I recently went on a trip to Europe and basically took some slide film solely to experiment with. I took a variety and shot them pretty much at box speed. When I got back home I started to try to figure out how to perfect this C-41 reversal process. I was really hoping that by the time I had most of the rolls developed, I’d have a fairly predictable and good (even if with wild colors etc) process figured out… Unfortunately, that is incorrect. After doing my 3rd roll, I’ve found that I have no idea what is really happening in this process. I get consistent pictures at least, but I can’t determine how to control these strange splotchy color shifts and highlight fogging. Also, each film type behaves quite differently in this process, as you’ll see.

What it looks like after the B/W developer phase (if you can’t see this much detail, then you should’ve developed it longer)

Fuji Provia 100 (at home)

I never made a blog post about this batch, but this was the last strip I processed of my test roll when first figuring this process out. Here is the process I used:

B/W developer mixed 1:6 rather than the normal 1:9 (Arista Premium Liquid)

B/W developer temp controlled and heated to around 102F

B/W develop for 16 minutes total. 30 second agitation initially, with 4 agitations every 30 seconds after

Rinse

Open tank and re-expose for 4 minutes about 6 inches over an iPhone flashlight

C-41 develop as normal (not stand)

The results were my best yet. Definitely some expected color shifts, but an otherwise very normal looking image.

And below is the raw scan without any color correction other than whatever the scanner does automatically

And this film turned out very transparent, though I thought it could still use another half stop or so of development:

After I did this, I was confident that I could just raise the developer time a bit, maybe the temp as well, and hopefully get consistently good images from this process… well, no.

Rollei CR200

This was the first film I processed of the slide film batch from Europe, and was the most shocking. Process:

B/W developer mixed 1:6 (Arista Premium Liquid)

B/W developer temp controlled and heated to around 108F

B/W develop for 18 minutes total. 30 seconds initial agitation, 4 agitations every 30 seconds after

Rinse

Open tank and re-expose for 4 minutes over iPhone flashlight

C-41 develop as normal

And the results?

What!? Yea, I have no idea what happened to the color spectrum either. It seems my developing tank temporarily became a portal to hell capable of imaging an alternate reality.

This one looks almost like it has color, but there is still a huge lack. Here is the raw scan:

Here’s some more pictures from hell for your entertainment:

The last one is particularly interesting. Why does the wall have a sort of glow to it where it meets the dark pavement?

Ok, so something definitely went wrong here. I’m thinking that the film is over developed because CR200 can’t handle as much development as Provia maybe? But really I have no idea.

Note, my chemicals were completely fine through this process, I developed normal C-41 film afterwards with no bad results. I also had a roll of C-41 film I was testing this process on. That roll of film came out over developed, but otherwise pretty normal with no crazy weird color shifts.

Fuji Velvia 100

This is my favorite slide film for normal E-6 processing. So many vibrant colors, and such deep blue skies. So, I was really curious what would happen when I put it through this process. The results are interesting, but also unpredictable. The process:

B/W developer mixed 1:5

B/W developer heated and temp controlled at 105F

B/W develop for 19 minutes total. agitate first minute, and every 30 seconds after

Rinse

Re-expose with iPhone flashlight, for about 4 minutes

C-41 stand development. 63F, 42 minute total, agitate first minute, and then once at 20 minutes

C-41 blix as normal at ~100F

I was thinking maybe this red splotch is from developer not getting in through the layers, so I needed more developer and stronger mixtures. I also decided to pull the film in the C-41 process by about 1 stop. 45 minutes is usually the perfect stand time for C-41 development. Lengthening it by about 3 minutes, effectively pushes about 1 stop. So, shortening by 3 minutes should pull by 1 stop.

Looks pretty good! Here is the raw scan:

A heavy mask, but otherwise a pretty normal image…. until we get a bit further into the roll.

It looks awesome… but what the hell happened? Here is the raw scan:

Here is some more interesting pictures from this roll:

So there is definitely something happening here. The red splotch is weird, it seems to only affect highlights. After doing some research I’ve found it’s most likely from too strong of development.

Fuji Superia 400 (bonus!)

In the above Velvia 100 processing, I also put in a roll of Superia 400 that I actually cared about a bit. You definitely have to color balance it to remove the orange mask, but it can produce some interesting results. One thing about this process though is that it definitely makes C-41 film look like slide film as far as exposure latitude. If it’s not right in the sweet spot, then you get a terrible picture. I was using a camera with a busted meter with this and was basically just guessing at exposure based on some rough shutter speed measurements I did.

Overall, not very useful, but can add an interesting kind of look to your shots. The most interesting thing is that, similar to slide film, all the preserved detail is in the shadows, while the highlights are the parts that get lost data.

Fuji Provia 100 (again)

And finally, I looped back to the film I was familiar with. I changed the process a bit though:

B/W developer mixed at 1:6 (Arista Premium Liquid)

B/W developer temp controlled at 106F

B/W developed for 18 minutes total. 30 second initial agitation, followed by 3 agitations every 30 seconds after

Rinse

Re-expose to fluorescent light ~12 inches away for 2 minutes

C-41 stand develop. 47 minutes total, agitate for 1st minute, and then once at 25 minutes

Normal blix at ~100F

First a few notes. I changed to a less harsh re-exposure method since I was reading on another process that re-exposure that is too harsh can cause “print outs” on your film. I thought that it might be possible that this is the origin of the red blotch. However, I was wrong. As a test, I basically put my iPhone flashlight on a single frame for around a minute, less than 1 inch away. No noticeable effect at all on the final image.

Also, I increased the C-41 development time. My developer is getting old and exhausted so I had to increase the time. I’ve developed the equivalent of 15 rolls of 120 film in it, when the manufacturer says it is capable of processing 8 rolls. I actually think I can still do 2 more rolls of 35mm if I increase the time to 50 minutes…

These results pretty much match what we’ve already seen, and do not at all resemble the first image on this page, despite being the same film.

And the raw scan:

Yea, I have no idea what happened here. It definitely has the purpleish mask I saw in my old results from the last blog post, but why did the highlights turn out like this?

And raw again:

I actually did a very makeshift scan of just these 2 (or 3) pictures from this roll. I’ll have to do a full run of this roll later after I develop some more C-41 film. I like to develop in batches, and then scan in batches since switching to DSLR scanning.

Conclusions

Don’t trust an experimental process working as you expect on a new film brand. I’m wondering if the weird fog could be from x-rays since these went through around 6 x-rays each in the airport. But 100 and 200 ISO is so slow, and I didn’t notice much effect on my 400 and even pushed film (800 and 1600)… So I think it’s just too much development. I have 1 roll of slide film (Lomography slide 200) left that I’ll wait until later to process. My plan is to cut down B/W dev to 102F and 17 minutes, and then do a pulling C-41 process for 42 minutes (after mixing a fresh batch of chemicals). I also have a lot of 35mm slide sitting around now and I’m really curious if this process could be used for pushing slide film to 400 ISO and beyond. So expect more experiments. I also have some an E-6 6 batch kit coming in where I could in theory use E-6 color developer on C-41 film as a negative developer (rather than only positive). I’m really curious what color shifts this can bring about in C-41 film, but hopefully without the lack of contrast since I won’t be reversing it.