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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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!
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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
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!
I recently stumbled upon this video and might have found some reason for the "light leakage" effect: the film you used is in fact a Kodak Aerocolor (sells under Santa Color 100, Flicfilm Electra ...). Instead of the normal orange colored carrier material, for this film Kodak uses polyester, and polyester acts much like optical fiber: if you expose the edge to (more or less) intensive light, it will go literally through the whole film (as visible at the perforation, where light shines out of the edges). So especially with this type of film you have to keep even the end which is not in the capsule as dark as possible.
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!
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. :)
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.
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.
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.
Over the years I've shot way more 120 and large format than 35mm so it hasn't been a big deal to me. But when I do shoot 35mm I rewind carefully and leave the leader out. Now of course you can't do that on all cameras though some with auto rewind do allow it loke the Nikon F5 and some Canon EOS bodies. Though the F4 and F5 also allow for manual rewind and you don't have to hold down 3 buttons one hidden behind a door like your launching a missile as you do to engage auto rewind on the F5. Barring that a small pair of pliers works great to peel the end off the film cannister in your darkroom or dark bag. If you want to look up a complicated process look into the K14 Kodachrome process. It's pretty wild. Another one is any of the Polaroid processes whether it be the roll film, later pack camera peel apart, integral, or even the rare 35mm Polachrome instant slide film. I got to shoot and process a roll of 35mm Polachrome in 2014 and it was pretty wild. Shoots like a normal color reversal film and in each box of film is a pod. You put the film and the pod into either a manual or electric processor and out comes a developed roll of slide film. You just have to wash off the rem jet. The 8x10 and 20x24 Polaroid is equally impressive. New 55 is another one I never got to try even though I was shooting a lot of 4x5 at the time it was around. it was popular enough I couldn't find a Type 55 back for a decent price. While there were Polaroid backs for most medium format cameras and even 4x5 there was also a speed magny back for the Nikon F. One version allowed it to use peel apart polaroid pack film, the other allowed it to use standard 4x5 film holders. I've read the Edwin Land Biography and several other Polaroid books and I still don't understand the chemical process of any of it.
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. 😊
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 RUclips 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!)
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 Fujifilm when I was younger also. Later on in life I learned that the older the film is before you use it the sharper the images are. I don't know why but a nature photographer told me about that trick.
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 use the subscriptions feed! I honestly do not understand how anyone can use RUclips and *not* use the subscriptions feed. It's a million times better than just hoping that RUclips 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 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
been doing film photography for well over a decade now and no one i've met has ever used that film lead retriever (not even my photo professors) and that is insane to me. I partially stopped shooting 35mm and moved to 120mm because 35mm is so fiddley and you had to wrench the canisters open then load them in the dark. The sheer amount of hours that would have saved me over the years is blowing my mind lol
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.
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.
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
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.
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!
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.
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 :)
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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!
Someone may have said this. I've done C-41 in my bathroom in the past and a single drop of dishwasher anti-spot fluid (the blue stuff) in the stabilizer will get rid of the spots. Doesn't take much, but fixes the hard water spotting issue.
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.
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.
The first film I ever developed was C41 color. It’s easy to do if you can control the temp. I got a cheap sous vide immersion heater using an old canner for a water bath. I mostly do black and white, and send my color to a lab unless I have a bunch to do at once. The film photography project online store is the cheapest place to buy these kits.
Some observations from someone who has water about as hard as your studio does: My C-41 perishes extremely quickly if I mix it with tap water; as in, it starts giving me pink negative / green print fog in my images within days. However, if I mix it with distilled water (and keep it in a dark bottle), I can keep it a couple of months just fine. Something to try, I suppose! YMMV, though, as I use a different kit (Flic Film instead of Arista). As far as equipment goes, the only extra piece I use for C-41 vs. BW is a mop bucket as a water bath and a meat thermometer to monitor it. I usually pour warm water in at around 110 and let it fall down to 102 and then start. By the time I'm done with dev it's at 99-100, and then it's within range for bleach and fix too.
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!
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.
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
Film retrieval. Never used that for developing, we opened the cans destructively BUT sometimes the film might have rolled in by accident before being used. A short strip of used but not wanted film, any kind that still has the gelatin will do. Dampen the gel slightly to make it sticky then insert that into the canister. That should stick to the film and draw it out. Its works about as well as film retrieval tools. I suppose a bit of double sided tape on film will work too.
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).
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).
This is so exciring to watch! I had been doing film photography for many years before my old film camera broke and it was generally becoming less popular and so too expensive and rare thing.. I thought about having camera when I was 10 or 11 but only got first one when I was 13 (and it was most cheap simple modern camera with plastic lence 🙈 because my father just didn't care), even though my brother had a dark room before but he sold it, and bw old camera was hanging on the wall and I was not allowed to used it until it mysteriously disappeared.. So.. sadly whatever I was interested in my family didn't care much and I had insist and persist to have something... But later when I was 14 my aunt who had been working in photo atelier all her life (in another city) gifted me amazing old Zenit-E camera (huge and heavy and I have some funny vintage selfies made with it in the mirror 😅) .. so I was quite serious about all that stuff long ago, but didn't know the chemical process (though probably when I was 12 I bought small old book for my birthday which explained the processing and I read the part about reversable fiml because I was obsessed with making stereo-slides ~ I bought two stereoscopes and all the vintage slides from a girl who lived two floors above our apartment and also some tiny vintage cameras (hope they are still there somewhere..) I think my interest in technologies comes from my uncle who brought some useful technologies to our village house (not there I was born, but where I spent best time of my childhood) and he also was doing photography ~ first black and white, then colour, then he got to movies and was projecting silent movies for us right in the garden with a screen hung on apple trees! That was kind of Magic:-) later he worked in television and captured our village adventures on his huge video camera from work. So I was inspired a lot by all that and was official keeper of our old family photos and such stuff.. I wish I had time and resource to get back to this. Your channels are really so inspiring! At first I thought I'd just watch series about analog photography and sound, but I ended up watching everything every day 😅 because it's just SO INETERESTING!!!!
I'm late to the party here but as a person who has removed thousands of foil seals from bottles, if you use your right hand to put the knife in the left side of the foil and draw the knife around clockwise, when you get close to meeting where you started the foil naturally ends up lifting up more than enough to be easily removed with fingers so you have an easier time getting the whole bottle empty
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.
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.
1:10:20 I actually thought that it was just my experience, so it's interesting to see that other people have had the same issue. That said the one thing that I've figured out about Fuji is that for whatever reason it's really, really consistent with color corrections during printing (everything is just a slight bit cyan under natural light with common speeds like 100/200/400).
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.
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. =)
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.
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.
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.
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
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".
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Yeah Alec this was exciting, please share some more footage on the scanning process. Thanks!
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.
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.
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).
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.
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 use my cinestill c-41 kit over a few months after mixing. Just add a bit more developing time than recommended when it’s getting older. Haven’t noticed much of an issue tbh. I usually get 20-24 rolls out of it before getting new chems!
Oh, man. I used to develop b&w films in college, along with the actual photo developing. I still miss that chemical smell that clung to me (super good for you I'm sure), and that paet in total darkness when you open the bobin, roll it on the holder and pour the liquid is the most peaceful time ❤ Also hit damn i ised to get the film oht in a dark closet, and cut and try to spool them all in the dark! That tool looks way better
For the film washer, the flow isn't right to allow the wahser to complete. It's like a toilet (UK) filling at the same rate as it is emptying. It's likely the inlet is too much for the outlet to clear the water quick enough... Hope that helps 😅. Love the video 😊
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.
a fun but TOTALLY unrelated fact: there is a sink right next to the setup....
...and where those pipes happen to go is a _big_ part of the decision...
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.
This is really cool info! Thanks for sharing :)
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. 😀
That is hilarious.
A changing bag would be my recommendation - closing it properly might be a challenge after what you described … 😂
@@lurch789 I mean, he closed his eyes so it would be dark...
@@lurch789but he closed his eyes?
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 😂
I love how in the interim shots there were a few sketchy-without-context things:
-A bottle marked STAB
-A knife
-A bottle of a blood-looking liquid
16:47
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.
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.
The smell of a freshly opened can of film is wonderful. The same with magnetic tape.
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.
my lab leave the smell of the chemicals on the negatives
I hope you do a part 2 with the scanning. This stuff is wizardry to me and someday I hope to develop some film myself. Great video!
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.
@@WorldInThe01:14:45
Does he look outside to you ???????????????
@@DeltaStormYT Load into the camera
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!
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.
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!
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.
I worked in both a commercial lab and a retail in-store one. I used all of those. The minute I saw that on screen I recognized it.
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.
You mean 6x6 cm negatives?
@@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.
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 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.
Consumer still films don't have anti-halation backings.
I'm excited that the siphon washers for film are cheaper than the pippette washers I was going to buy for our chem lab...
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.
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.
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
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!
I recently stumbled upon this video and might have found some reason for the "light leakage" effect: the film you used is in fact a Kodak Aerocolor (sells under Santa Color 100, Flicfilm Electra ...). Instead of the normal orange colored carrier material, for this film Kodak uses polyester, and polyester acts much like optical fiber: if you expose the edge to (more or less) intensive light, it will go literally through the whole film (as visible at the perforation, where light shines out of the edges). So especially with this type of film you have to keep even the end which is not in the capsule as dark as possible.
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!
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. :)
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.
You realise a scanning part 2 is absolutely required, right? ;-)
Also; long live the RUclips subscription feed!!!
Wait, they got removed...
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.
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.
Over the years I've shot way more 120 and large format than 35mm so it hasn't been a big deal to me. But when I do shoot 35mm I rewind carefully and leave the leader out. Now of course you can't do that on all cameras though some with auto rewind do allow it loke the Nikon F5 and some Canon EOS bodies. Though the F4 and F5 also allow for manual rewind and you don't have to hold down 3 buttons one hidden behind a door like your launching a missile as you do to engage auto rewind on the F5. Barring that a small pair of pliers works great to peel the end off the film cannister in your darkroom or dark bag.
If you want to look up a complicated process look into the K14 Kodachrome process. It's pretty wild. Another one is any of the Polaroid processes whether it be the roll film, later pack camera peel apart, integral, or even the rare 35mm Polachrome instant slide film. I got to shoot and process a roll of 35mm Polachrome in 2014 and it was pretty wild. Shoots like a normal color reversal film and in each box of film is a pod. You put the film and the pod into either a manual or electric processor and out comes a developed roll of slide film. You just have to wash off the rem jet. The 8x10 and 20x24 Polaroid is equally impressive. New 55 is another one I never got to try even though I was shooting a lot of 4x5 at the time it was around. it was popular enough I couldn't find a Type 55 back for a decent price. While there were Polaroid backs for most medium format cameras and even 4x5 there was also a speed magny back for the Nikon F. One version allowed it to use peel apart polaroid pack film, the other allowed it to use standard 4x5 film holders. I've read the Edwin Land Biography and several other Polaroid books and I still don't understand the chemical process of any of it.
I highly enjoyed hanging out in your kitchen while you developed some film. Love this stuff.
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. 😊
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.
@@GeorgeVCohea its photo
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
What's photo?
@@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.
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.
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.
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.
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 RUclips 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!)
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 Fujifilm when I was younger also. Later on in life I learned that the older the film is before you use it the sharper the images are. I don't know why but a nature photographer told me about that trick.
I have no interest in photography or developing film whatsoever, but for some reason I’ll gladly listen to this guy talk nerdy stuff for hours.
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 use the subscriptions feed! I honestly do not understand how anyone can use RUclips and *not* use the subscriptions feed. It's a million times better than just hoping that RUclips 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. 😅
Personally I just check mostly? Though I usually just wind up with it in recs
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
been doing film photography for well over a decade now and no one i've met has ever used that film lead retriever (not even my photo professors) and that is insane to me. I partially stopped shooting 35mm and moved to 120mm because 35mm is so fiddley and you had to wrench the canisters open then load them in the dark. The sheer amount of hours that would have saved me over the years is blowing my mind lol
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.
Those machine do the exact same thing, just very hands off.
@@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.
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.
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
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.
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!
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.
FYI you can of course use a generic plastic storage tub for sous vide cookers as well (:
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 :)
Perfect timing! I'm about to develop some soon myself for the first time, and I really enjoy your humorous and informative videos!
how did it go?
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.
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.
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.
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.
The 41 in C-41 is a running number, so it was the 41st process they tried. The predecessor was C-22. Color film is EXTREMELY complicated.
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.
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!
WHAT??? AN HOUR LONG VIDEO WITH ANOTHER PART???
Sounds like dedication to me! Kudos!
This was a really fun watch!
Also, very amusing having a bottle labeled "STAB" with a knife beside it in frame for a good chunk of the video... 😂
Someone may have said this. I've done C-41 in my bathroom in the past and a single drop of dishwasher anti-spot fluid (the blue stuff) in the stabilizer will get rid of the spots. Doesn't take much, but fixes the hard water spotting issue.
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.
I rewatched the entire photography playlist on the main channel last night, just on a lark.
Then this video goes up today?
Spooky. 😂
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'm a 100% digital photog these days, but I have a couple of decades worth of film neg's, & would love to see the process involved in scanning them.
The first film I ever developed was C41 color. It’s easy to do if you can control the temp. I got a cheap sous vide immersion heater using an old canner for a water bath. I mostly do black and white, and send my color to a lab unless I have a bunch to do at once. The film photography project online store is the cheapest place to buy these kits.
Some observations from someone who has water about as hard as your studio does: My C-41 perishes extremely quickly if I mix it with tap water; as in, it starts giving me pink negative / green print fog in my images within days. However, if I mix it with distilled water (and keep it in a dark bottle), I can keep it a couple of months just fine. Something to try, I suppose! YMMV, though, as I use a different kit (Flic Film instead of Arista).
As far as equipment goes, the only extra piece I use for C-41 vs. BW is a mop bucket as a water bath and a meat thermometer to monitor it. I usually pour warm water in at around 110 and let it fall down to 102 and then start. By the time I'm done with dev it's at 99-100, and then it's within range for bleach and fix too.
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!
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.
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
Film retrieval. Never used that for developing, we opened the cans destructively BUT sometimes the film might have rolled in by accident before being used.
A short strip of used but not wanted film, any kind that still has the gelatin will do. Dampen the gel slightly to make it sticky then insert that into the canister. That should stick to the film and draw it out. Its works about as well as film retrieval tools.
I suppose a bit of double sided tape on film will work too.
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).
I was as bad as you developing. When digital and printers came I was elated, that was my way to go!
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).
This is so exciring to watch! I had been doing film photography for many years before my old film camera broke and it was generally becoming less popular and so too expensive and rare thing..
I thought about having camera when I was 10 or 11 but only got first one when I was 13 (and it was most cheap simple modern camera with plastic lence 🙈 because my father just didn't care), even though my brother had a dark room before but he sold it, and bw old camera was hanging on the wall and I was not allowed to used it until it mysteriously disappeared.. So.. sadly whatever I was interested in my family didn't care much and I had insist and persist to have something...
But later when I was 14 my aunt who had been working in photo atelier all her life (in another city) gifted me amazing old Zenit-E camera (huge and heavy and I have some funny vintage selfies made with it in the mirror 😅) .. so I was quite serious about all that stuff long ago, but didn't know the chemical process (though probably when I was 12 I bought small old book for my birthday which explained the processing and I read the part about reversable fiml because I was obsessed with making stereo-slides ~ I bought two stereoscopes and all the vintage slides from a girl who lived two floors above our apartment and also some tiny vintage cameras (hope they are still there somewhere..)
I think my interest in technologies comes from my uncle who brought some useful technologies to our village house (not there I was born, but where I spent best time of my childhood) and he also was doing photography ~ first black and white, then colour, then he got to movies and was projecting silent movies for us right in the garden with a screen hung on apple trees! That was kind of Magic:-) later he worked in television and captured our village adventures on his huge video camera from work. So I was inspired a lot by all that and was official keeper of our old family photos and such stuff..
I wish I had time and resource to get back to this. Your channels are really so inspiring! At first I thought I'd just watch series about analog photography and sound, but I ended up watching everything every day 😅 because it's just SO INETERESTING!!!!
I'm late to the party here but as a person who has removed thousands of foil seals from bottles, if you use your right hand to put the knife in the left side of the foil and draw the knife around clockwise, when you get close to meeting where you started the foil naturally ends up lifting up more than enough to be easily removed with fingers so you have an easier time getting the whole bottle empty
Thank you for being the one RUclipsr to bring up the sub feed instead of a 5 minute rant about how your videos aren't showing up.
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.
That was so thorough. Thanks! Looking forward to part 2.
This was remarkably fascinating and sublimely calming to watch...
Definitely interesting in knowing what film scanner you have
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.
1:10:20 I actually thought that it was just my experience, so it's interesting to see that other people have had the same issue. That said the one thing that I've figured out about Fuji is that for whatever reason it's really, really consistent with color corrections during printing (everything is just a slight bit cyan under natural light with common speeds like 100/200/400).
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.
I didn't even know you could process transparencies at home.
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. =)
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.
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.
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.
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
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".
Yeah Alec this was exciting, please share some more footage on the scanning process. Thanks!
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.
Always wanted to take photography in highschool, never did but now feel like I have a decent understanding of it, thanks
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.
@@lurch789 To be fair, I don't drive ;) i own a Tesla that the wife drives but I wouldn't even know how to start the thing lol
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).
A hour and 20 minutes to watch someone develop film?!
SIGN ME UP! * gets comfy *
Back when I was a kid my Dad turned out laundry room into a dark room. He was really big into black and white photography.
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.
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.
Just the other day I was thinking how do they develop color film. And poof this shows up in my inbox. Thank you!
Appreciate all your time and hard word. Safety squints Ave says that too.
I use my cinestill c-41 kit over a few months after mixing. Just add a bit more developing time than recommended when it’s getting older. Haven’t noticed much of an issue tbh. I usually get 20-24 rolls out of it before getting new chems!
Oh, man. I used to develop b&w films in college, along with the actual photo developing. I still miss that chemical smell that clung to me (super good for you I'm sure), and that paet in total darkness when you open the bobin, roll it on the holder and pour the liquid is the most peaceful time ❤
Also hit damn i ised to get the film oht in a dark closet, and cut and try to spool them all in the dark! That tool looks way better
For the film washer, the flow isn't right to allow the wahser to complete. It's like a toilet (UK) filling at the same rate as it is emptying. It's likely the inlet is too much for the outlet to clear the water quick enough... Hope that helps 😅. Love the video 😊