C41 developing...

excalibur2 said:
Well I half agree with you........home development for colour neg 35mm is madness unless pushing film or whatever, but I did my own home 120 colour developing and chemical printing for about 15 years in the London area, but Paterson/Johnson stop supplying my favourite cheap chemicals "Photocolor", Jessops continued for a while then stopped, so that was that.
Tetenal and Kodak chemicals were always more expensive so avoided them, and for 120 film I'd rather send off two or four rolls of 120 to be developed for £5 or £10 +£1.20 postage with free postage back, unless I can get the Tetanal kit for half the price.
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Searching the web for the elusive special color developers I was amazed at the prices now.
 
Lovely ..Mr X. Where is the first shot from?

Incidentally, where are some nice places in Yorkshire to go to? We are thinking of going for a week this summer....

We like natural beuaty, historical architecture; and places away from the usual tourist-y crowds...
 
Hey Ujjwal - how's the non-smoking going?
 
First one Helmsley Castle ?

As to the second, can't help - theres any number of little villages equally as scenic up there ;)
 
ujjwaldey8165 said:
Lovely ..Mr X. Where is the first shot from?

Incidentally, where are some nice places in Yorkshire to go to? We are thinking of going for a week this summer....

We like natural beuaty, historical architecture; and places away from the usual tourist-y crowds...
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Well I'm a southerner and only visited a place west of York city to go to a wedding....left the medium format gear at home and used a Nikon EM and was stuck for time photographing. I was impressed with the area and they seem to have more room and esp noticed how clean roads were i.e. no rubbish like coke cans and so on.
 
TheBigYin said:
First one Helmsley Castle ?

As to the second, can't help - theres any number of little villages equally as scenic up there ;)
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Well it was too hard because of my memory, I thought you could see the house from the main road to Scarborough, well looking at the google satellite pic you have to walk up the main st Ganton to see it...erm no street view.
bTW we stayed at the Ganton Greyhound hotel

http://www.information-britain.co.uk/showPlace.cfm?Place_ID=65734
 
We need our secrets :D
 
and so ladies and gentlemen, I give you a piece of Kodak 400ASA Gold rushed through a Kodak Retina and then processed in Tetenal. This would be my first colour developing foray and it's quite fun! I did run off four films in various cameras, some even on that infamous day of the shopkeeper incident... they are now developed also, look good, and will be scanned this week if I get time (see below)


Obligatory daffodil shot - but in glorious technicolour - and all my own work
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then a few general "arty" type piccies...


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... and finally - a Church, cos they had loads of floweres outside!


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All looking good and so glad I worked up the courage to do this colour stuff - so big thanks to BY for that. I think the camera is struggling to keep up with things as it hits top speed at 1/300th sec - not good with ISO400 on a sunny day!

I may have to slow down a little though now because I am finally being allowed back to work, three mornings this week, then a bit longer every week until I get 100% work-fit. Finally!


Arthur
 
Certainly better than the first attempt I made with the C41 kit :thumbs: After the first couple of films, I started the roll with 2 shots of a colour check card, then used that to get the colour balances right (okay - maybe not right, but at least in the same ballpark!) in the scanning software.

I know what you mean with the 1/300th and 400 ISO film - think I shot the entire first roll of film through the Perkeo at f16 - no poncey DOF effects that day! :lol:

Good news about the work thing :thumbs: just take it steady and don't overdo it mate, don't want to set yourself back again. I finally got the okay to get back on the bike last week - felt great, in a lungs bursting, eyeballs sticking out like a fraggle kind of way...:gag:
 
Work's looking good yes, but to my eternal shame, I have just taken the XT chainset off the bike and dropped a pansy Bontrager touring set on - ready for when I am allowed to ride again that is of course... :D

Honestly though, not sure I can push 52 teeth through 11 but it will at least slow me down and mountains are a definite no - not just because I'm in Norfolk. Plans for the North to South Wales ride were long dropped, as was the Calais to Montpelier I should have done last year. I sit here now with a Hull to Fakenham flat ride map wondering if even that will be too much :(

At least I can still take piccies though!
 
Ambermile said:
Work's looking good yes, but to my eternal shame, I have just taken the XT chainset off the bike and dropped a pansy Bontrager touring set on - ready for when I am allowed to ride again that is of course... :D

Honestly though, not sure I can push 52 teeth through 11 but it will at least slow me down and mountains are a definite no - not just because I'm in Norfolk. Plans for the North to South Wales ride were long dropped, as was the Calais to Montpelier I should have done last year. I sit here now with a Hull to Fakenham flat ride map wondering if even that will be too much :(

At least I can still take piccies though!
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Bit hillier around here than your neck of the woods, but I'm currently keeping to the flatter bits. Don't think my regular training ride's 3 mile constant uphill middle bit would be a particularly good idea at the moment.:lol:
 
I've been at the C41 processing as well, and got a Fuji Superior to work fine. Last time I put an Ektar through after the pre-soak I emptied a bluish coloured water :lol:. This kindof worried me, any of you get that too?

All in all, I don't find it that difficult really. The description on how to do it can be anal depending on where you read it. But in fairness you could easily reduce it right down to about 6/7 steps.
 
Any process that doesn't run around room temperature and can be firked about with is best left to big machines with flashing lights.
 
colpepper said:
Any process that doesn't run around room temperature and can be firked about with is best left to big machines with flashing lights.
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Ah, but where's the fun in that! Just because machines can do it doesn't mean they should do it.
 
karmagarda said:
I've been at the C41 processing as well, and got a Fuji Superior to work fine. Last time I put an Ektar through after the pre-soak I emptied a bluish coloured water :lol:. This kindof worried me, any of you get that too?

All in all, I don't find it that difficult really. The description on how to do it can be anal depending on where you read it. But in fairness you could easily reduce it right down to about 6/7 steps.
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With a single roll of Ektar 35mm I got a bluey-greeney caste to the pre-soak, yes. Not quite as scarey as when i'd loaded 2 rolls of Ektar 120 onto the same spiral, that came out like anti-freeze :lol: And in both cases, as with pretty much every kodak film i've processed, the rinse water at the later stages started off Violet, and by the end of the rinse time it was still a pale mauve...
 
TheBigYin said:
With a single roll of Ektar 35mm I got a bluey-greeney caste to the pre-soak, yes. Not quite as scarey as when i'd loaded 2 rolls of Ektar 120 onto the same spiral, that came out like anti-freeze :lol: And in both cases, as with pretty much every kodak film i've processed, the rinse water at the later stages started off Violet, and by the end of the rinse time it was still a pale mauve...
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:eek: :lol:

I don't feel so bad now! Thought I made a major cock up :)
 
It seemed to come out allright in the end...



the 120 rolls were a bit odd - shot on pinhole camera and I think i got the wrong no. of elephants...

 
W O T - No Daffs?

I get a blue/red rinse from the first soak as well...

Anyway, the Minolta x-700. With the rather nice MD 50mm f/1.4. On a *very* sunny day, first film. Sadly, looks like it needs new seals and I need more processing practise!


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More ood Kodacolour, this time ISO200, Tetenal, Vehu scanner.
 
I quickly found that I needed to add 15 seconds to the processing time every other film (for <400iso films) and 15 seconds for every 400iso film. This was based on making up half the 1 litre solutions (I only had 500ml squeeze bottles handy at the time-meh!) and using 300ml for a 35mm film, or the full 500ml for 120 rolls.) The Blix time from the instructions was also a little short and was bumped to 5 minutes, and a extra 15 seconds every time the neg's came out of the stab and dried milky.

I think that the times quoted are for use on one of those Jobo constantly rotating processor machines which I don't have, and don't really have room for anyway. The last 35mm roll, with the pictures of the Gorse bush (above) on, I tried using a more vigorous agitation regime (3 inversions and a knock every 20 seconds) and it came out better than my prior attempts.

As I've said before, it's okay for what I want - i.e. to experiement with processing, x-processing and messing around with my Holga's. If I've got something on a roll of colour that I'm concerned about, it'll go to Peak Imaging. When I've gone through this batch of chemicals and the OOD fleabay colour film, I'll be thinking twice about getting another set... though if I can get my process nailed for E6, i'd like to keep doing that - there's really something about pulling a whole roll of slides out of the spiral and knowing you've done the whole process "from soup to nuts" - probably because E6 is just a finished item, whereas C-41 you've all the colour inversion faffing to do.
 
Right now I'm just happy to get an rgb image to be honest :D Been there, done that, melted the t shirt too... like you I may not continue past this first batch of chemicals, although I do have half left that I may keep on the shelf for emergencies. It's great fun though and something I would never have considered back in the 80's when I was total BW or nothing.
 
Ambermile said:
Right now I'm just happy to get an rgb image to be honest :D Been there, done that, melted the t shirt too... like you I may not continue past this first batch of chemicals, although I do have half left that I may keep on the shelf for emergencies. It's great fun though and something I would never have considered back in the 80's when I was total BW or nothing.
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My big problem with colour processing is I'm very mildly colourblind... If I have any major colour corrections to do, I always feel I need to run them past someone else, just in case I've done something hideous. I've taken to shooting a colour chart as the first frame on 35mm stuff now, so at least I can make a easy first stab at correcting colours in Lightroom/CS4 :shrug:

Thing is, black and white, by it's nature is unreal... therefore, there is no right and wrong with it, and if the picture looks right then it IS right. Colour is different - everyone knows what colour grass should be, so If I make it a lovely shade of blue, people will jeer, cry, and throw stones at me for not shooting on a proper camera. :lol:

As I said, i'll probably persevere a bit more with the E6, just to see if I can get something I'm happy with - i've not shot a great deal of slide since I started experimenting with colour dev... mainly because the weather has been pants, and I couldn't see why should burn good Velvia on grey skies and dry yellow/brown grass. As things are picking up, and it's bright enough to lose a couple of stops to the polariser, I may shoot more. Hopefuly, I'll get it sorted to my satisfaction, and I can process E6 and BnW, and leave the C41 to the labs.

As an aside, I managed around 11 films from the first half of the C-41 chemicals (and subsequently another 3 E6 films x-processed in the old stuff) before they started getting a bit gunky - so 28 films for maybe £25 isn't too bad - certainly not if you figure there were at least 10 rolls of 120...)
 
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