Cross Processing

purenvdesign

purenvdesign

Suspended / Banned
Messages
223
Name
Joe
Edit My Images
No
I am loving the vintage lo-fi look at the moment. I am used to doing it in photoshop but never really tried it properly. What do I need to do to cross process my film? Is there any film I should be using?
 
Fuji provia 100 looks great cross processed, if thats the kind of look you like. Just dev in C41 processing and there you go.

Mart
 
Essentially, it's processing a particular kind of film in the wrong chemicals. Typically, you'd shoot on E6 slide film( which is intended to give positive images in the correct colours), and process the film in C-41 chemicals - which are the chemicals intended to process colour negative film - the kind of film you can get processed on the high street and get pictures back in a hour.

You can of course also X-Process the other way around - and process C41 film in E6 chemicals. Both processes are valid, and will provide results.

The big problem is that the results are massively inconsistent, and can vary due to the Brand/Product of Film you're using, due to the degree of over/under exposure you give the film in camera, the temperature you're processing at, and more other reasons than you could shake a processing tank at.

Some films process better than others, I understand that most varietys of Kodak E6 Slide film work well, whereas every frame of Velvia 100 i've x-processed came out looking like berserk mode in the old video game Doom!

Personally, I'd only recommend doing your own cross-processing when

a) you're pretty happy with getting consistent output processing straight C41 and E6 films

b) you've already researched the look of different types of cross processed film, and picked out a couple you like the effect of. Then bought a cheap stock of 'em from ebay that are out of date.

c) your chemicals are pretty much depleted for processing any more films at standard processing, I'm fairly sure that especially with the 1L re-useable colour chemicals home kits the contamination from a couple of x-pro films will skew your colours for future standard processing. I usually keep my depleted chemicals back expressly for "playing about" like this, but I'm really not worried about even getting a hint of consistency in the output from roll to roll :shrug:
 
So if I shoot in E6 film and then have it developed at a highstreet store, that would cross process?
 
IF the high street store will process it, yes, Though what tends to happen is the person on the machine has had training that says "anything with E6 on the film canister, tell 'em we need to send it away - this machine can't do it!"

A decent mail-order lab will usually sort out cross processing for you - for example Peak Imaging charge an extra £1.10 a roll and take an extra day to process, but at least they'll get it right.
 
Awesome Thanks... I have just been looking for some E6 film but cannot seem to find anything with "E6" SHouting out at me... is there something I should be looking for?

Thanks
 
X processing really increases contrast. With the earlier version of Fuji Provia (RDP) I would over expose the film by 2 stops then pull the processing by two stops to try and lower the contrast.
 
Its unlikely that anywhere on the high street will do it for you, developing E-6 in C-41 chemicals contaminates them so the dev, fix etc all have to be dumped and replaced. Of course it depends on the knowledge of the person, they may do it for you when the chemicals are reaching the end of their life.

Some mail order place will do cross processing:

Peak Imaging will do cross processing in either way for a small extra fee:

http://www.peak-imaging.com/htmls/film_processing.htm

Fuji Lab linked below will as well for £1.50 extra:

http://www.photofilmprocessing.co.uk/lomographyfilmprocessing.html

If crossprocessing E-6 in C-41 you might want to ask for 1 stop of pull processing to decrease contrast and if doing C-41 in E-6 a 2 or 3 stop push to increase the contrast. I'm not sure if the Fuji lab above would do that for you but Peak Imaging will for another small fee.
 
Last edited:
I was in a Jessops in central London the other day and they still process C41 in house. Cross processing is not something I normally do but I asked them just out of interest and they said they would be happy to cross process for me at no extra cost.

I think it's really a case of asking in the individual branches as some of the staff are a little more clued up than others.
 
So if I developed the E-6 film at home with C-41, I could then take them to a highstreet store to be printed normally?
 
purenvdesign said:
So if I developed the E-6 film at home with C-41, I could then take them to a highstreet store to be printed normally?
Click to expand...

You could but it's not the most economical way to do it, most High St places will charge you more for prints if you have them done seperately from the processing. Unless you only want 1 or 2 prints doing you're better off letting them process and print the whole lot.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top