C-41 At Different Temperatures 

I love your channel; it is among the most competent in all things film. I regularly do home dev Kodak cine stocks in C41. I'm anal about temperature and time because I want the most accurate result for the base and take it from there, and your experiment corroborated that. My negatives are more contrasty and denser (1 stop?) than when I shot 35mm on film projects developed in a proper ENC2 lab. However, the colour channels are relatively parallel; at least, I didn't see a repeating pattern pointing to something off when using the "wrong" C41 process. Thanks for sharing your wealth of knowledge. Much appreciated!!

Brilliant video. I use the cinestill c41 kit and thay provide a table for push and pull processing c41 at different temperatures. So this video was an eye opener when it comes to how different temperatures effect color and contrast. Again briliant video!

As a heads up, if you’re using your phone, make sure the yellow shift filter for blue light reduction that a lot of phones have now is off. I was wondering why the standard result looked so icky and yellow, that’s why. Once I turned that setting off they looked like they should.

Thank you for putting this together! I develop C-41 at home and have had this question in mind for a while. So the answer is: Just follow the directions. hehe But now we know what happens when we follow the alternate directions, and why. Cool!

Thank you. Glad I stuck to 38 degrees in the past.

Very cool stuff. I for one would accept all of those sample images. I am usually developing color in lower temperatures, because 3:15 is not easy when doing 5 films at the time. It takes some time to get developer in and out. I do not mind those color shifts, they are all acceptable to me.

I will be so happy if you will make same test for higher temperture. It's really interesting

The artist who taught me ra4 printing and C41 dev 10 years ago always developed her films at 30°C with a jobbo. She told to me it should be at 38°C but she preferred the results at that 30°C because it was less contrasted and saturated for her taste and style. She had no issue printing them in the darkroom but she's a real master in that regard 🙂. But when she developed a few of my rolls at 30°C if found some a bit lackluster and others totally ok. But when I'm in charge, I always do it at 38!

This is very, very useful information. Thank you very much! Have you done similar tests for the RA-4 process?

Kodak is very strict saying C-41 developer should never be used more than once if developing in Paterson type tanks. Fuji Hunt on the other hand, makes their Film X-press kit for 5L, And they allow for about 70 films in tanks for the 5L, without replenisher even available for this kit. They say however, that for "professional" results, developer should not be reused. I have no test strips, nar do I have a densitometer, but in practice, the kit can produce acceptable negatives as suggested, with slight addition of time. Same goes with Tetenal type press kits (those with combined beach fix, often in very small quantities). They are not intended for one shot use even by manufacturers. It would be interesting to test, how many rolls you can develop with one liter of developer, reused without replenishing, until the results will shift out of the acceptable limits. Using a quality chemistry such as Fuji, and compensating time with instructions printed with Fuji Hunt Film X-press kit. Any standard, professional developer with starter can be used, as the developer in this kit is perfectly standard. This would be interesting, because many of the younger people using these kits are claiming they can use them to develop amounts of films with their kits that is simply not possible, if anything even resembling a good negative is desired. Many people in the internet are claiming they can get something like 40 rolls per liter of developer. Fuji says 12, Kodak insists that developer can be used only once if not replenished/

I've always wondered about this but never had the time to actually test it out. Very, very interesting. If you're making RA-4 prints, based on these results, I wouldn't recommend lower temperatures for sure. Even if scanning digitally, where there's a fair amount of latitude for doing corrections after the fact, I still probably would try to keep it as close to as in-spec as possible, but... it is nice to see what happens so if you do run into that situation for some reason (processing your film in a hotel room, etc), you know what to expect and can deal with it accordingly.

Are the Rollei kit and the Fuji Hunt kit actually identical in terms of chemicals? Since you’re using the times from one for the other.

Thanks for another interesting video. Another take on the same test that would be interesting is to see how much difference you get when you process at eg 36, 38 and 40 °C using the 38 degree times.

Oooh, the copy stand looks great! Should word for the intrepid compact enlarger right?

This is really good content I think a lot of people take it for granted that you absolutely MUST have the correct development temperature for C41 or it will completely ruin your film, and I think this shows that you can totally get away with it if you just want to experement and mess about

Great that you did this! I feel that scanning negatives perhaps don't tell the whole story. Could you do some quick c-prints and then scan those? In order to build a clearer picture of what's actually going on. Scanners always seem to do weird stuff with negatives, but they do prints much more accurately.

It would be nice to see the same test on E6

I expected very different results. Nice experiement. 👍

interesting... thanks for this experiment!

I like the 20c results. I would add a little yellow on the enlarger to compensate. I would like to experiment with more saturated colors. Is it true that hydrogen peroxide can increase saturation on RA-4 prints?

Like you I print RA4 - be interesting to see how the 20 degree and 30 degree print. Think I’ll stick to 38 for film - I’ve made some nice looking RA4 prints at 20 degrees for 2 mins though . 2 mins is a good time for me. Not scientific tests though

"Its not hard. Its not difficult" Sir. I feel personally attacked.

Great stuff!

Well, I just received my c41 kit but not the sous vide yet You could not make this video at a better time !

Great Test,whay i want to know,Thank you.

Differences are far less than I would've thought. Looks correctable to me in post (if I would like to have perfect colors, I would just go purely digital ;-)).

Obrigado! Agora seria interessante fazer outro teste com temperaturas mais altas compensando com diminuição dos tempos de revelação. Qual tal?

39° very nice very normal 30° a bit week doesn't really pop 25° kinda like the skin tone and the cool tilt on the studio, but the landscape was looking a bit ugly. But screams a bit more "film look" 20° looking very warm old school lighting skin tone it's ok. But my favourite outdoor landscape. Really helps make that forest green grass look more pleasing to the eye helping the other colours pop.

Given that the actual development time is very short (3 or so minutes right?), if you can but up with "very slightly less than perfect", a big sink of water at 38c is good enough, I don't think a sous-vide us strictly needed. I just get the sink up to temp, and then the individual chems to temp (adjusting those in the microwave),. Once I'm happy, I just go for it and don't worry if the temperature drops. If your room temp is 20c, you arent going to drift too far from 38 in that 3 minutes. I don't really do much with colour, and I think that also means I'm just not that fussy about it either.. Obviously if you are serious about colour, and do enough of it, then the sousvide route is far far easier. I'll tend to run a few rolls of colour maybe for a holiday, and if I have enough to make it cheaper than lab dev, I'll get the kit and run it myself..

i mostly usedd vision3 negative and ecn-2 for everything, after losing acces for jobo procesor i figure it out in home how to do stand developing in room temperature, develop and bleach for 1h, fix for 10 minut but work, i have little magenta in the shadow but i don't know why i like more this than ecn-2 in normal 40degree also i can develop old materials like orwo NC or older agfa

Do you do non-oppressive shipping to the United Kingdom? I would LOVE a copy stand but I don't think you do. (Most people/places couldn't be bothered shipping to the UK or make the cost so prohibitive that it becomes impossible!).