How I spent my afternoon (C-41 in Rodinal)

[Cuchulainn]

I was doing some focus adjustment on a camera the other evening and wanted to have a play with it today. Rather than just stick a roll of Kentmere in, I thought I'd have some fun and try C-41 in Rodinal. I used Kodak's finest from Poundland (think it's Kodak Gold 200) as it was cheap and in the freezer. Development was 11 mins at 20 degrees in 1+50 Rodinal. The negs came out looking like drinking chocolate, but scanned pretty well (though they are admittedly contrasty).

 

[Stumpy]

They look quite nice to me, bit grainy but OK. Good experiment, well done.

looking like drinking chocolate, but contrasty.

Could the chocolate just be the orange base layer? Too much contrast, if I remember correctly, is usually down to too much agitation. How vigorous were you?

Seems more and more like I'll have to buy some Rodinal again some time.

 

[Cuchulainn]

I think both the contrast and colour are because I omitted the bleach step. Most of the dye is left, leaving a muddy, rather than clear orange base. This also effectively reduces the dynamic range apparent in the neg, meaning that if you do a "correct" scan it will be high contrast since you are expanding a small tonal range on the neg to a full 16 bit tiff.

 

[Stumpy]

Ah. Never remembered bleach at all. Though to be fair on my self, it has been 30 years plus since my disastrous experiment developing colour. (Wonder if "Domestos" might do the job)? LOL

What fixer did you use then? Did you dip test, (Fix till clear + 20% time)?

 

[AJQS]

No bleaching is required for B&W dev on C41 films.

 

[Cuchulainn]

True, but I was wondering if the bleach would remove the background dye. Looks like it's mainly used to remove the silver, leaving only the dye, so I'm not sure what would happen if I did bleach them

 

[s162216]

True, but I was wondering if the bleach would remove the background dye. Looks like it's mainly used to remove the silver, leaving only the dye, so I'm not sure what would happen if I did bleach them

The bleach would leave you with no images as the C-41 developer generates a B&W image and also activates the colour dyes in the emulsion to form colours. If you just process it as B&W the dyes won't be activated so no colours will be formed and as so when the image is bleached there will be nothing there. If however you process with the C-41 developer and skip the bleach (so called bleach bypassing) then you get the resultant high contrast silver B&W image on top of the colour dyes.

 

[Cuchulainn]

Thanks Sam. That's what I thought might be the case after reading up on c-41 a bit more over lunch, glad to see I hadn't completely misunderstood.

 

[Asha]

A very good result there imo ........an afternoon well spent!