So I was incredibly curious how the E-6 process worked and how the process of getting a positive image on film worked. I had been doing some research on this when TheDarkroom finished developing my E-6 film I’d shot and revealed that my LC-A 120 was for some reason giving overlapping exposures (unintentionally, that is). I’ve never had that problem before, but this was also the first time I’d shot Fuji slide film. I figured maybe this was some issue that happened with that specific brand of slide film but I needed to reproduce it. So, I needed to waste a roll of film either way. I didn’t want to pay for processing, and I already knew cross-processing “worked” to produce negative images… but what would happen if you took E-6 film, and did a reversal process on it in C-41? I couldn’t find a good reference for what would happen, so I figured I should try it. Also, spoilers. I couldn’t reproduce the overlapping exposure problem.

So, first of all I shot an entire roll of brackets of ISO 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600 for 10 shots, and the last 2 I did 100 and 200 I think. Then, I figured these are throw away pictures anyway and I just want to see if I can get something out of it. So, I cut the roll up. Basically I’d load it onto plastic reels until it was almost a full loop, and then I’d cut it. Also, when loading go against the curl. It’s harder to load, but trust me. You’ll see why this is so useful in a minute.

I’ve developed just 2 strips of film this way and I figure I have either 1 or 1.5 strips left. Anyway, so the first strip I developed like so:

Pre-soak for a few minutes (62F) Stand develop in B/W developer (Arista Premium Liquid, at working stregth). 40 minutes total, with agitation the first minute, and agitation at the 30 minute mark, 62F Rinse Open tank and take out the reels, take the film partially out of the reels because I loaded it wrong (went with the curl) and the emulsion is facing the inside of the reel Take to a tungsten lamp (technically my dining room light) and expose for 4 minutes (these were like 40W bulbs) rotating the reel around and such Put back in the tank. Pre-soak again in distilled water (avoid contaminating developer with ANYTHING) C-41 stand process - Developer at 62F for 48 minutes, agitation first minute and again at 30 minutes Blix as normal at ~100F Rinse and open the tank and look (no need for stabilizer if there’s no images)

And the result? Not good at all. I thought the film was just straight up black when I pulled it out, but holding it over a bright light and squinting I could see that there was some very faight images on the 100 and 200 ISO exposures. So, I scanned it and well, it’s not good looking, but it is a picture… and it is positive.

This is after some adjustments in photoshop to get as much detail as possible:

So, not great. Reading up on the process, people seem to warn “too much black/white developer will result in a completely clear image, but too little will result in too much dye clouding”… So I figured I had the latter problem. That and most people were absolutely scorching their film with black/whtie developer… Using more concentrated solutions, higher temps, and incredibly long times. One suggested XTol at 110F for 12 minutes! So, I adjusted my development time, loaded the second strip of film (this time properly going against the curl) and came up with this:

Pre-soak with ~101F water B/W developer at 101F for 10 minutes, agitating 4 times per 30 seconds. (My stuff is usually a bit stronger than XTol so I figured a bit less time) Rinse Open tank and take out the reels. This time the black and white image is incredibly clear on every single exposure (though I believe I only have ISO 100-400 on this strip) Fog the film over my iPhone flash light for ~2 minutes, rotating reels to try to get it pretty even (apparently tungsten makes the purple/blue cast worse, which kinda makes sense) Put back in the tank Presoak again, develop again in C-41 as before (stand style) Blix for 2 extra minutes at 100F (seemed to have no effect) Rinse and open

This result is much more promising, and maybe even useable for scanning, definitely not projection though. There is still a very high dmin with the deep purple mask, and upon scanning, the colors are definitely… interesting. One incredibly surprising thing to me is how incredibly fine grained it is. Even at 6400 DPI, the grain is still rather subtle. I’ve tried traditional xpro before with E-6 film and the result was a grainy mess, so what did I do in this process to make it so fine grained!?

Here is what it looked like when I pulled it out and held a phone backlight to it:

And here is the unadjusted and then adjusted scan of the ISO 100 image (note I had to use very high exposure on my scanner, though not the absolute max)

And just so you can see what this grain looks like, here is a 100% crop at 6400 DPI. I’m sure my scanner softens it some, but in every other film I’ve developed you can see some obvious grain doing this.

So, these are awesome results. I’m still developing CD3 using E-6 film in CD4, so I never expect perfect color rendition, but with this process I get a major leg up on the traditional x-pro process by being left with an incredibly sharp albeit high dmin image, instead of a grainy mess as is usual. I still get the crazy color shifts, but surprisingly no out of control color saturation with this process as usual either. However, one thing you don’t seem to gain by processing in C-41 chemistry as usual is exposure latitude. With slide, apparently you can get around 1 or 2 stops more over and under exposure latitude when cross processing. With this, it is not the case. 1 stop of under exposure might be usable as it is with E-6, but 2 stops you’re toast. Unfortunately I don’t have the means yet to test how well this handles over exposure since I don’t own a camera that goes below 100 ISO.

I still have that 1 or 2 strips to develop and run further tests. I’m trying to figure out what I can do to reduce the purple mask or even what it’s origins are. I know C-41 bleach isn’t as strong as E-6 bleach and that probably has something to do with it.. but it could boil down to not having done as much B/W development. It seems to be that “black” in these exposures means this deep purple mask, so with even more aggressive development, I could get images where white isn’t also tinted purple. I know there are some small marks on the edge of the film (from the factory?) where the film is almost perfectly clear. Either way, if anyone has any ideas, give them to me.