Home color developing?
Jason Smith
hi. it costs about $3 to develop a roll of color film at a one-hour lab
here in chicago. i was wondering if any of you have experience with
developing color negs in c-41 yourselves with a kit. is it cheaper and how
critical do you have to be with the temp. AND how many steps are there?
thanks!
that's my web page
--
-------
Jason Smith
jsm...@wwa.com
CHICAGO
-------
William Laut
Jason Smith (jsm...@wwa.com) wrote:
: hi. it costs about $3 to develop a roll of color film at a one-hour lab
: here in chicago. i was wondering if any of you have experience with
: developing color negs in c-41 yourselves with a kit. is it cheaper and how
: critical do you have to be with the temp. AND how many steps are there?
:
: thanks!
Jason:
I recently received the formulas for C-41 so that I can mix my own
chemistry from bulk chemicals. The reason is that the kits are so darned
expensive that it'll always be cheaper to have the one-hour lab do it for
you.
On the other hand, once you've amortized the cost of the scale and other
sundry equipment, the cost per liter of chemistry drops to a small
fraction of what a kit costs. If you do much color, it is well worth
getting the recipes and mixing it yourself.
Bill
brumer
jsm...@wwa.com (Jason Smith) writes: > hi. it costs about $3 to develop a roll of color film at a one-hour lab
> here in chicago. i was wondering if any of you have experience with
> developing color negs in c-41 yourselves with a kit. is it cheaper and how
> critical do you have to be with the temp. AND how many steps are there?
>
> thanks!
>
>
> that's my web page
>
> --
> -------
> Jason Smith
> jsm...@wwa.com
> CHICAGO
> -------
William Laut
brumer (@cmc.net) wrote:
: jsm...@wwa.com (Jason Smith) writes: > hi. it costs about $3 to develop a roll of color film at a one-hour lab
: > here in chicago. i was wondering if any of you have experience with
: > developing color negs in c-41 yourselves with a kit. is it cheaper and how
: > critical do you have to be with the temp. AND how many steps are there?
2) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
: >
: > thanks!
: >
: > http://miso.wwa.com/~jsmith
: >
: > that's my web page
: >
: > --
: > -------
: > Jason Smith
: > jsm...@wwa.com
: > CHICAGO
: > -------
: I've done a lot of home developing. It is very easy, and you can get absolutely fantastic results, but you will end up spending a lot more money than you ever would spend at a commercial lab. Do it for the fun, and to get the results you want, but don
't do it with the idea of saving money.
I agree. As for the points I underlined in your original post:
1) It's nowhere near cheaper if you use a prepackaged kit. It only
becomes cheaper if you mix everything from bulk chemicals.
2) The temperature is *very* critical, specifically for the developer.
This is where tempering presoaks are essential, in order to stabilize
the temperature of the film and tank before starting the development,
so that the developer will remain to within +/- 0.5F of the required
temperature.
There are five steps:
1) Presoak to temper everything.
2) Developer
3) Blix
4) Wash
5) Stabilize
Bill
Jason Smith
Thank you very much everyone for your responses so far! I've decided to
keep taking it to the lab, but wintertime is gonna suck as far as that
goes. I was tempted for a second by the fancy jobo processors, but it all
seems like such an incredible hassle, especially if it's not gonna save me
any money.
for all the talk about newsgroups in the media, this one sure helped me
out. i'll see y'all online i'm sure!
i'm at:
http://miso.wwa.com/~jsmith
Thomas J. Purcell
replenished line. This way it works out to about 30 cents a roll. If you
use the prepackaged kits, the price goes up. If you are not processing
enough film for a particular volume of chemistry, bring it in for
develope only at the corner 60 minute place. TP
David Kao
wl...@alpha.delta.edu (William Laut) wrote:
>brumer (@cmc.net) wrote:
>: jsm...@wwa.com (Jason Smith) writes: > hi. it costs about $3 to develop a roll of color film at a one-hour lab
>: > here in chicago. i was wondering if any of you have experience with
>: > developing color negs in c-41 yourselves with a kit. is it cheaper and how
> 1) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>
>1) It's nowhere near cheaper if you use a prepackaged kit. It only
> becomes cheaper if you mix everything from bulk chemicals.
>
>2) The temperature is *very* critical, specifically for the developer.
> This is where tempering presoaks are essential, in order to stabilize
> the temperature of the film and tank before starting the development,
> so that the developer will remain to within +/- 0.5F of the required
> temperature.
>
> There are five steps:
>
> 1) Presoak to temper everything.
> 2) Developer
> 3) Blix
> 4) Wash
> 5) Stabilize
>
>
>Bill
>
>
>
>
What you need is give it a try by paying some cost for a chemical kit and
a development tank with a film reel. Once you do it you will realize that
all it takes is some practice with water (instead of real chemicals).
You will master it very quickly.
I have done many many C-41 and E6 film processes without any fancy equipments
in my bathroom sink. I never failed once. Printing (paper) is a different
matter though. The volume in printing will burn you out very quickly if you
do it without help of some type of processors.
David
Jerry Houston
Jason Smith wrote:
>
> hi. it costs about $3 to develop a roll of color film at a one-hour lab
> here in chicago. i was wondering if any of you have experience with
> developing color negs in c-41 yourselves with a kit. is it cheaper and how
You can do it for less than $2 a roll, unless you're talking about
something special, like high-speed 220 professional.
You can get kits that require only two main chemicals plus a stabilizer,
which is essentially a final rinse and wetting agent.
Temperature control is important, but not beyond the abilities of most
home darkroom enthusiasts. A small plastic dishpan to keep your
chemical bottles and developing tank surrounded with the right
temperature of water will set you back about $1.99 at K-Mart.
Development and bleach-fix times are fairly short, so the working
temperature doesn't have to be maintained over a long period of time.
Some of the kits can even be used at room temperature, with fairly long
times required, but that eliminates the need for temperature control
altogether. You have to KNOW what the temperature is, but you don't
have to do anything to KEEP it there.
The attractions to doing your own C-41 are usually OTHER than saving
money. I have nearly all my 35mm film developed at a high-quality
1-hour place near me, and I appreciate being able to get a quick set of
prints to work from. However, there isn't a quality 1-hour lab near me
that will handle 120-size film, so I nearly always do my own.
It's also nice to know that you can develop them anytime, and start
printing right away. Or that you can develop film that you might not
want to send out for reasons of privacy. Or that you can bulk-load your
own color film and not have to convince a commercial lab that it's safe
to process.
All the above applies to the C-41 NEGATIVE process, now, which I assume
is what you were asking about. Nothing in the world would ever compell
me to make a couple hundred 4x6 prints by hand. That's what automatic
printers are for!
--
Reply to me personally by first removing the tilde ~ from my
address. It's there to make life difficult for spammers.
David Kao
Jerry Houston <~jhou...@walldata.com> wrote:
>Jason Smith wrote:
>>
>> hi. it costs about $3 to develop a roll of color film at a one-hour lab
>> here in chicago. i was wondering if any of you have experience with
>> developing color negs in c-41 yourselves with a kit. is it cheaper and how
>> critical do you have to be with the temp. AND how many steps are there?
>
>You can do it for less than $2 a roll, unless you're talking about
>something special, like high-speed 220 professional.
>
It is possible to get down to less than $1 a roll if you have the quantity and
use chemicals wisely.
It is probably not very widely known that C-41 bleach is a chemical that you
can reuse almost indefinitely. I have used a 500ml C-41 bleach over 2 years
and still using it. The trick is that you need to use a fish tank air pump
to pump air into it for 20 minutes or so before reusing it. This is to cause
it to rust by the air (oxidation) which restores it back to the desired state
for bleaching. Well, after using this technique for a long time the ph of the
bleach needs to be rechecked and adjusted. If you don't have a ph meter to do
so then just discard it and buy a new bleach and start it all over. In order
to reuse it for a long time you need to add a water wash step between develop
and bleach to reduce chemical carrying over from develop into bleach which
would cause the bleach ph to change. This step needs to be done very fast
to not lengthen continuing development during the wash step.
Since C-41 bleach is the single most expensive chemical in the C-41 kit, by
reusing it you will be able to reduce the development cost significantly.
You can buy bulk C-41 developer, 1 gallon or even 3.8 gallon and use as little
as needed each time to mix 500ml or a liter a time for use. The C-41 fixer is
also very cheap in concentrate form. Just mix a liter or so for use each time.
as a result the cost for developing a roll of 35mm film can be less than a
buck.
I even discard the developer and fixer after developing a roll only.
The only problem with this technique is that once the bottles are opened it is
said the chemicals will not last. However, the partially used C-41 chemical
if tighly sealed in original bottles seems last over a year without any
visible problems. Since none of my films is critical I simply trusted the
chemicals and have had no sigle failure for years. I used all chemicals up
to almost the last few cc's.
BTW, I develop my films in my bathroom sink with a film tank. The sink is a
natural water bath that keeps temperature close enough to produce satisfactory
results. This technique is not only saving me money but also save my films
from scratched by lab operators.
Regards,
David