Developing colour film at home...

[MindofMel]

After doing some googling... it seems to be peoples answer to this question is "too hard" "don't bother, just lab colour stuff".. but why? what are the considerations that put colour out of reach to dev at home?

Was in poundland and picked up 5 rolls of Kodak 200 colour something or other that I can practice on if it's feasibly done at home. If not, worst comes to worst ill develop em in my b&w chemicals which has yielded some interesting results on flickr.

 

[Mahoneyd187]

Different chemicals of course, but I think most of the complication comes through very temperature sensitive results, it's less forgiving than b&w. People on here dev it, I'm pretty sure TBY does amongst others...

That Kodak 200 stuff isn't bad...by the way, asda will "process only" 35mm colour films for £2, that's why I won't consider devving colour at home.

 

[EdMoss]

Easy if you use a Jobo.
Keeping temp at correct figure is the hard bit, rest is really straight forward

 

[Carl V]

After doing some googling... it seems to be peoples answer to this question is "too hard" "don't bother, just lab colour stuff".. but why? what are the considerations that put colour out of reach to dev at home?

To be honest, I wouldn't say it was too hard to do at home as such, although it is more difficult than black & white in my opinion. I think the cost comes into it as more equipment is required than the basic B&W set-up. When I learnt to do colour many years ago, we had a permanent darkroom set up in the basement at work so it wasn't too bad. However, as I was gradually shooting more in B&W than colour, it became an easier choice for me to make when I finally decided to have a home darkroom.

 

[mustanir]

It's not exactly harder than b&w developing, aside from having to work at 40 degrees C which is easily done with a water bath. The main issue with it from my perspective is that it is boring, and given the time and cost of chemicals, getting your colour stuff done by someone else is not much more expensive.

Unlike b&w developing, colour developing is a lot more rigid. You do it the prescribed way and get it right, or you don't. Unless weird colour shifts is part of the aesthetic you are going for, it's a lot of effort for little gain. That's how I see it anyway.

 

[excalibur2]

That Kodak 200 stuff isn't bad...by the way, asda will "process only" 35mm colour films for £2, that's why I won't consider devving colour at home.

If you are not in a hurry Tesco will do it for 99p Note: I haven't checked them out and the 99p might be linked to having prints or CD done as well at the same time.

 

[Nuffles]

It's not exactly harder than b&w developing, aside from having to work at 40 degrees C which is easily done with a water bath. The main issue with it from my perspective is that it is boring, and given the time and cost of chemicals, getting your colour stuff done by someone else is not much more expensive.

Unlike b&w developing, colour developing is a lot more rigid. You do it the prescribed way and get it right, or you don't. Unless weird colour shifts is part of the aesthetic you are going for, it's a lot of effort for little gain. That's how I see it anyway.

I wouldn't say it was boring as such, I vastly prefer colour devving to b/w. With the chemicals we have at uni it's 3min 15sec in the dev, 6min in the fix, lights on and door open so you can chat to your mates while washing for 4min, bleach for 3min, wash for a couple more minutes, then soap solution and done. The fact that I can do pretty much as many films as I like, whatever brand or speed, all at the same time is great too. Black and white developing is much more involved and time consuming, imo.

 

[MatBin]

In days gone by I used to do colour slides at home, which were notoriously difficult, or so common wisdom suggested. I found it easy enough, temperature was critical (apparently) but a simple water bath worked for me, I simply filled a washing up bowl and monitored its temperature having got the chemicals at the correct temperature using the water bath as well. The satisfaction of seeing slides come out of the dev tank was fantastic.
Go for it.
Matt

 

[offline]

It's not exactly harder than b&w developing, aside from having to work at 40 degrees C which is easily done with a water bath. The main issue with it from my perspective is that it is boring, and given the time and cost of chemicals, getting your colour stuff done by someone else is not much more expensive.

Unlike b&w developing, colour developing is a lot more rigid. You do it the prescribed way and get it right, or you don't. Unless weird colour shifts is part of the aesthetic you are going for, it's a lot of effort for little gain. That's how I see it anyway.

+1

I've gone through quite a few tetenal kits developing colour, but in the end it becomes a purely mechanical operation that eventually doesn't give a lot of pleasure. If I cames across a cheap Jobo machine, I might go back to doing it myself.

On the other hand, I believe someone developing their first films would probably be best doing colour, as the instructions are fairly rigid - unlike in B&W (choose your film, then a developer, then stop - or maybe not, then choose your fix, then go to the massive dev chart to look at the various dilutions/temperatures, make notes, think about caffenol, then have a go). With colour, you shoot the film, buy the kit, follow the instructions.

C41 chemicals smell nasty too.

 

[TheBigYin]

As noted above, I dev my own E6 and C41, as well as B&W, it's easy enough to get a result, the difficulty comes in getting a CONSISTENT result. If you've got a good timer, nobody around to interrupt you, and a method of keeping temperatures constant, then its no harder than putting B&W through a patterson tank - though as noted above, a Jobo processing machine makes the whole thing a doddle - pity I haven't room for one :shrug:

And - the kick you get when you first bring a roll of 120 with 6x12 panoramic images on a chunk of Velvia is out of this world. Like a little row of miniature stained glass windows. LF sheet film is even more fun - 10x8"s just ROCK

 

[RaglanSurf]

I've only ever dev'd a few colour films a home and that was using the Jobo CPE with the lift, I was very pleased with the results and would have kept it but I didn't have the space to keep it set up all the time and TBH it was a pain to have to drain everything down and pack it all up every time I needed to turn the darkroom back into a kitchen.

So, IMHO if you can get yourself a Jobo CPE (preferably with the lift), have got room to leave it set up at home then go for it, until then use the likes of Tesco's/Asda for your test rolls and somewhere decent for your important stuff.

 

[Marvin d martian]

I dev both C41 and E6 at home in a Patterson tank using the Tetenal kits. Its easy and you get good results. I need to do more but I'm mainly shooting B&W at the moment.
Mart

 

[excalibur2]

Not worth bothering for 35mm surely...but for me if I started dev in colour again it would be for 120 as I can't find a lab near me that can do it cheaply and £1.20 postage for one film plus waiting about 4 days doesn't appeal to me (more sniggers from the lurking digital crowd ).
If only Asda did a 1 hour service for 120 film, I wouldn't use 35mm much.

 

[RaglanSurf]

Not worth bothering for 35mm surely...but for me if I started dev in colour again it would be for 120 as I can't find a lab near me that can do it cheaply and £1.20 postage for one film plus waiting about 4 days doesn't appeal to me (more sniggers from the lurking digital crowd ).
If only Asda did a 1 hour service for 120 film, I wouldn't use 35mm much.

The Darkroom in Cheltenham is free postage

 

[excalibur2]

The Darkroom in Cheltenham is free postage

But it would go on the price somewhere......if you live in Wandworth (London) there is a promising place that will dev 120 for £2 + vat (I haven't checked their price lately tho').
So a Tetanal kit would cost about £14= about six 120 films dev at Wandsworth each film or more probably done the same day.

 

[Marvin d martian]

Not worth bothering for 35mm surely...but for me if I started dev in colour again it would be for 120 as I can't find a lab near me that can do it cheaply and £1.20 postage for one film plus waiting about 4 days doesn't appeal to me (more sniggers from the lurking digital crowd ).
If only Asda did a 1 hour service for 120 film, I wouldn't use 35mm much.

I'd agree it's not worth doing for 35mm when you can still get the dev done cheep. For larger formats its almost becoming a none option and home dev is the way forward.

 

[freecom2]

But it would go on the price somewhere......if you live in Wandworth (London) there is a promising place that will dev 120 for £2 + vat (I haven't checked their price lately tho').

Genie Imaging is still that price - £2.39 for C-41 and E6 developing of 35mm and 120.

 

[excalibur2]

Genie Imaging is still that price - £2.39 for C-41 and E6 developing of 35mm and 120.

Excellent...Asda charge £2 for dev only :thumbsdown: but the sweetener is the scanned CD for an extra 99p

 

[EdBray]

I've only ever dev'd a few colour films a home and that was using the Jobo CPE with the lift, I was very pleased with the results and would have kept it but I didn't have the space to keep it set up all the time and TBH it was a pain to have to drain everything down and pack it all up every time I needed to turn the darkroom back into a kitchen.

So, IMHO if you can get yourself a Jobo CPE (preferably with the lift), have got room to leave it set up at home then go for it, until then use the likes of Tesco's/Asda for your test rolls and somewhere decent for your important stuff.

I disagree, the lift isn't a necessity, I did it for years professionally with a CPP2 (bigger than a CPE2) without a lift as I didn't want to use one-shot chemicals and used a 30sec water bath between each chemical step to prevent carry-over.

If you use a lift you are resigned to one-shot use.

If you are not too bothered about rotation (this is an advantage as allows about 50% less chemicals to be used and also reduces the development time) then a large water bath will keep the temperatures of the chemicals close to the required temps, and if you get a fully sealing dev tank, you can manually rotate the tank in the water bath to reduce the amount of chemicals and dev time required.

 

[EdMoss]

"If you use a lift you are resigned to one-shot use."

Why? I re-use my C-41 chemicals without problem in a CPP2/lift. As long as the dev is not contaminated then you should be fine.
I do add a rinse between bleach and fix, in addition to the digibase instructions.

 

[EdBray]

"If you use a lift you are resigned to one-shot use."

Why? I re-use my C-41 chemicals without problem in a CPP2/lift. As long as the dev is not contaminated then you should be fine.
I do add a rinse between bleach and fix, in addition to the digibase instructions.

My apologies if that is incorrect, that was what I had been told by a Jobo rep when I went to a demo day at Cameraex in the late 80s.

looks like they missed out on a sale and I missed out on keeping my hands dry