MagnumLite
Member
Disclaimer : I am a novice when it comes to processing film, recently got hooked on B&W processing and out of curiosity and maybe a tad of stupidity I decide to try color processing. Best not to try and ask me question, most probably I don't know or can't answer them!
Curiosity kills the cat, certainly I hope not in my case. I was reading all these interesting post about film processing and pick up B&W here and elsewhere on the net and to my credit I tried out a total of 3 films with some relative success but nothing to crow about before the C-41 bug hit me. Reading about it sounds intriguing with plenty of risk, then again I don't have any reputation to think off and so why not just give a try. Honestly, looking for data on C-41 on the net is almost a hopeless cause, maybe my google power not that good enough, anyway after a few weeks of research I come to my own conclusion that perhaps Digibase C-41 kit would best suit my purpose. This is where the hole in my pocket gets bigger, this stuff is not cheap to come by, easy enough to source for it and in my instance I got it from macodirect.de. I guess they shipped anywhere if you willing to pay for it and I paid dearly, the shipping cost equals to the Midi kit and 4 rolls of Rollei ISO200 film which is Euro 83... now waiting for that conversion from the credit card company.
My choice for the Digibase C-41 is simply because it claimed to be able to process at a wider range of temperature rather than the almost standard temp of 38degC. I don't have any Jobo processing kit, so this is going to be almost caveman like processing and I'm not going to play around with heated water and etc. My test film are two rolls of Agfa Vista 400, so comes the crucial part, the mixing of the chemicals. According to my "notes" I have to mix the chemicals at 45degC, this is critical, so no choice heat up some water in the tub, and dropped in a bottle of distilled water to be "tempered", but the darn thing won't go beyond 41degC, least to say my patience got the better of me and I mixed all the chemistry at 40degC!!
With all the chemistry mixed and ready to go, it's time to roll up the films into the processing tank... I have done this a total of 3 times before, the first was smooth for a virgin, the 2nd and 3rd time there was a snag and for the this time it took me nearly half and hour to get it right for the first roll :sweat: I was cursing under my breath and my wife was giving me that :think: look and my kids was going :what:, anyway how do most of you guys did this? Do you use cotton glove or something because when I was fondling the film in the dark, I'm pretty sure I rough it up quite alot. The 2nd roll was a bit easier elsewhere, so I'm just gonna put the blame on the film reel
. With that done, it's time to monitor the chemicals, it was like 30degC in the early evening but I had to go somewhere and only got back around 10pm before I start my processing and by then the temperature dropped 0.5deg. I did my calculation for the timing, darn no 29.5degC in my time chart, so with a little adjustment I start the developer process and set my time for 9min 37sec, I somehow felt that with all the mishap I going through, most probably this experiment will end up with a zero success rate.
So there I go, processing color film, not in my wet bathroom but a totally dry living room! I did get my bottles all ready for used and unused chemicals, sure got a bit bloated with the downed bottled mineral water! Half and hour latter I was down to my last process, the stabilizer part..heck, decide to take the risk and add wetting agent to the stabilizer right at the last minute. Finally the moment of truth, the unveiling of the processing tank, actually I was expecting the worse out of it but to my pleasant surprise the negative came out orange in color and OMG, I can see images and I see colors! Hang them to dry and went to sleep and only this morning did I get a chance to take a close look at it and did some scanning and here is the result:-
This is directly from the scan, no post processing at all.
In a nutshell, darn exciting process and perhaps my beginners luck is with me, the two rolls of film didn't come out like crap! The Digibase C-41 is doable in normal room temperature, saves heap on heating up water and etc and if a perfectly novice guy like me can do, so can others and perhaps those guys with a little bit of patience can get a better result and you certainly don't need state of the art processing equipment like the Jobo to get this done! The only prohibitive factor would be the cost...so as to will I keep on doing this? The anticipation and the whole process is stimulating enough to want more, it can be addictive but let me try out this first batch of chemicals and see how many rolls I can squeeze out before I decide to burn another hole in my pocket.
Curiosity kills the cat, certainly I hope not in my case. I was reading all these interesting post about film processing and pick up B&W here and elsewhere on the net and to my credit I tried out a total of 3 films with some relative success but nothing to crow about before the C-41 bug hit me. Reading about it sounds intriguing with plenty of risk, then again I don't have any reputation to think off and so why not just give a try. Honestly, looking for data on C-41 on the net is almost a hopeless cause, maybe my google power not that good enough, anyway after a few weeks of research I come to my own conclusion that perhaps Digibase C-41 kit would best suit my purpose. This is where the hole in my pocket gets bigger, this stuff is not cheap to come by, easy enough to source for it and in my instance I got it from macodirect.de. I guess they shipped anywhere if you willing to pay for it and I paid dearly, the shipping cost equals to the Midi kit and 4 rolls of Rollei ISO200 film which is Euro 83... now waiting for that conversion from the credit card company.
My choice for the Digibase C-41 is simply because it claimed to be able to process at a wider range of temperature rather than the almost standard temp of 38degC. I don't have any Jobo processing kit, so this is going to be almost caveman like processing and I'm not going to play around with heated water and etc. My test film are two rolls of Agfa Vista 400, so comes the crucial part, the mixing of the chemicals. According to my "notes" I have to mix the chemicals at 45degC, this is critical, so no choice heat up some water in the tub, and dropped in a bottle of distilled water to be "tempered", but the darn thing won't go beyond 41degC, least to say my patience got the better of me and I mixed all the chemistry at 40degC!!
With all the chemistry mixed and ready to go, it's time to roll up the films into the processing tank... I have done this a total of 3 times before, the first was smooth for a virgin, the 2nd and 3rd time there was a snag and for the this time it took me nearly half and hour to get it right for the first roll :sweat: I was cursing under my breath and my wife was giving me that :think: look and my kids was going :what:, anyway how do most of you guys did this? Do you use cotton glove or something because when I was fondling the film in the dark, I'm pretty sure I rough it up quite alot. The 2nd roll was a bit easier elsewhere, so I'm just gonna put the blame on the film reel
. With that done, it's time to monitor the chemicals, it was like 30degC in the early evening but I had to go somewhere and only got back around 10pm before I start my processing and by then the temperature dropped 0.5deg. I did my calculation for the timing, darn no 29.5degC in my time chart, so with a little adjustment I start the developer process and set my time for 9min 37sec, I somehow felt that with all the mishap I going through, most probably this experiment will end up with a zero success rate. So there I go, processing color film, not in my wet bathroom but a totally dry living room! I did get my bottles all ready for used and unused chemicals, sure got a bit bloated with the downed bottled mineral water! Half and hour latter I was down to my last process, the stabilizer part..heck, decide to take the risk and add wetting agent to the stabilizer right at the last minute. Finally the moment of truth, the unveiling of the processing tank, actually I was expecting the worse out of it but to my pleasant surprise the negative came out orange in color and OMG, I can see images and I see colors! Hang them to dry and went to sleep and only this morning did I get a chance to take a close look at it and did some scanning and here is the result:-
This is directly from the scan, no post processing at all.
In a nutshell, darn exciting process and perhaps my beginners luck is with me, the two rolls of film didn't come out like crap! The Digibase C-41 is doable in normal room temperature, saves heap on heating up water and etc and if a perfectly novice guy like me can do, so can others and perhaps those guys with a little bit of patience can get a better result and you certainly don't need state of the art processing equipment like the Jobo to get this done! The only prohibitive factor would be the cost...so as to will I keep on doing this? The anticipation and the whole process is stimulating enough to want more, it can be addictive but let me try out this first batch of chemicals and see how many rolls I can squeeze out before I decide to burn another hole in my pocket.
