Tips:
- Use a hot water bath and monitor your temps. Try and keep them within a degree or two of your target. Immerse the developing tank in the bath to keep the temperature stable. I just use the hot water from the tap and keep adding hot water until the temp is about where I want it.
- Keep another container of water that is near the developer temp for the rinse cycle and you will need enough for 7 tank-fulls of water for each rinse step.
- Do keep the caps on the bottles during the process and keep them in the order you'll be using them. Only open the cap to pour back the contents from the developing tank. You don't want to accidentally knock over a bottle and lose the contents!
- I use amber glass bottle made for chemicals. Avoid using bottles made for food or drink.
Once you get your first roll done and see the color positives on the roll, you will be hooked. At $31 for a quart kit, you'll get over a dozen rolls of 35mm film processed. At the going rates for mail-order labs, you'll save yourself over $100.
What about mounting the transparencies?
The only reason to mount them is if you are projecting them. I have thousands of mounted slides in my files, and I only occasionally have projected them. It does make it easy to handle individual frames, and the slides are easy to file and label. However, most of my recent E-6 film is stored in the typical plastic 35mm pages that we put negative strips into. After I scan them, it's still easy to hold the page over the light box and examine the sheet.
My last roll was definitely color shifted to the blue side, and I think it is because it was roll #6, and I had not compensated for the used developer in the First Developer step. It should have gotten at least another minute.
Examples:
last roll, Retrochrome 160 - note the blue shift, which is actually pretty cool. |
1 comment:
I like the last shot. The color is mysterious.
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