Topic: color film in bw chemicals

[formica]

i could swear that someone mentioned this recently, but i can't find it. has anyone processed colour film in bw chemicals? how long did you develop for? i want to try this out, but i don't know how long to develop for. any ideas out there?

                      william

[Francois]

I've never done it but I think moominsean did...
From memory it was diafine for something like 20 minutes...
Maybe you can find the info on the massive chart
http://www.digitaltruth.com/devchart.html

[formica]

thanks for the suggestion. i'll more than likely be using ilfotec lc29 when i do it. i guess i could just go for 20 minutes and see what i get with it. unfortunately the development chart only tells you about bw film, not colour.

           william

[Andrea.]

yep, LC29 will be fine. I think I did 20mins but quite recall. ANyway, if you look here http://farm1.static.flickr.com/107/311401335_e73c66bfb5_m.jpg you will see one of the ones I did

[formica]

that looks nice andrea. is that scanned from a print or negative. and if it was negative was it scanned as bw or as colour?

              william

[Andrea.]

Scanned neg as colour. Difficult to wet-print from a ne like this as it is dense

[gothamtomato]

yep, LC29 will be fine. I think I did 20mins but quite recall. ANyway, if you look here http://farm1.static.flickr.com/107/311401335_e73c66bfb5_m.jpg you will see one of the ones I did

Andrea, I can see just one image, but it is GORGEOUS.

What film was that shot on? And when you do this process,  do you expose the film normally?

Thanks.

[Andrea.]

It's all a bit hit and miss. Can't recall the exact way I did it but I should imagine I guessed the exposure - it was taken in a Kodak Twin 20 which gives little room for getting the exposure right - using Fuji NPH. The lens had been smeared with vasaline for the blurred effect and this was the only usuable shot I believe. Good fun and a great way to waste film - and that is what its all about isn't it?

[al]

I used to do a fair bit of this before I got into C41, purely as a way of wasting a job lot of cheap expired film without breaking the bank on lab development.

It's probably not worth worrying too much about which developer to use, the biggest problem is the dark orange mask which makes the negatives dense and low contrast, although they scan OK.  I just picked a development time based roughly on monochrome films of the same speed, and added a bit for luck!  The orange mask makes things so bad that all the other factors are probably insignificant!

But it does work (for scanning at least) and is good fun!

[Francois]

Actually, I don't think you need to change the processing time to account for film sensitivity like in B&W!
Color films are designed to be processed for a standardized time in the same soup.
So once you figure out how long to process, no matter the sensitivity, the times will work.

You could do a test. Get a cheap roll of color film (1$ film should be good enough).
Expose an average contrast scene, same picture on all 24 exposures... that shouldn't take too long.
Then, do a clip test.
In the darkroom, pull a short length of film (6 inches), cut and process. Do the same with different processing times until you have processed all the film. Then choose the one you like best and process for that time/temperature.

If you have a film leader extractor, it's the time to use it! If you don't, just make sure the film doesn't get exposed by accident. Using an empty black photo paper bag is the best way to go. Kodak film cans with the gray plastic top might not be the best...

[moominsean]

never used diafine for color. d-76 for about 20 minutes. it pulls the silver out, and if the less time you develop, the fainter the image. and the negs will be very dense and orange.

[cpierce]

Just one word from experience, color film will deplete your developer about 10x faster then bw film.  If I recall, there was post here some time ago on developing color film and the fact that you could use the developer forever before seeing any real negative effects on processing.  I think the self life was like years even after used many times.   This maybe something to consider if you have lots of cheap color film to play with... (C-41 film)



cp

[Ed Wenn]

Just one word from experience, color film will deplete your developer about 10x faster then bw film.  If I recall, there was post here some time ago on developing color film and the fact that you could use the developer forever before seeing any real negative effects on processing.  I think the self life was like years even after used many times.   This maybe something to consider if you have lots of cheap color film to play with... (C-41 film)

cp

This is a very good point - assuming the comment about colour film depleting b/w chemicals more quickly is true.

Why use up your b/w chemicals seeing as how the colour ones will last fo'ever? After reading Al's excellent article/post from a couple of months ago about his experiences taking liberties with colour film processing chemicals it actually makes sense to go and get a colour kit and not waste yr b/w chemicals on colour film.

Unless of course, you have a load of b/w chemicals to use up, or you're doing it for a particular effect.

[formica]

Just one word from experience, color film will deplete your developer about 10x faster then bw film.  If I recall, there was post here some time ago on developing color film and the fact that you could use the developer forever before seeing any real negative effects on processing.  I think the self life was like years even after used many times.   This maybe something to consider if you have lots of cheap color film to play with... (C-41 film)

cp

This is a very good point - assuming the comment about colour film depleting b/w chemicals more quickly is true.

Why use up your b/w chemicals seeing as how the colour ones will last fo'ever? After reading Al's excellent article/post from a couple of months ago about his experiences taking liberties with colour film processing chemicals it actually makes sense to go and get a colour kit and not waste yr b/w chemicals on colour film.

Unless of course, you have a load of b/w chemicals to use up, or you're doing it for a particular effect.

good points ed. for me i'm curious about the effect. but also, i've never seen the colour chemical kit for sale here, and i believe it's something that probably can't be shipped internationally because of it involving chemicals.

can you reuse developer? i'd just been tossing it after i used it. i knew you could re-use fix, but what's the story on developer?

                          william

[LT]

you can re-use some/ most developers, but you need to adjust the times for each re-use, and they quickly become too long to bother.  Ilford used to publish the  figures ... they still might - check out the developer fact sheets over at the ilfordphoto website.  It's probably only worth doing if you're going to be developing films directly after you used it the 1st time though - otherwise the developer is likely to go off.

I used to use perceptol for up to 3 times, but I''m a  bit more fussy about my film development now.

[Francois]

I went through apug and found 2 links that might be of interest.
The first one is ok
http://www.apug.org/forums/forum37/24568-experimentation-color-b-w.html

but the interesting part is on this one
http://www.apug.org/forums/forum37/42617-cross-processing-c41-rodinal-mystery.html

And it still has me puzzled...

[al]

can you reuse developer? i'd just been tossing it after i used it. i knew you could re-use fix, but what's the story on developer?

You can do whatever you want, the rules are only there to be broken

The results I got were all done with one-shot developers after they'd been used for developing normal black and white film, i.e. they were supposed to be thown away.  This seemed like a great way to get the final life out of the developer and use up some very cheap expired ?0.15 per roll film at the same time!

I suggest giving it a go next time you do some developing and have some developer ready to chuck out.   Just guess at a development time, it'll work to some extent and it's amazing how good scanners are at picking out images from dreadful looking negatives!