On Wednesday, January 24, Alan Tyson wrote:
> Until these last two messages partly answered it for me, I
> was going to ask just *how* critical the time & temperature
> were.
I'll add that I use a Radio Shack digital indoor/outdoor thermometer
to watch the temperature of the water bath, and stir in about an
ounce of boiling water from a measuring cup every 30-60 seconds,
as needed. Crude but fairly effective. I can keep the temperature
between 99.5 and 100.5 for three minutes without difficulty.
As an illustration, I've posted a scan from the first snip of color film
that I ever developed:
I color-corrected the scan on an uncalibrated monitor, then had a
print made by Lexar Media's printroom.com service. (They don't
correct anything unless you ask for it.) I can hold any object up
against the print and they really are the same color.
> (1) What is the shelf life of opened stock solutions? (For
> E6 developers, it wasn't good, even with careful
> displacement of air from the top of the bottles.)
Haven't been at it long enough to know first hand. Kodak's C-41
processing document, Z-131 says at least 1 year for unused
chemicals in tightly stoppered bottles. That document's a good
read, by the way. You should be able to find the PDF starting
at:
> (2) How bad are the economics? 10-15 years ago it was
> costing me more to do my own, but the results were better.
Again going from Kodak's Z-131, they say 14-15 rolls of 135-36
per gallon of mixed developer, more or less depending on the
emulsion type. Twice that many for the other chemicals. As a
guide, I paid about $50 to a local photo retailer for the chemicals.
(The bleach is the most expensive stuff by far.) Add in say another
$11 for a second gallon of developer and it's about $2/roll for 36
exposure rolls, less than $1.50/roll for 24 exposure. I just figured
that for $50, I could develop as much film as I might possibly want
to within the next year. Seemed reasonable...
Like a lot of things in life, if you're just trying to save money you
won't save much by doing it yourself. But you shouldn't have to
pay for the privilege either, and you can save some if you're willing
to take a chance and go outside the official recommendations. I
tried one extra roll before dumping my first set of bottles and I
can't tell any difference between it and the earlier ones. Close
enough for jazz, I guess.
I like it for the experience I'm getting, for being able to run a test
strip whenever I want to, and being able to take liberties with the
process and push a roll a stop or two if I think it might need it. I'd
also like to try cross-processing, bleach-bypass, and some other
creative variations, but I'll wait until I have some more experience
doing it straight before getting into that.
Hope this helps, and good luck if you decide to try it,
Tim Victor
TimVictor@csi.com
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