One extra note here: you may notice I didn't touch on what to do with the used chemicals. Yeah, that was on purpose. There's conflicting info, advice, and opinions out there and I don't feel qualified to make a suggestion one way or another. So, uh, I'll leave that up to you.
Is there anything that is really toxic if flushed down with lots of water, and it's diluted some? My guess is lots if people flush it down the drain...but maybe there is a better option....maybe adding something to neutralize toxic chemicals?
If the MSDS from these chemicals* is any indication, then yes, it's harmful. But in a more general sense, it's mostly the used bleach/fixer/blix that's a cause for concern, due to their silver contents. * I use a different kit, from Flic Film instead of Arista, but the products are likely very similar.
@@DoktorFrankenstein oh ok. Thanks for explaining. I wonder if Nile Red has a video on here explaining the chemistry? Not that I'd fully understand it lol
A long time ago, when i worked in a industrial photo lab (40000 rolls by night), i prepared C41 chemicals by scratch from the components, and I remember the most of the formulation: for the developer: about 5 gr/l of CD4 (color developer 4 an aromatic ammine) about 20g/l of potassium carbonate about 5 g/l of potassium idroxide to form a buffer at ph 10-10.1 some anti calcium agent about 5 g/l of sodium sulfite (antioxidant) a little quantity of sodium bromide, less of a gram, and potassium iodide a few mg. for the bleach: if it is brown ferric ammonium EDTA if it is green ferric ammonium PDTA some bromidric acid and potassium bromide, fun fact is possible to reuse the bleach if you use a acetic acid stop bath and areate the bleach after use. The concentration of the bleach may vary depending on the immersion time prescribed, there was faster processing (minilabs) with 45 second bleach time or standard processing 3.15minutes. for the fixer: ammonium thiosulfate sodium sulfite some EDTA some sodium hydroxide to set ph about 6.5. Most of the chemicals degrade quikly when discarded in a normal biologic treatment waste water plant (we had one) or dont have any effect when diluted( at least in the quantity you use ). I saw a comment about silver toxycity, in a roll there is probably 0.2 grams or less but if you don't want to discard it put a little quantity of steel wool (not inox) in the container, the silver will precipitate in the bottom of the flask in few minutes as black silver sulphide.
I've never developed colour films but used to do some black and white stuff. My key hint when dealing with film is to not try to develop it after a day celebrating the birth of a niece followed by a late night party. Making the room dark before unspooling the film should be done by turning off the lights, not by closing your eyes. Yes, I did waste a film before I realised what I'd done. 😀
Lol omg, yes we were told, while practising how to load the film, NOT to practice by closing your eyes because you WILL create a habit and catch yourself out in the darkroom at some point 😂
Just a hint. The spotting that you’re getting from the photo-flo is most likely an artifact of not using distilled water. Hardness in the water crystallizes out and spots the film. When I tried development with tap water, it spotted like crazy. I started using distilled water and it got much better.
Hmm. I haven't thought to try mixing the stabilizer with distilled water, but I honestly don't think that's the issue. I'm now leading more towards not mixing the solution up enough between final rinses - it seems the first couple of rolls I run are *perfect* and the later rolls get worse and worse with the residue. It was much better this time around but there were still a few spots in the end. Next developathon I'll try using distilled water with the stabilizer and see what happens!
@@TechnologyConnextras- I used to use filtered. (Brita pitcher) Tap water, especially here in Chicago post rain with high chlorine, will either give you spots like this, or areas of fuzzyness.
I skip the stabilizer they include and use 3-4 drops (at most) of photoflo in distilled water per tank of film - I found the included stabilizer too flaky.
@@mattjames4126as long as your scanning and don’t care about the longevity of the negatives that’s fine. The stabilizer isn’t photo flo for a reason. Protects against fungus, which c41 film is susceptible to.
@@TechnologyConnextras Stabilizer should be fine with (modestly hard) tap water, but I found that results tend to be better when used with distilled (or rather demineralized) water.
As a Navy Photographer, we used a plastic tub, 9 plastic bottles and an Aquarium -type immersion hearter to mix our C-41. the HARDEST part of color is Color Printing. Digital scanning of negs, eliminates this stumbling block! L❤VE your photo series!
Once you start, your life is forever changed! Started developing B&W myself a year ago, which gradually started at 35mm, then 120, and now up to 4x5in! This also led to me bulk spooling film so now I am more or less self sufficient and all I need to buy is the chemicals, the film itself, and water to dilute chems with! The perfect mix for a broke university student with a chronic film addiction! I scan with a 100mm f2.8 Canon macro lens which allows 1:1 magnification, which is super easy!
I saw this note on the SantaColor website about light leaks "we recommend you load the film indoors, and definitely not in direct sunlight as this might lead to light leaks on the first frames"
Yeah I was about to bring this up. I've heard people have issues with certain bases as they'll do something called light piping. The base can basically end up piping light similar to fiber optic cable. This is almost only ever a problem on specialty films like the santa color.
I worked at a 1 hour photo lab in the 90's, and this video brought me back to that smell. The machine we had would maintain the temps and do all these steps automatically, including drying it. Fun stuff.
That's a job i'd actually love to have. Easy enough to do stoned, love the working environment, and employee discounts on film and processes. So I'm working on getting the 1 hour photo parking lot kiosk things near me to reopen. I love my usual place that does it in-house, but more options give the one guy that manages their whole development thing a break for those like me who prefer to keep it local.
If your minilab printed too (every minilab did in the 90´s), the EP-2 developer had the strongest smell. This was the smell I remember from the late 80´s - mid 90´s. RA-4 smells much less.
I don't mind long format films because you always have very interesting things to say that I hadn't always heard. It's enjoyable to hear someone talking about something that they are passionate about. I wouldn't mind watching a similar video about scanning the film.
That "old-fashioned can opener" that you mention is called a church key :) Also, I used to work in a photo lab years back as an assistant and I can still recall the smell of the chemicals. And the oldest casette of Kodak Gold III that I used expired in the late 90s, I used it in 2002 or so, turned out pretty wonky. If only I could remember where I put those prints...
Somewhere around the place I have some unexposed glass plates from the 1920s. One of these days I shall get round to discovering just how bad the fogging is after a century... fortunately I also have a quarter plate camera which fits the plates.
The greedy cup siphon auto-rinser is so clever to me. Fully automatic, no need for external controls, etc. Yes it's finnicky, but it's quite an elegant way to auto-wash things like that.
I haven't done film photography since 11th grade (which was about 10 years ago now) but the further along you went with this, the more I remembered about the process, so this was a fun little nostalgia trip for me. Thanks!
I think that Santa Color is one of the films that is prone to light piping due to no anti-halation layer. Loading the film into a camera in harsh light could be the cause of your problems.
also taking the film leader out in light aswell is not recomended (on the package) because the film being so thin and the cartridges felt being meant for normal film thiccness.
I suspect the difference is just the color of the film. The Santacolor is nearly completely transparent, so any light leak in the middle will shine through more layers of film before being attenuated compared to a dark standard C41 base.
@@korhonenmikko No, they don´t have remjet, but they do have antihalation layers in the emulsion. Last film marketed for still photography by Kodak with remjet was Kodachrome. Because K-14 could be developed by a specialist labs only, remjet was not a problem in this film.
I was a literal photo lab manager (Noritsu Machines) for Kroger for 3 years right as digital cameras (think 2000 -2001) started becoming popular. This was a throw back for me. We used Safety-Kleen for the waste - they are still around. And bonus - if you would like some very old, unused 35mm color film as well as some more niche stuff (I think, haven't looked at them in a while), hit me up. I'd love for them to go to a good home like yours.
Safety-Kleen is still around because it is an industrial scale general waste chemical disposal corporation. Petro based oils and chemicals, lead batteries and other environmentally concerning byproducts are their bread and butter though. Film processing, for better or worse, has most probably become more trouble than it is worth for them in most areas, but Walmart is likely tying their lucrative automotive disposal contract to it's photo lab waste needs.
I believe Safety Kleen was purchased by Clean Harbors. Clean Harbors is definitely still around. I have no idea if they have any facility for private individuals to deliver hazmat. I had to set up an account with them for my company's hazmat (fluoride and peroxide, primarily, we made oral care products) and it is non trivial. Some cities have provisions for household waste, mainly for old pesticides, herbicides and car chemicals, so these chemicals should be allowed.
@@NoName-zn1sb Oh, I see. I was a victim of autocorrect. Apparently, _it_ does not understand that there is a difference between its and it‘s, but I do and never would have made such a mistake on my own.
My first real job was at a camera store in the mall. We had a Gretag mini lab in the store, and most days I was there I kept the chemistry ready to go on the machine. I can smell that vinegar smell from here, 26 years later. We had paper stock for 3x5, 5x7, and 8x10. For anything else, we'd usually send it out. A single roll of film would be developed fully for cutting in about 5 minutes. Printing an entire roll of 24 exposures on 4x6 usually took about 5 minutes, so we could process about 12 rolls an hour. The chemistry tanks we could usually run all day for the typical work load, but some times I'd change the chemistry out half way through the day. The machine had a densitometer for the given calibration targets, we usually carried fuji semi gloss paper because it was the most economical. I always took time to run a calibration print after a few hours of continuous production, because picky customers would sometimes cry about their "photos not looking good" (it was literally 99.9 percent of the time their camera skills) but I would always keep a log of the calibration times and chemistry refresh, and keep all the rollers and belts as clean as possible. Towards the end of my tenure at that job I switched to focusing on digital photo retouching and printing out the fixed imagery with a kodak thermal dye sublimation printer. Way back in 1997-1998, the writing was already on the wall that digital was going to eat film.
Seeing that film picker was a big blast from the past for me. I worked in a 1 hour photo center for like 7 years back at the height of film photos. We had a faster tape based leader puller but sometimes it didn't work so we always kept a film picker around. Using a church key in the dark box was a last resort.
It is rather eerie how often you'll binge watch a random subject. Then a perfectly fitting additional puzzle piece to the binge will pop up a day later.
I have not touched a roll of film in over 45 years, but before that I was the Quality Control Manager at a film lab in Hackensack, NJ. We processed C-41 films (prior to that was C-22). From the looks of your results I'd suggest your tongue retrieval tool did some of the damage. It would seem that at least some of the light leaks were caused via the opening "felt slider" on the film can. this can be tested my opening a roll in side of your changing bag or for more dexterity, do it in a darkroom.
Oh, you talked about cutting the leader to shape, there’s a tool out there that does that based on one fujifilm used to have for their bulkloading/press consumers called the Reszivot Monorail. Neat little tool, and handy if you buy film at 100ft rolls like i do
I use the subscriptions feed! I honestly do not understand how anyone can use RU-vid and *not* use the subscriptions feed. It's a million times better than just hoping that RU-vid shows you the latest videos of the channels you like to watch. Oh, also, I didn't expect to enjoy a video showing analogue photo development. 😅
I remember doing B&W photography and development back almost 30 years ago with my old TLR camera. Those were like 2" x 2" negatives. Talk about high quality and resolution pictures. Those made some amazing prints. It was always fun getting to spend a weekend in the dark room.
@@johndododoe1411 Yeah, something like that. I couldn't remember the exact size off the top of my head. All I knew was they were massive and very detailed.
You mentioned being able to use a church key on film canisters but you can actually also use a bottle opener! The film lab at my college (I took a class in b&w film photography last fall and it was great!) had small little light sealed rooms where’d you go with the development tank and film roll which had wall mounted bottle openers so you could just do everything in the dark.
I've always wondered why everyone is so hot about turning on notifications. I've always used the "subscriptions" feed and can tell by what I've watched last generally how far back I need to go to find what I want to, but haven't yet, watched. Crazy!
Never did much colour developing, but did a ton of B&W for years. Pulling the leader out under your lights will fog the film, at least the first few frames. I would extract the leader, trim to shape, but no more than that, before putting in changing bag and loading onto the reel. Even the trimming should be done in very low light. Try loading onto reel in the bag, rather than starting on the bench.. i think this will cure your isse re: first few frames. Fogging on one side of the negative is light-leak as you stated, having a strong overhead light with developing track open. Pro labs is IR night vision goggles, damaging to IR film off so that had to be clearly marked for processing. Edited for typos abs additional comments
I loved how you said "irrational". I run a portrait studio and everything we do is digital. It would make zero time and economic sense to be using film in a modern portrait studio. I know some people advertise themselves online as "film wedding photographers" who shoot one or two rolls of film at a wedding in addition to digital images. The problem is most of the people advertising this dont know what they are doing and for the most part the images are terrible.. but their hipster clients dont know any different.
Old-school photog here; learned B&W from my grandfather back in the '70s using stainless steel tanks, and learned color in the early '80s. Those discolorations next to the sprocket holes are "surge marks", and they come from excessive agitation. Basically, the liquid flow brings too much fresh developer in to contact with the film, causing the film to overdevelop. FYI, if the discoloration was from a light leak, the discoloration would be black like the first few inches of the film, not cyan. Color shifts are due to errors in development.
Actually, the color shifts are from a phenomenon known as “light piping”, which is a well known issue with areal recon film due to the extremely clear base. Best way to prevent it is storing the film in a light tight container, and load/unload the camera in complete darkness/very dim light. If you can see the film at all, there is a light piping risk.
This is true with black & white, but it is practically impossible to cause this in C-41 by agitating too much. The process is originally made for continuous agitation.
My 35mm camera was manual rewind, so I never rewound the cartridges all the way back, always leaving the tag out. And I'd bend the tag, or cut a notch, so I could easily tell a used cartridge from a new one.
This brings back memories. I remember developing color film at home back in the day. Personally I hate those ratcheting plastic spools. I always used the stainless steel fixed on and used a bottle opener I always found it very easy to wind the film onto the spool in the dark bag. I just used a thermometer and ran the kitchen sink to the proper temperature and had a continuous flow for the water bath. I don’t remember what chemicals I used but I remember they were powered and I think the blix was clear. I also remember they smelled terrible. I remember I had purchased these dark bottles that were accordion so you could collapse the containers as you used the chemicals to remove most of the air. I don’t remember ever having any issues storing them for months and I never had any issues with them after months of storage. Thanks for bringing back these memories it’s amazing how much stuff we forget and developing film is certainly one of those things!
I really hope you do a part two, would love to see how these come out, especially the Santa color ones. Would be pretty cool to see what effects they would have
I definitely want to see your scanner process. I just got into film photography and so far have been using labs for development and scanning. I just purchased a used Nikon CoolScan 4000 so hopefully I can do better scanning. I'm not sure home development, or even printing, will ever make sense for me but I'm glad to see the entire process.
Thanks for bringing us along for this and showing us your process p.s. I mainly only use my subscription feed for videos and don't usually watch recommended vids unless I get too curious after the 45th time it shows me the same one and my curiosity gets too great.
I used to develop B&W film in school, it was kind of fun, even though I don’t develop color film because it’s too complicated and I rather take it to a one hour photo lab. This is cool video, since there’s lots of demand for color film in recent years, I went to Walmart and there’s Fujifilm products selling out! Even Fujifilm can’t meet the popular demand of 35mm film stocks!
I would argue color film is easier. Yeah there’s an extra step but you generally do one temperature for each kind of film so the process stays the same across all c-41 films.
@@malman1080 color c-41 process is easier if you have the processor machine and the chemicals, because my cousin used to work at a drugstore and he developed multiple films in one hour!
I used to process my own film and positive prints in high school, back in the 1980s. Never tried color back then because it was too expensive for me, so only B&W. Later, in the 1990s and 2000s I did some color film but I had it processed by a lab because I didn't have any of my old equipment anymore (moving from one continent to another meant that I had to leave my stuff behind). Then of course I changed to digital. The one thing I do still have though is my last film camera, and it's a very nice one - Canon EOS Elan 7NE. The one with the eye-tracking autofocus mechanism, which didn't work for a lot of people but worked great for me (and which Canon buried for about 20 years and I think only now is bringing back). This video maybe has inspired me to get back in the saddle on color film photography. :)
This video brings me back. When i was editor and chief of the school newspaper at Florida Tech, we had a dark room for B&W photography, and a killer negative scanner for 2002. Wau better than any affordable digital camera at the time. When we needed color we shot digital on an OG Sony mavica. So it was ret a transition time. How far we have come. 😊
Love the video! Years ago I had a color darkroom in my basement. Temperature controlled baths for the chemicals and all. Developing the film is straightforward but there were no affordable scanners in those days so you had to print it on color paper. Getting the print color right is a black art. If you have an enlarger and you want to make yourself nuts for a few weeks, you might try it :)
I am familiar _enough_ with the process of color darkroom printing to know I don't want to go down that road! It's fascinating and I'm sure it would be satisfying but... it's a _lot_
It can be hard at first, but when you learn not to confuse blue with magenta or cyan, you have already learned a lot. It will take some time, but it is no black magic. Yes, there are some negatives that refuse to print in acceptable colors, but these are often very badly exposed, or have issues in developing, or film ruined by some other factors such as light leaks, strong airport scanners, etc.
Hey, I still use the subscriptions feed, all the time! :( Excellent video - I did colour a handful of times in the photo labs at school but found it so exhausting, so this took me back to hiding in the dark and hoping nobody would do something stupid while spooling films for developing. At home I only ever did B&W, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I ended up just focusing on B&W and getting into all the little technical details about that - throwing colour into the mix was a long way away, and then I no longer had time and moved and never set up another darkroom. Boo :( Now I'm just one of those boring digital people - the only thing I'm struggling to move to is mirrorless, and I'm still standing my ground on that one... For now... Looking forward to part 2 :)
excellent! quality content as usual! Along with a taller pot, if its stainless steel with a heavy bottom it will retain heat better, especially if you wrap it in a towel. I actually use cotton insulation sheets that came with hello fresh attached via a couple thick rubber bands. I would recommend for most people to use at least filtered water because the minerals will bind to particulates/hardness (calcium/iron/magnesium, etc) and cause spotting.
I used to do this professionally. The bluish tint at the beginning looks to me like the color developer was not washed out completely and or the stop bath did not reach this part of the film. The consequence is that the bleach-fixer (containing iron cyano ferrat) oxidizes the residual developer in the bottom layer that couples the cyan dye. I also notice that you don't seem to know that the orange tint of unexposed film is actually an azo coupler that turns magenta when exposed. A similar mask is used in one of the other layers. This positive masking reduces spectral overlapping between the dyes in neighboring layers. There is a lot of science involved in color films
I used to work in a 1 hour photolab right on the cusp of digital cameras becoming the norm. This process you use is very different from our chemical cartridges and giant automated machines and computers. Fun to see.
@@somegeezer It is mostly C-41RA in minilabs. It is a faster version of the standard C-41 running in higher temperature. These kits used by most hobbyists are nonstandard, and are mostly cheap copies of Tetenal´s press kit from the 1980´s.
For anyone watching in Canada, Thecamerastore in Calgary and Downtown Camera in Toronto sell various sized (0.5l to 5l) C41 kits from Unicolor, Flic Film, Cinestill etc. Other shops may also but those are the two I know of.
This brings back so much memories! When my dad would do his color film developing and I would take the developer canister and rock it back and forth back and forth back and forth. Then he got a Tumblr and I just sat there and watched!
Thank you! Loved watching this and I feel encouraged to do my own C41. LOVE film developing, it's so much fun and feels very fruitful at the end, whether the results are good or bad.
C-41 development is actually easier than B&W - because it is completely standardized (and not that sensitive to temperature and timing as, say, E-6 reversal processing). And you can mix film stocks in the same development - very handy! Color film stock has become quite expensive, so that's a drawback (especially for those who do large format). Edit: CineStill Cs41 and Tetenal ColorTec C-41 chemicals are stable for at least 6 weeks (I've used some 3 months old chemicals, and they did work, too). Maybe it is the Arista kit chemicals that are not on the same level.
Tetenal is having difficulties at the moment, as the company making chemistry for them went bankrupt. I doubt their chemistry is available anywhere at the time being. Steer clear of CineStill, those kits are not up to any standards. C-41 is not E-6 nor ECN-2, so the chemistry keeps fairly well.
@@b6983832 I've used CineStill Cs41 more than once, works fairly well (not as well as Tetenal ColorTec, which I do prefer, but similar). And yes, Tetenal is not available here in Germany at the moment.
@@c.augustin All those simplified kits are copies of Tetenal's press kit from the 1980's. Some are up to standards, but not all. I would suggest buying Fuji Hunt Film X-press kit for 5L instead. It costs about 100€ with capacity of at least 60 films, probably more. It is the standard process with separate bleach and fix. Or EnviroNeg, if you develop very much (Fuji Hunt chemistry for minilabs). The bigger packs, the cheaper it is per film. C-41 chemistry keeps quite well provided the part B of developer is stored in full glass bottles filled with inert gas. I am a bit "allergic" to CineStill because of their awful E-6 chemistry. I hope Tetenal will resume their operations some day They had (or have) many good products both in their professional and hobby lines of chemistry. Tetenal made also most of the Kodak brand B&W chemistries for European market (such as D-76, HC-110, Dektol, Photo-Flo).
After watching this video I looked up Kodak Ektar and it's shocking how much it costs now. Probably more than double since I last bought it (shortly after Kodak introduced it around 2009 or 2010). Back in the day it was easier and probably not that much more expensive to take color film to Costco (which kept their chemistry good because they did such high volumes) to get developed than try do it at home. It's telling that most C41 chemistry is either designed for travelling press photographers or commercial labs, with not much in between.
@@irtbmtind89 For 35 mm and medium format sending film in for development might still be an option (depending on location). But often film is cut in very impractical ways by these labs, and it is cheaper to do it at home. For large format, labs are not an option (unless you're doing it professionally and can handle the extreme expense - costs per sheet are above those for a roll, so the development of one shot on 4x5 costs more than 36 or 8-16 shots on roll film). The 1 liter packs of developer are fine for amateur photographers (same as with B&W chemistry), so no complaint there. Getting rid of fixer or bleach-fix in an environmentally friendly way is a problem, though.
In high school I took a photography class for a short while and that involved shooting on B&W film, developing it, printing it etc (although I sucked so much at the developer step that I don't think I actually got any usable film out of it). Watching this video I can see why the school would have gone for B&W over color given that it takes so long to get color developer up to the point at which you can develop film (even more so without the modern gadgets like this guy has).
After your B&W processing video, I got back into it after doing it in college 15 years ago. Ended up getting a bulk loader on ebay with expired HP5 and tried color after my local shop wouldn't dev a roll that got a little wet. I'm loving that by doing it DIY I can shoot motion picture film, like MotiPix from Ultrafine. Cheap and interesting film (and very easily reloadable canisters). Very excited to see how SantaColor comes out too. These are absolutely the best DIY videos on youtube, really awesome of you to make this approachable.
I was told a tip somewhere and always do it now is to microwave the bottles of chemistry to nearly the working temperature, just keep checking the plain water, before putting in the water bath. Saves loads of time!
I was "only" trying out b/w film developing and printing in a dark room (my bathroom with a red led). Results were awesome for me and doing the processing was really a chilling and slow down experience for me.
Santacolor (Kodak Aerocolor) has no anti-halation layer, absence of which promotes light piping when loading the film. I wouldn't expect even a floodlight above the tank to expose the film but if it's known to be leaky and stuff, maybe that doesn't help.
Heads up, if you find you're not super satisfied with the results you're getting, you might find its because you're using a kit with blix for a simplified process, while true C-41 processing calls for separate bleach and fixer steps. Check out the bellinifoto kit, or if you're getting through a lot of rolls, look at the Fuji Hunt X-Press kit, which makes up 5L of chemistry and is good for 70-80 rolls of film (varies based on ISO and format).
I used to do B & W development and printing when I was a teenager so all this looks familiar. I remember having film hangers that clipped on the sprocket holes, one had hooks for hanging the bottom was like the top except it had a weight. Also I had a tool designed to pop the film caps without bending them so they could be reused. I loaded bulk film and reusing the containers saved a few bucks. I'm inspired to try colour development now.
It's been year's since i used to Develop and print my own photos but i really used to like Black and White and Colour Slide Film because they where so much easier and cheaper to do yourself.
All I watch is the subscription feed, which is why I'm about 2 weeks behind on seeing this! I suppose maybe a lot of people don't subscribe to every channel they like, or maybe they spend more time keeping current than I do, but of course RU-vid wants to keep you engaged for hours and hours. Anyway, I have to now go out into the real world for a bit. I seem to remember having done C41 processing back in the 1980s, having set up my apartment bathroom as a darkroom. I was confused by the "Blix", and thought I'd remembered a "bleach" process, so now I guess they've combined bleach and fixer. Color was more difficult than black and white back in the day, but I think I even made at least some color prints with my enlarger, and later discovered an easier print process called "Cibachrome" (going by memory alone). I remember the Cibachrome being very high contrast with very vibrant colors. It's also possible that was used to make prints from slides because I remember black borders on the prints. (Now where did I put all that stuff? I hope I don't discover bad chemicals deep in the bowels of my garage at some point in the future! Apologies to whoever discovers it after I pass on!)
I'll tell you one thing that has made my life easier is that I swapped my changing bag for a little changing tent. So much extra space to work with and less hand sweats. I think I paid about $50 ish on adorama or some place like that. You have a real good idea there doing all that first part outside of the bag, I always do it inside and it's such a pain to feel around and try to flush cut blind so I'll be doing it your way next time. Thanks for that!
10 месяцев назад
Yeah Alec this was exciting, please share some more footage on the scanning process. Thanks!
28:53 Tip: If you shoot with an EOS-1 series SLR, there is a custom function that will rewind film and leave the film leader out. Not sure about Nikon’s equivalent pro SLR cameras cuz I’ve always been a Canon shooter. 😊
Even back to the Minolta Maxxum 9000 had a leader out function. Most of the pro cameras did this because people might need to change speeds mid roll. Was also really handy for developing.
@@minigpracing3068 I never understood why they made the point & shoot cameras to rewind the leader into the cartridge. We had to pull the leader out from each and every film in the minilab where I also helped as a teenager.
Thank you for creating this video. Film is complicated and amazing. I love the range of light levels that can be captured in a single exposure of neg film. Latent image is formed during the light exposure; it's very small - in each sufficiently exposed AgX crystal it may be only a handful of silver atoms that are reduced from silver ion to silver metal. This provides a tiny silver substrate on which the reduction of silver ion to silver metal by the developer can proceed more quickly, so that crystals with latent image are developed within the allotted time and those without latent image don't. The oxidized developer combines with the couplers near it in the film to form dye molecules; coupler molecules have large organic segments that ballast them so they and the formed dyes stay in the film. There are some light absorbing dyes that are added to adjust the speed of the layers...some of these are water soluble so they may be what you see come out in the initial water soak. The bleach converts silver metal (formed from silver ion during development) back to silver ion so it can be dissolved and washed out by the fixer.
As I was searching for a comparison between b&w and colour film development, you upload a video to complement your previous ones to round out your coverage of film. Thank you for this information
I have done high school holograms, in general developing almost any films aren't hard. Doing it in the dark room is challenging however, especially when you are given a filtered incandescent flashlight (red and green LED flashlight can either be bought or DIY'd and honestly it's somewhat better but remember brightness and sensitivity to general wavelength matter too - it's important not to overdo the dark room illumination or you could accidentally expose the films, when in doubt, check your film box for what color of safe light to use).
In the late 90's early 2000's the local photo lab sold the empty cartridges as keyrings. I have some made of Agfa and Kodak in my desk drawers. Who would've imagined some people would reuse them twenty years later.
We useddto take empty Konica film cartridges from the local minilab, because these were of that type which could be opened without destroying it. Kodak and Fuji can't be opened without destroying the cartridge. I don't remember how it was with Agfa cartridges.
TBH we use a sous vide cooker in one of my labs to do precise water baths. It's actually a lot better at maintaining a steady temp then our older laboratory style hot water bath.
As a kid in the 60's I had a 120 roll plastic camera, then a Kodak "Instamatic" in which I used Kodachrome to produce slides for use in a Projector- then I had a Praktika slr using 35mm but never got into deeveloping as the set up costs were very expensive here in the UK.
You're correct at 1:14:47. The light leaks are from the clear base stock. It pipes light like a fiber optic. That's why estar base filmstocks are brown. It probably happened from when the film was new and had the leader out of the can collecting light like a solar panel and piping it into the can
I run my college's darkroom and love this kind of stuff! Whenever i talk to people about my photography they always are surprised i do my own c41 but like you said it really isnt that bad, especially if you have lots of equipment
Personally I've had really good results with even 6-month-old C-41 chemicals (using the CineStills powder kit). Once mixed, I keep the blix and the developer in black accordion bottles with most of the air squeezed out, and the photos I develop with the old chems look just as good as the freshly mixed stuff. I think keeping the light and air out is mostly all you need. You can also do WAY more than 10 rolls with one set of chems. I've done 20 rolls without trouble and I've heard of others pushing it as far as 30. You just need to make note of how many rolls you've developed so you don't lose track of your dev times. For heading the chemicals, I put the sous vide, the chem bottles, and even the whole dev tank in a Rubbermaid type bin full of water (which, when drained, doubles nicely as storage for the whole development kit). Definitely helps a lot to have a big bin full of hot water to function as thermal mass. I also do spin development with continuous agitation and for my standards at least it works just as well as inverting, while allowing it to sit in the water bath and maintain temp and being much less prone to causing a mess. I've found that filling the bin with hot water from the bathtub is the fastest way to get up to temperature with such a large volume of water. Also the thin plastic walls of the accordion bottles are much faster at letting the heat into the chems than glass bottles. To be clear, NOT saying you're doing anything wrong. Any process that works is a good process! Heck, even a process that doesn't quite work can be a good process. (shout out to Attic Darkroom). Messing around with the process is a big part of this hobby. I'm only sharing my personal approach in the hopes that something in there might be of use. And because it's fun to share. =)
I was a latecomer to digital photography and only purchased one after full frame sensor DSLR's matured enough to my satisfaction. Would love to see you do a video on film scanning. I use a Nikon Coolscan 9000 with numerous firewire dongles to get it to work my a recent model Macintosh (at the firewire 200 speeds). Scanning can be a major hit or miss with the better 3rd party scanning software applications. Most of the time the colors are very nice but many times not so good and even Photoshop can't fix. Have been a PS user for nearly 30 years. We love film, hate the pain. Personally, I prefer to take it to a pro lab for processing - if you can find one. The one hour places usually are good for film processing but do be cautious. It seems that film photography is more of a minor hobby these days. For film processing E-5 in my case in the past, "TIME AND TEMPERATURE".
The artifacts along the sprocket holes of the film looks like light piping, which is common (for b&w film, at least) with a clear (PET, for example) base.
I've always wanted to process film and make prints, but never had the opportunity, funds, or room. Then once digital cameras came out, I figured it was an obsolete science. But if given a chance, I'd try it. If everything was supplied and I was given training. Btw, I used Polaroid 35 mm film a few times. The prints turned out better than Fuji or Kodak. Richer colors. I only used it a few times because of availability.
The only way I've seen C41 done in the past is with a huge great enormous machine... how things are done "at home" is always very interesting. ... "brown coloured film".... I've always considered it Orange rather than Brown! ;)
It's not "orange colored"! These are two positive masks to reduce the spectral overlapping. One is yellow and the other is magenta giving the apparant orange positive mask. This important invention made the color negative film marketable in the first place. Without it the gamut is greatly reduced due to wash out between neighboring dye absorption spectra
With the film washing device. it probably requires that the input flow to be a bit lower than the flow of the drain in order to break the siphon and not continually drain itself
Films with clear backing can be prone to light-piping through the plastic. Loading the film into the camera in bright light can be a problem, and likewise when you preload onto the reels in bright light could be a cause.
Good call, the camera loading may have been done in subdued light but the preloading of the reels was definitely not. I've used a film called Flic Film Electra that I think is the same source and it warned about light piping as well.
For that reason the back side of most films (Agfa Kodak) have a dark green dye that washes out during processing. It provides good suppression of diffuse light and internal reflection
Oh wow, I just finished my first ever roll of 35mm film, and you upload this video! I might have mine sent off to be developed for my first ever roll though 😂
I remember doing black and white photo-stuff with large sheets of photo paper. The time in almost pitch black rooms with the faintest of red illumination preparing very DIY cameras cutting and loading the things was great. Developing came down to three baths and then running the paper through a speed-modded lamination machine to drive away the water before the paper takes too much of a liking to it. This here seems more chill in a weird manner.
3D Printing misadventures? Looks like hot knives to me..... BTW, I have found distilled water in the stabilizer can make for better results. Doesn't matter so much for the other steps.
This reminds me of when I was processing color slides. Ektachrome E2/E3 process at first. The kit was $5 and did 16 (I think) 24 exposure rolls. Exciting times for a teenager! The process operated at 75 degrees F. Later E4 process was 85 degrees. There were 7 different chemicals all provided as powders.
The light leak is definitely light pipping caused by the clear film base acting similar to a fiber optic cable. Both Kodak aerocolor and adox CHS 100 II are noted to have this phenomenon among others I'm sure. The Adox canister has a label to the effect of, to keep in original package until loading and return to package upon unloading.
