becomes more copper than bronze looking. Blacks are a nice and warm, but deep black. The transition of tones in contrasty prints is especially great. There is a slight contrast boost at this point. At this point highlights begin to be bleached away and the whole print lightens up. I'd recommend around 1/4 stop more exposure to compensate.

If you go to 8 or 10 minutes, blacks finally fade to a deep chalky reddish orange. Highlights are quickly eaten away and, contrast seems to slowly decrease at this point. This may only be "perceived" by the erroding blacks. Going beyond this point does nothing and may begin to stain the whites of the paper.

With Selenium

I tried two methods with Selenium, doing it before and after copper toning. With the before copper toning I used Ilford Cooltone FB and Liquidol. It was nearly 100% selenium toned. This paper is probably a bad choice for this, but it was a waste print I had handy. This had some strange results. I toned it for around 6 minutes in copper toner. At first it seemed like nothing was happening. Around the 2 minute mark I started to notice some brown splotchy blacks. This got slightly more intense up to 4 minutes. After 4 minutes nothing else seemed to happen other than some pink staining of the whites. The toning effect in the blacks is not consistent and is obviously splotchy. The toner does not touch midtones or highlights at all, they remain the purple color from selenium. This effect might be possible to do somewhat easy split toning (maybe even with separate midtones?) with a better paper choice and a very gentle selenium toning.

For the after copper toning attempt with selenium, I used the warmtone RC paper from before. With this absolutely nothing seemed to happen, even when I tried to increase selenium concentration. Even very lightly copper toned prints had only a very subtle tone change to a more purple tint of grey-brown. I put a print that was very heavily toned and it caused the selenium solution to go dark and powdery. It's a real pain to clean if you let it stay that way in the tray, so I figured it was some weird failure reaction and poured it out. The print stayed in the developer around 10 minutes total waiting for something to happen before I noticed it. The print was completely unchanged and still extremely chalk red as before.

Notes

I think this looks best with above contrast prints and the way it renders pictures of metal are really striking. I like the peak bronze effect most, before the blacks really begin to fade. I'd really like to see this on straight up glossy RC (or ferrotyped FB) paper. I think the metal effect with a shiny gloss finish would be nice. The extreme chalk red might be interesting to play with on some subjects too, maybe on matte FB paper especially, or even something like Ilford Art 300.

[filmandtubes]

Arista Ortho Litho at 120 size shot at some crazy slow speed (0.1 or so), developed 9m in DD-X 1:19, 30s initial agitation, 4x per minute after. Definitely my favorite developer now for this film, and even at full 40MP res grain is nearly invisible

[filmandtubes]

Just a nice bench I use for testing film

Mat 124G, Arista Ortho Litho@~1.5 ISO, Pyro PMK

[filmandtubes]

Adventures with Arista's Ortho Litho

Recently I've been doing more darkroom printing, and thus had less desire to shoot positives of any sort. Still have an update planned on the x-pro reversal front, but the project got placed on hold for a bit.

Anyway, one of the things I've been messing with in the meantime is Arista's Ortho Litho film. Ortho film is different from most normal "Pan" film (or panchromatic). Panchromatic film is sensitive to all colors for the most part. However, Ortho film is only sensitive to the blue and green spectrum, not red. The exact response of course varies by film stock, but typically, it's very blue sensitive, fairly green sensitive, slightly yellow sensitive, and completely red blind.

Arista's Ortho Litho film is not for those that lack patience nor are they for places where not a single shot can be lost... Ortho Litho film is, to put it lightly, tempermental. You can get consistent results, but extreme care must be taken to perfect the process first, and then to follow each step exactly.

These are the problems that make it.. difficult:

Super high contrast without special development process

Processes that tame contrast usually have low max density

Extremely low speed. The nominal ISO ranges from 0.8 to 12 ISO. Exact speed highly depends on development process but higher speeds often result in higher contrast. This film surprisingly has decent exposure latitude for both over and under exposure, if processed in PMK Pyro at least.

Unexpected color response

Very easy to scratch

Only available in large format (well, for right now ;) )

But it is rewarding:

Unexpected color response

Extremely low speed. Ever wanted to shoot at f/3.5 in bright daylight with your camera that has a max shutter of 1/500? No problem, but you'll need a tripod if you want depth of field. Longish exposure of 5s without neutral density filters in daylight? You'll have to stop down to f/16 or f/22, but easily doable.

Fine grain (I wouldn't say "very", but really attractive grain structure without being obstructive)

Insanely cheap (by raw film area, tends to be around 3x cheaper than anything else on the market)

For right now, this blog post isn't going to go into the color response. I've not shot nearly enough of it to put it's weird response into words. Expect black trees, surprisingly decent sky detail (normally ortho film has no cloud detail), weird rock tones, and honest skin tones.

All of this is for in-camera shooting. I don't own a large format camera, so I cut things down to 120 strips. Specifically I use a Yashica Mat 124G for this, and a lightmeter app on my iPhone for metering.

Development

The biggest problem with Ortho Litho is that it is designed for very high contrast applications, ie, lith half-tone etc. If you develop this as you would normal film, the result would be black and white with very little grey tones in between. If you want the super high contrast look for some reason, then it's very easy to achieve with standard paper developer. High contrast can be useful for masks for darkroom printing. Anyway, so the key to getting reasonable contrast is to use developers and processes that tend to be dangerously low contrast with normal films.

Unfortunately these low contrast methods tend to suffer from a serious density problem. Here's what I tried.. unfortunately I don't have a good method of scanning these rough cut strips (I don't own a LF camera, only 120), so I won't have image samples of the early test failures

Paper developer

As expected, paper developer results in super high contrast results, and the film develops to completion extremely quickly. I wouldn't say it takes longer than 1m. One recommendation I've seen for better continuous tone results is to dilute it to 1:1 or 1:2 or higher. I tried this with Ilford Multigrade down to 1:5 (working solution:water). The results I got were still very high contrast, but it was lower contrast than straight paper developer. With high dilution the result would be really interesting for masks, but not really suitable for enlargement or scanning. The result was that to the naked eye things looked fairly good with decent mid tones, but when under a loupe, the mid tones was actually just jet black grains with gaps, similar to how inkjet printing produces midtones with dots of ink. This might have an interesting look for a few things, but definitely not general purpose.

This is a quick cell phone pic of what this looks like on my enlarger. As you can see, very high contrast, almost no shadow detail, and only some mid tones in the highlights. This was actually an enlarger "print" onto the film from standard E-6 color slide film.

HC-110

HC-110 really interested me because there is a somewhat common alternative development process for varying contrast. The basic process is to figure out the proper time for the right speed with some dilution, and then to increase contrast by decreasing dilution or decrease contrast by increasing dilution. No time or temperature adjustment is necessary. Unfortunately the dilution necessary for reasonable contrast also results in very low max density. With HC-110 1:200 (the most common recommendation I see), even film developed under lights gives a strip of film that is a very mild grey. I increased the concentration to 1:100 and the grey did improve some, but not nearly as much as I'd like. At 1:50 the density looked reasonable. However, tests at this dilution resulted in high contrast, especially at higher speeds. This could have some potential, but the combination of high contrast with very little exposure latitude made me look for other methods. The primary problem was that with over exposure the highlights would get completely blown very easily.

Here is a shot of the negatives I got from this:

Lith developer

For fun, I tried using some diluted lith developer after I was done with a round of lith paper printing. The result was very contrasty and highly inconsistent due to short development time. With proper lith development this film will turn into an extreme contrast mask where the film is either 100% black or 100% clear. I didn't bother capturing these results

Pyro PMK

I ordered some of this after a lot of reading about it's unique results. It just so happened to arrive almost immediately after I did some test shots, and I had heard it had three big properties:

Low contrast

Capable of preserving even highly over exposed highlight details

Decreases/hides grain

This is the one I've been sticking with once I saw it has real potential of taming Ortho Litho. It doesn't come without some problems though:

Pyro is messy and dangerous. Make sure to use gloves as skin exposure will burn, stain, and potentially cause you to develop an allergy. It also has a tendency to stain anything it touches.

Some pyro developers (not PMK) are more tempermental and variable. With PMK I've had consistent results with consistent process

Pyro stain is stripped by acid. The stain is what provides most of the benefits of pyro. This means you can not use a stop bath or acid fixer. TF-4 alkaline is the recommended fixer for this

Also don't use photo-flo. It can strip stain as well. Basically only use developer, fixer, and water.

Very small dilutions are annoying. (needing to accurately measure 5ml basically requires a syringe)

That being said, if you're patient, the results are worth it. This is the only developer I've seen that gives a very normal contrast (I actually had to increase the contrast to grade 3 or 3.5 while printing some images) while also maintaining a fairly good amount of density. One of the weird things is that the stain has color, it's not just black and white like silver. The stain for PMK at least is an olive green to a mild orange. The color of course doesn't affect B/W printing nor scanning, but does make reviewing negatives fun. Weirdly enough with this film, the positive-on-top effect is very real. If you look at the film at a downward angle with lights overhead, it's very easy to see a positive of the image. It's especially prevalent with Pyro, but I've seen it with every developer I've tried.

Here's some of the results from my testing. These were all shot at either 1.5 or 3 ISO. 1.5 usually looks better, but 3 can really be helpful in preserving sky detail. Also, my Mat 124G apparently has developed a focus problem, so you'll just have to pay attention to the tones since most have missed focus.. Also, this was all testing so expect a lot of dust and scratches.

Finally, here is something to illustrate the speed response of this film. These are brackets taken at 0.8, 1.5, 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, 96, and 192 ISO, respectively. All were scanned at fixed exposure for the ideal scan of ISO 3. A lot more detail is in the highlights at 0.8 and 1.5, but the fixed exposure caused it to be missed.

And finally, here is a picture showing the incredible over exposure latitude. I was aiming for ISO 3 with f/16 and 1/4s. The camera's shutter stuck though and it ended up being exposed for around 10 seconds. The picture is all blurry cause after waiting around 8s I started to mess with and bang the camera to try to get the shutter unstuck. Eventually I just wound it. I wanted to avoid winding with the shutter open for fear of damaging the shutter, as well as because it causes the next frame to be exposed. I did not used fixed exposure on scanning this of course, otherwise it'd be straight white. The image is clearly visible with the naked eye on the negative too.

Low Speed

The exact speed depends on development process, but it's pretty safe to say this film is incapable of anything faster than 12 ISO without extreme amounts of contrast. What can you do with this kind of film? I've had fun with the slow speed of it. I hate carrying a tripod, but some of the effects are worth it. You can shoot in bright daylight stopped down to f/16 or f/22 and actually expose the film for multiple seconds (rating the film at 0.8 ISO is safe in PMK), causing ghostly effects of anything moving. Normally you need to use neutral density filters to achieve this kind of picture, and something about ND filters always rubbed me the wrong way. They seems to always have some strange characteristic "look" to any picture they make, be it digital or film. Typically there is a ton of contrast, and very strong corner vignette. Meanwhile, using super slow film like this, the entire frame looks properly exposed, the lens characteristics are usually still pretty good at f/16 or f/22, keeping things sharp, and overall it just looks like a normal picture without that daylight long exposure "look"... This lets you make some really ghostly looking images while not introducing any weird character into the final result. Now of course, despite this film seeming to have almost limitless over exposure latitude, it does eventually just add fog. You'll lose a lot of highlight details exposing it more than a few stops beyond 0.8 ISO, and it'll be a pain to properly scan. The idea though is that even when you need ND filters, you can use a lighter one of a few stops, rather than the huge distorting ones that reduce exposure by 10+ stops, and you shouldn't need to stack filters to achieve a slow enough shutter speed.

The other interesting use for this film is being able to shoot wide open with slow cameras in broad daylight, with no worry of over exposure. This can be really interesting for portraits. In particular, skin tones can be interesting with this. With women it can be a bit harsh, but ortho film is known for making men look "macho" and rough. It's also of course interesting for still lifes of specific objects up close and all that.

And finally, this super low speed film is not grain free like one might expect. I actually really like the grain structure of this film. It's readily apparent at 120 negative sizes, but never gets in the way of a razor sharp subject. At intended sheet film sizes with contact prints, the grain would be invisible for the most part. For pyro PMK development especially, it yields easier to print negatives than I expect. Don't be afraid to bump up the contrast to 3 or 3.5 though. This film in 1:1:100 PMK tends to be a bit flat. Tones of great tone separation for post processing/printing, but flat when printed as-is at a neutral grade of 2. It also does get very grainy when under exposed as you can see from the brackets above.

Large-format only (til now)

This film only comes in large formats, with 4x5 being the minimum size. Getting into large format requires a whole different type of dedication due to the weight, expense, and bulky film. It's not something I'm ready to get into anytime soon, but it's really cumbersome to deal with small single exposure strips of 120 film to use it with my Mat 124G (my only full manual 120 camera). I ended up doing some tests with multiple 5" strips being taped into a 120 backing paper, and this worked well though with the obvious problems of dealing with multiple strips. After figuring out that this film had real potential I ended up ordering a 24"x100ft roll of the stuff. This was actually the cheapest format I could get where I could cut a 32" length (nominal film length for 120). I cut some of it over the weekend, wasted 5 rolls worth, but overall had some success. The biggest problem was dust and scratches as well as slightly inaccurate cutting. I wasn't too careful since this 10-roll sheet was for testing anyway.

With the size of film I ordered, I can make up to 375 rolls of 120 film. I definitely can't shoot anything close to this much film, so as a way to recoup costs I plan on selling around 250 rolls, and hopefully wasting less than 50 rolls in mistakes. I'd really like to eventually test out some stuff like making my own edge markings and doing pre-flashing (Ortho Litho really benefits from some pre-flash). But for right now it's super simple. No edge markings, no pre-flash. It is loaded in a red light darkroom, so it's possible that the red light could make a non-image forming change that would decrease contrast. I've not seen any effect like this with my testing so far. The maximum red light time should be 10 minutes per strip, and at 20 minutes there was no image in my safelight testing, so I don't think there's anything to worry about. Some other people I know have handled this film with these lights for 45 minutes even with no problems. This will of course come with some disclaimers.. don't use it for priceless pictures or anything. It's still possible there could be some defects since this is done by hand, etc. Since my main goal with this stuff is darkroom printing, I don't want to deal with any dust or scratches.. so I need to perfect this process for myself either way. The emulsion of this film is incredibly easy to scratch. Even rubbing the film on a piece of plastic or felt will induce some scratching, so it obviously must be cut and loaded emulsion up.

[filmandtubes]

The ending of a night on the town

Cinestill 800T shot with Mat 124G @ 1600 ISO, pushed 2 stops in C-41

[filmandtubes]

Rainy day (Pen EES-2, Lomo Color 400, HC-110/C-41 X-Pro Reversal)

[filmandtubes]

X-Pro Reversal, Perfected.

After a long time and a lot of test shots, I now think that I have perfected the process. I’ve tried it with both E-6 and C-41 films with good results on both. First, I'll start off with the boring bit and then get to the results.

Here is the recipe. I purposefully made it so that it could all be done at the single temp of 102F as used by every C-41 kit I've ever seen. Note that temperature control is more critical in this and that some kind of warming method will be needed for the long first developer time.

NOTE: It is trivial to re-reel the wet film with stainless steel reels. With plastic reels it would seem impossible; however, several tips online has said that you can easily (apparently more easily than stainless) re-reel the film by sticking both the reel and film in a water filled bucket so that they are submerged. If you're stuck with plastic reels, you can try this method but I haven't tested it for myself.

Mix HC-110 A working solution (1+15)

Heat both HC-110 and C-41 chemicals to 102F (you might also want a bottle of water for rinsing)

Rinse/preheat the tank for 2 minutes

Develop for 6:30 in HC-110. Agitate 10s initially, and then 4x every 30s after. Experimenting with less aggressive agitation could lead to less blown highlights, but additional time might be required for full shadow development. Less agitation might also add some color casts. Develop for 7:30 for C-41 films for "box speed" results (otherwise you'll need to over expose by 1.5 stops for best results)

Rinse several times in order to stop development

Remove film from tank, fog over daylight colored light pad. Do not fog over tungsten lights or outside using the sun. Fog for 2 or 3 minutes, ensuring to cover both the front and back of the film

Put film back in tank

Rinse/preheat tank again for 2 minutes

C-41 develop for slightly longer. For my kit it says 3:30, so I did it for 4:00 for VERY fresh developer (ie, this was the second roll I used with it). If you've processed more than 4 rolls, extend to 4:15. If you've processed more than kit capacity go for 4:30 or even up to 5:00.

Blix for almost twice as long as instructed. For my kit it says 6:00, so I blix for 10:00. If using a two bath kit, extend both bleach and fix times. See troubleshooting to figure out if you need more blix

Rinse as normal. I recommend inspecting the film before stabilizing in case more blix is required.

Troubleshooting and FAQ:

Can I use a different B/W developer? - Yes, however not all developers are ideal. Before HC-110 I used a generic F-76+ developer and had problems reaching the native box speed, even with greatly extended development times and higher concentrations. HC-110 solution A is ideal because it's high contrast like slide film works best with, and it's also incredibly active, meaning you can develop the film very quickly. Previously 18 minutes and beyond was required just to reach half of the native ISO. HC-110 also does not seem to produce any color shifts by early development of the color couplers.

My film came out but it looks faded and blacks aren't deep - This is caused by a moderate to major lack of C-41 development. Ensure that your C-41 chemicals are still good

My film came out missing an entire color region, or there is only one color present - I've had this happen only twice and both times I chalk it up to my C-41 developer getting contaminated somehow.

There is a lot of grain and weird reddish coloring in the highlights - This is caused by lack of blix. If there is any grain AT ALL in the highlights of the film where it should be clear (like the exposed leader) then this indicates lack of blix. When not enough blix is applied it tends to affect only certain portions of the film, so that some frames will be correct and others not. There is no harm in putting the roll back into the blix if you see this. Note that massive under development in the B/W developer phase can also cause this, where the exposed leader is only gray rather than white.

Can I use stand development to decrease contrast/safely develop badly shot film? - I've tried this a few times. Do NOT under any circumstances use it for the C-41 development part. The result is really massive color shifts, fog, and lack of certain colors. For the B/W development part, it should be possible. Keep in mind though that you still need a very active developer and potentially raised temperatures. I tried doing stand development with the less active F-76+ stuff, and over 1 hour it barely even touched the film. Also for C-41 film, it's exposure latitude even when processed like this is much more forgiving than E-6 film. As long as the C-41 film isn't massively over exposed it should still produce something. I've used this with film that was suppose to be pushed 2 stops (ie, 400 ISO shot at 1600 ISO) and processed it this way with very good results.

I tried a different film and it looks weird - That's part of the fun. Each film, be it C-41 or E-6, has it's own unique character in this process. Sometimes the results aren't great, but it's almost always unique.

All my highlights are blown and the shadows are faded - If the unexposed portions of film are dark black, then you did not develop in B/W developer long enough. If the unexposed portions of film are not dark black, then you either did not fog for long enough, or you didn't do C-41 development long enough, or your C-41 developer can be contaminated... or of course you could've shot it at the wrong ISO in the camera.

My film is mostly black, or it looks under exposed - If the exposed (ie, leader on 35mm) portions of film are not clear, then you have a major lack of B/W development. If it is clear, then it is a moderate lack of B/W development, or inaccurate metering in the camera. (note that when shooting slide, it's typical to meter for shadows and not highlights)

My highlights are completely clear, but shadows are very dark - Part of this is the fun of slide film, but this can also indicate too much C-41 development. There is a balance to be struck between dark blacks and reasonable contrast. The more time you develop in C-41, the darker shadows will get and the deeper colors will turn.. but you'll have more contrast because the highlights will be more or less unaffected. If you greatly reduce the C-41 development time, contrast is pushed way down, but color saturation is also much weaker.

Can I push or pull with this process? - Of course! I don't have reliable times, but a 1 stop push appears to be around 8 minutes with HC-110 A. If you are looking to do extreme pushes of 2 or more stops, it can be helpful to pull in the C-41 process. If you pull (shorten development time) in C-41, then dark shadows can survive and not get completely blocked. Of course this has effects on color rendition, dMax, and can cause some (mostly correctable) color shifts. Note that if you push (extend development time) in C-41 development, then you need to push in B/W development even more, because pushing in C-41 effectively decreases the perceived speed of the film since shadow detail etc gets so dark, and contrast also can be drastically increased.

I followed everything you said, but ended up with a blue tint over everything - This is normal and varies depending on film. On some film it is a red tint. The tint appears to be incredibly minor (ie, you can only really see it when scanning) if the C-41 developer is fresh, and it seems to get worse as the C-41 developer is used to capacity. The blue tint is incredibly simple to correct out though, and there are otherwise no crazy color crossing with E-6 film like you see with traditional negative X-Pro. If the blue tint is not subtle, you may have also not done enough C-41 development. I've found "by the box" C-41 development to give some slightly more noticeable blue tint, but with extended times it goes away quickly. If you extend C-41 development a lot, then the blue tint eventually goes away completely, but also contrast can get pushed to insane amounts, so it's a balancing act.

Does this contaminate my C-41 developer, how many rolls can I process with one kit? - I have no idea to be honest. I've done normal C-41 processing after several rounds of this process with no problem. However, I have noticed that the kit capacity should really not be exceeded when using this process if you can help it. It introduces more and more color tints, and blix times especially will need to be extended potentially to 12 minutes or more since this process is much more blix intensive.

Is there some special way I should shoot with this process? - Just shoot it like slide film. The exposure latitude is about the same or only slightly reduced, so avoid really contrasty scenes if you want both shadows and highlights to have detail. Also keep in mind that it's safer to under expose slide film than over expose. A lot of shadow detail can be brought out of an under exposed slide with a good scanner.. but there is no highlight detail to recover. It's the opposite of color negative.

Why would you want to do this? - I hate needing to have a second batch of color chemicals mixed and going bad when I want to develop slide film without crazy colors like in X-Pro. I also like that the B/W developer can be used one-shot. But also I think the color changes are interesting. With C-41 film it can give a unique color pallette, while with E-6 film it gives fairly predictable colors. This process isn't like X-Pro when used with E-6 film, so it won't give you crazy color crossing where red is purple etc.. but it does change the strength of certain colors, and at least for Provia 100F, I think it makes things look similar to Kodachrome. For Velvia it seems to emphasize blue colors rather than green colors, etc. Also, unlike X-Pro, there is very little grain, about the amount (or maybe just slightly more) of grain you'd expect from slide film.

What can I expect from using C-41 film with this like Portra? - Orange base, color shifts, medium amount of contrast (usually), blown highlights, good looking shadows, and slightly finer grain than normal. Each stock of film tends to respond differently to this process. Superia 400 introduces some insane color shifts that can be very unflattering to skin tones, though can provide a dreamy look during golden hour lighting. Lomo color 400 (rebranded Gold 400 iirc) responds with somewhat normal colors, but with weak blue highlights but strong blue shadows, and other colors are very saturated and punchy

Ok, now we know the technical bits, lets move on to what the results actually look like. Each stock of film has it's own personality in this process. I personally like Provia's look the best so that's where I'll start

E-6 Provia 100F (120)

I processed this with newly mixed C-41 developer and the colors were worth it! This looks completely fine when held up to a slightly warm lightpad, but looks ever so slightly blue when held against a daylight lightpad. I also shot this on a cloudy day, which apparently results in a slight blue tint for Provia when processed normally. I took these using my Yashica Mat 124G, my favorite camera of all time for portraits.

Despite being a fairly cloudy day, I absolutely love the color of these. I did have to do some curve adjustment as they looked a quite blue to begin with, but I expect if I had my lightpad set to something near tungsten during scanning it would've looked almost as great with no correction at all. I especially love how the colors seem to pop, and how much contrast it has without blowing any important highlights. Absolutely perfect processing in my opinion. I think standard E-6 processing with Provia is a bit drab with less saturation. This process ramps up saturation without making things garrish like Velvia can sometimes be.

Bonus photo from my half-frame Pen EES-2:

E-6 Velvia 100 (120)

I did this on a slightly more cloudy day somewhere in Detroit, and again with my Mat 124G. This was with much less fresh C-41 developer (slightly past kit capacity) and it shows. I expect we'll see something more exciting when I do a batch of this with fresh developer. I also didn't have as much time to prepare for my shops since we were basically in the location thanks to the patience of a security guard, so I was relying more on the slightly inaccurate meter of my Mat 124G and a prayer. The ones close to over exposure actually turned out looking best with this. This film definitely had a blue tint to it, but with a very warm tungsten light could be passable and potentially used as slides.

As you can see the colors are definitely just not there like they should be in Velvia in most of the shots, but there was at least 1 that looked like what you'd expect. I've done this process (though not )

E-6 Ektachrome 320 (35mm)

This was my first time shooting with this film so I wasn't really sure what to expect.I got this as "retrochrome" from Film Photography Project and was advertised as being frozen since creation, so I just shot it at box speed and hoped for the best. I shot this film with my Leica M6 with a classic character Rokkor 40mm f/2 lens on a cloudy day. This film actually caused me to increase my blix recommendation time to 10 minutes. I was using exhausted blix (past capacity) and did it for 10 minutes and the rest of the tank was clear, but this film still had some silver grains in the highlights. If using exhausted blix, I'd say do 12 minutes minimum if using this film. Overall the results were a bit of a mess. The colors were muted and aged looking, and there was some slight color crossings. It worked for some subjects, but it wouldn't be something I'd shoot every day. For what I was using it for (Detroit and Heidelberg) it actually complimented things pretty well, but I'll use with caution in the future. This is also very old film that is supposedly government surplus. This may also have had a quality effect. Looking at some E-6 processed reference photos of this stuff, I'm really not that far off either though. Also this processed caused a considerable blue tint on the film, more so than is common with Velvia or Provia. It was simple to correct, but would not be suitable for projection.

I'd say, compared to E-6:

Some slight color crossing, especially in the green and yellow spectrum

Slightly more grainy

Significantly worse exposure latitude than Velvia or Provia. This film really seemed to have a sweet spot that I missed 90% of the time.

C-41 Superia 400 (35mm)

This was the first C-41 film I tried after figuring out the final process. It has always been an unpredictable process with C-41 film, but the color crossing in this one was especially... unique. C-41 film does of course always have the orange mask, so highlights are orange rather than clear. This is easy to correct, but of course makes it completely unsuitable for projection. These pictures were taken on a mix of a sunny day and near sunset.

The following were taken using an earlier version of the process (all the same but 8 minutes of B/W development) with my Pen EES-2 camera:

And the following were taken using the final version on my M6 with Jupiter 50mm f/1.5 lens:

The colors are definitely other worldly and in some cases quite dreamy. I love this for golden hour and sunset stuff, but the color crossing is a bit less subtle in open daylight. You have to be careful using this for skin tones, because it can definitely make skin look quite blotchy and unhealthy for some reason. In the two pictures of my wife (the redhead) you can see I gave up trying to keep the colors realistic and just went with the color pallette this film naturally gives me. When trying to correct things to be more natural it made skin tones look really bad. When color correcting this film in this process, everything is up for a bit of interpretation anyway.

C-41 Lomo Color 400 (35mm, rebranded Kodak Gold 400)

On this one, the colors are much more natural but very punchy. This roll was mostly under exposed (it was suppose to be pushed 2 stops) but had some surprisingly good results despite that with this process. Honestly this might be my new way of pushing C-41 film with some slight modifications.

E-6 Rollei CR200 / Lomography X-Pro 200 (120)

(This was added after the initial post)

This one came out with a really thick teal cast, and came out incredibly curly. Definitely not the typical slide experience, but if you correct out the cast, it's not too bad. I honestly have never processed this film in standard E-6 chemicals, so I'll just give the results I got:

AR-5 FPP Color IR (35mm)

(This was added after the initial post)

This one came out looking great. The only problem is that lens has no focus mark that corrects for IR light, and so things aren't nearly as sharp as they should be. Regardless, these slides came out looking great. I'm not sure if it's the film with a red filter, or the process or what, but the results definitely lean to the greener side. It is still more grainy than I'd like. I've heard you actually get less grain with this stuff when processing normally in C-41 as a negative, and more grain with E-6.

Conclusion

For E-6 film this is definitely a doable substitute to traditional processing. I prefer only keeping one set of chemicals and using every one-shot if possible, and this process allows for both. You do have to be careful to not use exhausted chemicals and such, but overall it's a less finicky process than traditional E-6. The only complication is that fogging must be done manually. This isn't a problem with steel reels, but is near impossible with plastic reels. I bet some smart person out there knows how to make a chemical fogging agent, but I've failed to find it in my searching on google. Also I'm not sure how much I trust chemical fogs, since that is yet another chemical to go bad, so I'll personally never use it. If anyone does find out though, definitely message me on reddit and I'll include something here about it: u/earlzdotnet

[filmandtubes]

On the way to perfecting X-Pro Reversal

I did another run of X-Pro reversal aka, producing positive slides from E-6 film in C-41 chemicals. First, I processed the remaining test strips I shot in first developer. My recipe for this is pretty close, but right now the ISO is only around 80 or 50 for Velvia 100 film. I recommend increasing development time to 18 minutes, but make sure to read the details later, as you may want to vary this to get more controlled results.

Arista Premium Liquid Developer, mixed 1:5 rather than 1:9

Heat to 102F, and preheat/prerinse film/tank

Agitate 30s initially, and then 4x every 30s after

16 minutes total development; make sure to control temp to maintain 102F

Rinse thoroughly with colder and colder water

Remove from tank and expose to light pad for 3 minutes

At this point you can dry the film in a dark cold area and then do color development later if you wish. This is useful if doing test strips

This time, since I'm getting close to having the first development/exposure figured out, I did some experiments with the color development step.

I've done 3 test strips so far. Each test strip contains a test color chart of ISO 25, 50, 80, 100, 160, and 200. This allows me to see precisely what the ideal exposure seems to be for the process. I processed all the strips the same, with only some variation in the color development time. The basic recipe:

Rinse film with 102F water

Color develop at 102F. Agitate 10s initially, and then 4x every 30s after. (development time of 3:30 is recommended kit instructions)

Blix for 10 minutes at 102F (kit recommends only 6.5 minutes)

Rinse

Don't stabilize until you're sure you don't need more blix

My C-41 kit is just past capacity, so increasing development time to 4 minutes is what I'd consider "normal" for C-41 film. So, I did the following times on each strip:

4 minutes - "normal" C-41 development

6 minutes - push 2.5 stops C-41 development

2 minutes - pull 2.5 stops C-41 development

The results were a bit unexpected. I had always heard with E-6 development that color development is "to completion"... and I've also heard that C-41 developer is much more active than E-6 developer... With this knowledge in mind, I did these initial test strips. The results were a bit surprising. (Also, I promise I'll upload pictures of all this when I get my new scanning setup built)

Normal development: The apparent ideal exposure looked to be around 80 ISO. At this point colors were plenty punchy with around 80% of the velvia saturation we all love. The blues are incredibly deep with tons of saturation, but greens are pretty mild. Reds look true to life, about like Provia's color rendition. There was quite a bit of contrast, but even at this ISO there is some loss of shadow detail. Across all but the 25 ISO exposure, there was a slight blueish purple cast. It also was not uniform and not easily corrected in photoshop. The 25 ISO exposure would still be useable, but did have some mild fading. Colors looked good though faded. On the other side, the 200 ISO exposure was way too dark to project, but could be saved in scanning. A lot of detail was contained in the shadows when scanned, but to the eye it looked mostly straight black. The colors were fairly punchy, but also there was a definite dark purple fog at this level of under exposure.

Pushed development: Apparent ideal ISO is 50 or 25. This caused a ton of blocked up black shadows when under exposed. In 25 ISO, the colors were the best I've had yet. Not overly saturated, but true to life green colors. Blue saturation was the same as with normal development, incredibly deep and punchy. Reds are slightly more saturated than life-like. Overall contrast is also increased, maybe with slightly more contrast than expected from E-6 slide development. Significantly more constrasty than the C-41 normal development strip. The 200 ISO exposure had very little detail, and insane amounts of contrast where something can be made out. 100 ISO is definitely under exposed and has a fog to it, but could probably be saved with scanning. Also the under exposure fog appears to be uniform black, or very dark purple. The increase in contrast definitely made each exposure level very different, so I think this is getting close to resembling the ISO sensitivity that is traditional with E-6 processing.

Pulled development: Apparent ideal ISO is 100 or 160. This is definitely not an ideal method, but something can be learned from it. It resulted in blacks being only deep orange. Some highlights went completely clear in the 25 ISO exposure, but shadow detail was very clear and easy to see in every exposure. Contrast was decreased significantly across all exposures, and the differences between 50 and 200 ISO were only slightly noticeable. Color saturation suffered from this pull, but less than expected. Green was very mild, but present. Blue was life-like or slightly more saturated than life-like. Red was mild. There was a uniform red/magenta cast over everything. Also, development was uneven. I would recommend decreasing temp to 95F or 85F so that times can be increased beyond 3 minutes. I also wouldn't recommend pulling to this amount either. Pulling 1 stop might be useful though.

So... what's the take away from all of this? First, I think 6 minutes is nearing the "develop to completion" thing that I've heard about E-6 development. I don't think 6 minutes or 10 minutes would have much difference, other than possible contrast increases. I think 6 minutes or maybe 5 minutes is the ideal time. As for the casts and what could possibly be happening? I have no idea. It's strange that initially the cast is orange and then purple.. opposite colors nearly.

Another tool that could be used out of this is to decrease contrast so that slide film is less sensitive to exposure differences. This could be useful when using an unreliable meter, or when making some extreme pushes. Of course, to compensate for the color development changes you'd want to decrease first development time so that you match exposure.

I'm actually really curious what some extreme pushes on slide film would look like. I'm talking up to 800 or 1600 ISO. I did some test shots at 800 ISO before, and during the fogging stage I could clearly see the image. Of course, it was near black after color development though. Using a B/W push, and color pull, this could potentially be used for an interesting look to night photography. Sure there would probably be some color shifts, but so does normal C-41 film when pushed 2 stops or more. Either way, if I can get useable images out of 100 ISO film at 1600 ISO, I'll be happy.

[filmandtubes]

Some shots from my first roll of T-Max 3200, shot and developed at 3200. I love the tonality of this stuff, but it is incredibly grainy

[filmandtubes]

I FIGURED IT OUT

E-6 Requires more bleaching than C-41... also, it seems that reversal processing requires more bleaching in general, as a bad looking C-41 reversal also benefited from extra bleaching.

So, now I can actually go back through my failures with this process and actually FIX the previous pictures. With this information, I’ve now figured out the ideal process for Velvia film, and probably Provia. CR200 and Lomo X-pro 200 is a much bigger mystery though. Rebleaching does NOT remove the color cast from the overall film, so the red CR200 and purple Provia are development problems. However, the grainyness of the CR200 and Provia are vastly better after rebleaching, but the extreme color cast remains. The color cast this removes is from highlights. FIlm that is over-exposed becomes perfectly clear after bleaching. When I get all the stuff done that I want I’ll make a full post, but for now, if you want to try this process, bleach for like 10-12 minutes at proper temperature, rather than 6.5 minutes

[filmandtubes]

Preventing red splotch of shit

Just ranting and figuring out ideas. So, on my C-41 reversal process with E-6 film I think I've figured something out this morning. I took a small strip of brackets, and did B/W dev etc. Then, I figured out that I can actually do color development in daylight (well, I can check it occasionally, too much light might cause solarization problems). So, I cut the strip of film in half after fogging. One I put back into the tank and tried to do a very short version of stand development (normal for C-41 is 45 minutes, and I used 30). I also checked it at the 20 minute mark to see the progress. The other strip I put into developer that was close, though not precisely normal C-41 temp, and developed for around 2 minutes, agitating constantly. I rinsed it off after I could start to see some ink clouds behind the silver and put it in blix. The problem I've been combating is "the red splotch of shit" that basically eats away at highlights on the slide and bleeds into shadows and causes halo effects. This typically happens with slightly over exposed sections  of white on the film. So, on this strip that I developed with constant agitation, I had a shot that was taken at somewhere in the vicinity of 0.5 ISO. ~1s bulb exposure in bright daylight at f/8. I also had an image shot at ~800 ISO. Both shots turned out. The bright daylight shot was mostly washed out, but there was some detail.. and more importantly, no red splotch of shit despite being vastly over-exposed. The 800 ISO shot had some detail you could coax out, but it was clearly under-exposed. The colors on both looked consistent, and the film itself (Velvia 100) had a dark blue base tint, similar to normal E-6 processed slides.

For the other strip that was stand developed, it came out completely differently. The red splotch was in everything shot below 400 ISO. A shot at 400 and 800 looked to have some extreme color shits as well. More importantly, the base tint of the film was not nearly as dark, and the tint was green. Colors were all over the place depending on exposure.

My hypothesis thus, is that stand development, despite being gentle and good for C-41 negative processing, is incredibly ineffective for reversal processing. In E-6 the cyan layer is at the bottom of the film, while yellow is on top followed by magenta. So, this red splotch I think comes from having a few tiny unfogged grains of silver, that end up being over developed on the top layers, yellow and red.. resulting in a splotch. Stand development is great for preserving highlights while keeping shadows in negative. However, for positive it results in over development of highlights (which would normally not be developed at all if white) and under development of shadows, killing contrast and leading to this oddness. I've never seen this happen with C-41 film being reversed, but I think this is because CD4 couplers are so much more sensitive than CD3 as used in C-41 film. So, you effectively need to pull the CD3 process several stops to get it to not over develop... or something.

My plan next is to keep the same B/W time as last, but to use traditional C-41 processing, but with the time shortened by about 50%. Problem is that with normal temps, this would be a 1.5 minute development time. This is way too short to ensure consistency, so I think I'll develop at an alternative temp of 90F which should be processed for 5.5 minutes normally, so for this it would be ~3 minutes of development time, which is still very short, but at least reasonable.

[filmandtubes]

First go at using the tricolor process. Using Trip EES-2, fixed f/4 aperture with 1/40s shutter on FP4+ film.