xwhatsit
Well-known
Hello all,
After a couple of months having it on order, my 2.5L C41 kit from Macodirect finally arrived. Naturally I got stuck in straight away, having a fair stockpile of C41 rolls by now.
So far, my experience hasn't really been very happy, and I can't wait to get back to B&W! I've only done 5 rolls so far, because I want to solve my problems first.
First of all, the stabiliser included with the kit seems to want to foam up intensely and leaves these horrible greasy little droplets on the back of every film I process. Re-washing in water doesn't seem to wash these droplets off (they look white under certain lighting, the famous C41 white spots that the Rollei/Maco chemistry I have is supposed to be great at avoiding). Besides, the formalin in the stab is supposed to be last thing to touch the film anyway, if it's washed off then the dyes will get fungal growth in a few years.
I tried diluting the stab a bit more, to no effect. The only thing that works is wiping off the droplets with a piece of tissue with some lighter fluid on it. Not really a very good solution for a number of reasons. Next time I'm going to try processing without stab, to confirm that that's what's causing it.
The issue that is causing me the most grief right now though is scanning. Let alone all of the colour balance issues (man, what a pain!); grain aliasing is giving me all kinds of trouble. I'm using Fuji Superia 200, a relatively low-grain film. However, if I scan at 800 or 1600 dpi on my V500, I get horrendous mottling and all kinds of what looks like sensor noise. If I go up to 3200, this disappears -- even if I save at the low resolution I was scanning before.
The drawback of this, is that scanning at 3200 (especially when using infrared dust removal, as you're able to with C41, and almost seems to be required, as it seems to attract much more dust) takes a hell of a lot longer time that 800 or 1600. It also slows down my workflow a lot, as I'm used to putting two strips of 6 frames in, doing a preview at 1600, then saving directly from the preview as I edit each image. At 3200, my poor old computer doesn't have the grunt to keep up so I have to preview at low res, then scan at high. This makes scanning a fairly miserable and slow process.
Anybody have any tips on this? At this stage I'm thinking about never shooting a roll of colour again
(well, slides maybe, I can project those instead of scanning).
After a couple of months having it on order, my 2.5L C41 kit from Macodirect finally arrived. Naturally I got stuck in straight away, having a fair stockpile of C41 rolls by now.
So far, my experience hasn't really been very happy, and I can't wait to get back to B&W! I've only done 5 rolls so far, because I want to solve my problems first.
First of all, the stabiliser included with the kit seems to want to foam up intensely and leaves these horrible greasy little droplets on the back of every film I process. Re-washing in water doesn't seem to wash these droplets off (they look white under certain lighting, the famous C41 white spots that the Rollei/Maco chemistry I have is supposed to be great at avoiding). Besides, the formalin in the stab is supposed to be last thing to touch the film anyway, if it's washed off then the dyes will get fungal growth in a few years.
I tried diluting the stab a bit more, to no effect. The only thing that works is wiping off the droplets with a piece of tissue with some lighter fluid on it. Not really a very good solution for a number of reasons. Next time I'm going to try processing without stab, to confirm that that's what's causing it.
The issue that is causing me the most grief right now though is scanning. Let alone all of the colour balance issues (man, what a pain!); grain aliasing is giving me all kinds of trouble. I'm using Fuji Superia 200, a relatively low-grain film. However, if I scan at 800 or 1600 dpi on my V500, I get horrendous mottling and all kinds of what looks like sensor noise. If I go up to 3200, this disappears -- even if I save at the low resolution I was scanning before.
The drawback of this, is that scanning at 3200 (especially when using infrared dust removal, as you're able to with C41, and almost seems to be required, as it seems to attract much more dust) takes a hell of a lot longer time that 800 or 1600. It also slows down my workflow a lot, as I'm used to putting two strips of 6 frames in, doing a preview at 1600, then saving directly from the preview as I edit each image. At 3200, my poor old computer doesn't have the grunt to keep up so I have to preview at low res, then scan at high. This makes scanning a fairly miserable and slow process.
Anybody have any tips on this? At this stage I'm thinking about never shooting a roll of colour again
(well, slides maybe, I can project those instead of scanning).