C41 Film Processing at Home

Not content with developing black and white (see a previous posting) I recently took the plunge into color film processing ("C41"). Turns out it is fairly easy - once you have the kit. The key with C41 is maintaining control of the temperature of the developer and to a lesser extent the Blix (bleach + fixer). Once I resigned myself to spend the money to buy the necessary kit, I was good to go. Certainly there are many folks developing C41 at home who do so by carefully managing the warm/hot water coming our of their bathroom (or kitchen) water taps. After watching many YouTube videos it was clear to me that going the temperature controlled water bath route was for me. Cinestill was the source of choice as I had used their products to set myself up for black and white film processing. They sell all the necessary gear and chemicals to get the job done. In particular, their temperature control system - which is an enhanced sous vide heating unit - is awesome! That unit, a 15 quart plastic tub, and I was in business. Having now processed four rolls of film with the C41 process I can state authoritatively that it is a straightforward process anyone can do at home. 

Fill the tub with water, set up the heater for 102F, place the developer and Blix containers in the bath and let everything come up to temperature. While that is in progress, set up the dark bag and load the Paterson film rolls with the film to be developed. Once the chemicals are at temperature - about 30 minutes - the processing begins. Three minutes and 30 seconds to develop, eight minutes for Blix. Rinse the film for three minutes and you're done. From setup to cleaned up takes me about one hour. 

Following the development process the film is removed from the tank, hung on clips attached to a closet hanger in the shower. Squeegee excess water then give the film strips a few hours to dry completely. What could be easier? 

Per the instructions, one liter of the C41 chemical kit is good for 24 rolls of film. If you believe the internet, it will actually last longer. Counting the cash outlay to get established as an upfront sunk cost, I'm developing film for about a buck a roll, far less expensive than the cost at my local camera shop. And I see the results much faster!

However, more is required than just the chemical processing. Film negatives do me no good as they are. I'm not interested in the next step of building a full on dark room in my home to print the negatives. My preferred image viewing is via computer screen and photo books that I generate digitally and have printed. This drives me to a hybrid workflow. Analog for the image capture and negative processing, then digital to scan those images into the computer. That portion of the process is completed with my Canoscan 9000F Mk2. Recently I began using Vuescan software for the analog to digital image capture process using the scanner. The initial learning curve was more painful that I thought it should have been but once again YouTube came to my rescue. While I'm not a guru, I'm quite happy with the scans I am seeing from Vuescan. Once scanned, the images are imported into Capture One which is my software of choice for processing digital images. The final step is exporting the images as jpegs.

The three jpegs below are from my recent development activities. And yes, the first image is black and white! That film stock is Ilford's XP2 Super black and white. It is a "true black and white" film stock whose emulsion has been modified such that it can be developed in C41 chemicals. This enables me to mix and match film rolls in the same processing. Super convenient as at any moment I have cameras loaded with color and cameras loaded with black and white. One film developing process to rule them all!

Ilford XP2 Super (ISO 400). Shot with the Leica M3 and a Voigtlander 28mm f/2 Ultron ii. This image was my week 11 post for 52Frames.

The two images below shot with Flic Film Elektra 100 (ISO 100) which turns out to be re-branded Kodak Aerochrome IV. Shot with the Leica M3 and a Voigtlander 28mm f/2 Ultron ii.

52Frames

 In late December last year I became aware of the web site 52Frames.com. A photographic assignment is provided every week for a year. The assignments make up a wide variety of subject matter. A few examples include; macro, depth of field, blurred action, self portrait, etc. One photo is uploaded, once a week. There is no cost to register and the only pressure is that which you put on yourself to get the shot and upload it. Thousands of photographers, professional and amateur alike, from all over the world, participate each year. After reading a bit about the site, I took the plunge and registered. Today I uploaded my ninth consecutive assignment - "macro" (image below).

Generally, I am not a joiner. However, I truly wish to become a more accomplished photographer. Reviewing past year's assignments, and more importantly, the many submissions against those assignments, I became convinced that 52Frames could provide me an assist both creatively and technically. Having now just completed my Week 9 assignment, I can state confidently that I know more now than I did nine weeks ago. 

My primary shooter is a Leica M10R. It is a mirrorless, manual focus (and aperture), rangefinder camera with a 40MP full frame digital sensor. I love many aspects of this camera, one of which is that "M-mount" lenses made as early as the 1950s work as well on the camera as lenses made yesterday. I also very much love the tactile, manual operation of the camera. It forces me to slow down and to think just a few moments longer before I release the shutter. That said, it does have modern digital camera features. One of those is "Live View." Live view is an LED screen on the back of the camera which shows you an image looking through the lens. If you shoot pictures on your cell phone you know how this works. However, until I became involved in 52Frames, I had not used live view as I preferred the analog rangefinder experience of looking at the world through an optical viewfinder rather than through a tiny digital screen. The down side of that thinking was that a lot of potential images would be difficult to capture due to my insistence on NOT using live view. 

One example on this topic would become apparent early on as the Week 2 assignment was "blur the motion." The image I sought required low angle camera positioning and a slow shutter speed. In that position I couldn't get my eye to the viewfinder to frame the shot. As I was about to give up I (re)noticed the 3" LED screen that partially fills the back of the camera. A few minutes futzing around had me up and running in live view and I was able to get the shot I envisioned. In the weeks following there were other occasions where live view was the right answer to achieving creative vision. Now I am (more) comfortable and (a bit more) proficient in knowing when and how to utilize live view. And as a result of several of the follow-on challenges I've also become more proficient in using ND filters and shooting portraits. Thank you 52Frames.

Nine weeks into the year's worth of assignments I find myself looking ahead to upcoming assignments, thinking about how I will capture the essence of the challenge. And as I see how other participants addressed challenges each week I am continually amazed by the creativity and thought they put into their work. I am beginning to think less about the "letter of the law" describing the assignment and more about the "spirit" of the assignment. The upcoming Week 10 challenge is "complimentary colors" and I'm thinking about a product photography setup using a back-drop lit with multiple flashes. A year ago that never would have occurred to me. Again, thank you 52Frames.

It turns out I needed outside prompting and guidance to begin, and stick with (at least for the nine weeks so far) a journey of continuous improvement. Not sure where it is headed but I'm enjoying the ride.

More to follow.

  My wife's Pink Christmas Cactus in full March bloom. Captured with a Fuji X-E4 and an adapted Nikon 105mm f/2.8D AF Micro-Nikkor lens in natural, morning light. Developed with Capture One.

Home film developing and scanning

Shooting film is slower and more deliberate than shooting digital. The "shoot-chimp-shoot" style of digital photography is not possible. As such, immediate feedback regarding exposure is not available and patience is required to see final results and learn if you got it right. 

A few of my film cameras have built-in and working light meters but most do not. That led me to re-familiarize myself with the Sunny 16 guidelines I learned back in the 1970s and used for years. Fortunately, with digital, the guidelines can be put into practice with immediate affect. Look at a scene, apply the Sunny 16 guidelines, shoot the image, then look at the image. Is it correctly exposed? If not, why not? Think it through, convince yourself you understand why the image was not exposed as you believed it would be, make necessary adjustment then reshoot. Rinse and repeat. After a few digital outings using that process I felt comfortable enough to put it to the test with film. However, I still had the issue of delayed gratification in seeing the images. That issue led me to home development of 35mm black and white film. 

After much research I settled on Cinestill's Df96 Monobath process. Rather than the standard three part process of developer -> stop bath -> fixer, Df96 develops and fixes in one chemical solution. A solution  that can be reused to develop up to 24 rolls of film. With each roll developed there is a slight increase in the time required for the process but it is on the order of seconds and not at all time-consuming. At a solution temperature of 80F film development times run from about three and a half minutes to six minutes depending on how many times the solution has been used. Following developing and fixing the solution is poured back into its container and the film is rinsed with water (I use distilled water). It is then hung up and left to dry. All-in-all a very straight forward and fairly easy process.  

To date I have developed four rolls of black and white film. For the first two I utilized a Paterson tank with its easy-to-load film reels. No issues with those rolls and the film developed very nicely. For the second two rolls I utilized a Nikor stainless steel tank and its stainless steel reels. Unfortunately I didn't roll the film properly onto the reels. Most of the images developed nicely, however there were areas in the reeling process where the film layers touched. Those areas did not develop properly and the images were lost. Additionally, the steel tank leaked quite a bit during the agitation cycles. Based on this one experience I plan to move forward with Paterson system.

Steel film reels aside, the four rolls developed properly. Following development they were scanned into the computer using a CanoScan 9000F Mk2 (with supplied Canon software) and edited as normal with Capture One. Home development and scanning provides much faster feedback on exposure settings and should, hopefully, cause me to output better images. 

The image shown here was shot on Ilford HP5+

The next step is color processing. More on that later...