Tim Parkin - Landscape Photographer

This is another post for all you film users out there (and for those who are thinking about using film.. go on you know you want to!).

My impression of colour developing has always been that it is something of a black magic art. When I was a kid, we had a magazine called ‘you and your camera’ and they would talk about colour developing and enlarging and make it sound ultra scary. Because of this, I never really considered developing my own until I had a conversation with Baxter Bradford some time ago. He had bought a fully automated E6 machine (the Jobo 2500 ATL) and he described the results and made everything sound very easy.. As long as you had the automated machine.

Now at the time I set up a search on ebay that tracked whenever one of these would come up. One year later and I hadn’t seen anything. In the meantime, Dav Thomas was doing his own development using a Jobo CPP and getting good results. I carried on waiting.

The final straw came when I was talking with Richard Childs in Eigg and he was saying how easy it is to develop your own in just the very basic thermostatically controlled Jobo (CPE2). He then offerred to show me the developing unit when he came down to visit Charlotte and I when we were on holiday in Knapdale a couple of weeks later.

Well a few weeks came and went and we finally met up with Richard and spent the day taking photos and travelling around the Knapdale area and that evening, Richard took over our kitchen and told me I would be developing my own film taken that day! Now I don’t get stressed that easily but I’d taken a few pictures I really liked and I can’t say I wasn’t concerned about things. To cut a long story short, apart from the entertainment Charlotte and Richard had watching me analysing the timer intently and being over-careful pouring chemicals, everything went very smooth and to see your pictures arrive out of the wash was a revelation – how cool is that! thjese were the pictures I had taken a few hours earlier!

So now I’m hooked. Knowing how easy this was and also having it confirmed to me that I can have the same development quality of a pro lab but at 16p per sheet instead of ¬£2.50p per sheet (plus saving on the cost and risk of post and packaing) finally convinced me to just get a bog standard bit of kit and have a go at it.

As soon as I got back from holiday, a Jobo CPE2 was acquired on ebay for ¬£150 (I probably over paid but I was excited) and I’d ordered a bunch of chemicals from First Call Photographic (E6 & C41). Dav came to visit later in the week and sold me his 4×5 drum, reel and mounting station (thanks Dav!) and when the CPE2 unit arrived on the Thursday I was fortunate to have been left home alone and took full advantage in commandeering the kitchen for my first batch of self developed transparencies.

Now let’s have a blow by blow run through of what is actually happening..

1. Mix Chemicals – You will be using four chemicals.
   1. First Developer – Mix: 50ml 1st Dev + 200ml water
   2. Colour Developer – Mix: 50ml Colour Dev A + 50ml Colour Dev B + 150ml Water
   3. Bleach Fixer – Mix: 50ml Bleach Fix A + 50ml Bleach Fix B + 150ml Water
   4. Stabiliser/Quickflo – Mix: 10ml Stabiliser + 240ml Water
2. Set up a timer of some sort.. 6’30” first dev, 2′ wash, 6′ colour dev, 2′ wash, 6′ bleach fix, 4′ wash
3. Fill up your Jobo CPE until the water will just covers the bottom 5 or 10mm of the drum that contains your film. (I’ll cover loading the film in a sec)
4. Full your four wash bottles with water
5. Water should be near 38deg C (which is just about warm hand hot) although I’ve processed accidentally at 36 and had no visible problems..
6. Switch on thermostat and measure temperature in one of your water containers using a decent thermometer (not in the bath). Tweak thermostat temp until this reads 38 +/- 0.5
7. You should have the three measuring jugs of 1st dev, colour dev and bleach fix sitting in the water too..

And go!! Pour the 1st dev into your film, give it a knock to prevent bubbles, start the timer and stick your drum on your CPE.

When the timer runs out, pour your 1st dev back into the measuring jug and then wash..

To wash, pour half of a wash bottle (125ml) into the tank and wash for about a minute. Pour this away and repeat with the second half

Follow the same process with your colour developer and then the same process with your bleach fix. and then a final wash cycle with 2min instead of 1 min per half bottle of water.

Open the top of your drum and flush with cold water for a bit under the sink and then put each of your transparencies into a tray containing the stabiliser solution (actually a weak formaldehyde solution).

And thats it, you just take each tranny out of the stabiliser after a while and hang them up to dry (I currently use a coathanger with picture hooks glued to it).

You can then re-use the chemicals with 30 secs added to each step and then again with 60 secs added to each step. (i.e. 7’00-6’30-6’30 and then 7’30-7’00’-7’00’

The only part I haven’t covered is loading the film. Well this just uses a spiral film reel which takes a single sheet per spiral. Richard Childs suggests using only 4 sheets per spiral just in case they protrude and hit each other.

Here are a set of videos taking your through the whole process. Each video is about 10 minutes long and is pretty much unedited. If you watch the all of the films, you will see every part of development process. Feel free to give me some pointers as I’m still learning and this was only my second batch of transparencies developed.

If you want to push your film, just add an extra couple of minutes to the first developer for one stop and an extra five minutes for two stops.. (I’m still working on this so any advice would be helped as the results have been poor)

The Results

The results so far have been excellent and the tolerance for cock ups is quite high (good job!) The results of this batch can be seen in the sidebar (click to see larger images).

My next step should be to get a tank that will take three drums so I can do 12 sheets at once.. Or an intermediary step, just a spare reel so I can load another reel while the first is running..

p.s. If anybody knows of an ATL 2300, 2400 or 2500 for sale, please let me know as I may well be interested at some point. For the volume of film I’m currently developing, the CPP is fine though.

UPDATE: A few sources have said that it is best to add the water before the chemicals when mixing A and B parts. This makes sense to me, but like most things I’ve found out about the E6 process, things like this are advised but not critical.

UPDATE & WARNING: My slapdash approach of using chemicals in the kitchen and whilst making coffee is probably borne of working in chemical lab at GEC for a year. A certain Laissez Faire attitude was prevalent which is something I obviously absorbed (like the bromine, carbon tet and god knows what else). Be careful around chemicals in general, always clean surfaces with plenty of water and wipe down with a rag that you keep just for that purpose. Rinse the whole sink thoroughly, blah, blah, blah – you get the message. The good news is Stanley and I aren’t dead and it’s thanks to the E6 process (if it had been the Kodakchrome process I may have een a little more careful). Toxicity of E6 chemicals is fairly low but not zero and allergic reactions are a possibility. Do not bathe newly borne babies or small hairless rodents in first fev or colour developer!

UPDATE: I have found an Arista E6 guide that gives tables of what changes you can make to developing times if you don’t have exactly the right temperature. Now obviously this isn’t for Fuji E6 but the chemical processes are similar so it should give and indication of what might happen. Interestingly, it says that if you process at 70F you will get colour shifts and density problems (really!!? wow!)

UPDATE: Here is the Jobo E6 Manual, quite useful

UPDATE: In response to a comment on youtube about how many you can process/can you reuse chemicals. You need about 33ml for each 4×5 transparency so for 12 transparencies you need 400ml – however the tank for the jobo only takes 270ml so really you should only develop 8 sheets. It seems like theses standards are fairly conservative though and I’ve had OK results with Velvia and Provia on the third run (i.e. 12 sheets) using only 250ml of chemicals. I have had my Astia go slightly green I think (although I’m not 100% sure) so to be really safe, I would only develop two runs of 4 4×5 sheets with 250ml of chemicals … 250ml because it’s easier to work out .. I’ve also put 16 sheets through just to see what happens and they came out OK as far as I can tell – more accurate testing is needed obviously… oh joy…

UPDATE: Joanne Carter adds that you should probably be careful of the first developer and colour developer cross contaminating each other, even fumes. I haven’t seen direct problems beyond a slight green cast in the third run of chemicals but only on Astia film. She also says to make sure your emulsion side is pointing toward the centre of the drum. Thanks Joanna!

UPDATE: Michael Gordon has posted a great video on how to process black and white film at your own kitchen sink too … just site and admire his pipette here How-to Video: Daylight Sheet Film (4×5″) Development