Do you develop colour by yourself?

FrankHarries

FrankHarries

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Hi there,
Looking at the gallery I see a lot of great colour shots. I was just wondering, if you all develop your colour films by yourself or if you just take them to the lab (or wallmart) nearby. Does it make a difference?
Post your experiences, pleas!
 
Developed e-6 myself using a kit. Worked out really well, no problems. I was cool seeing e-6 slides in 120 from my holga. I read you just have to make sure you are accurate with with the developing temperature. You should try it. I didn't even use a jobo, just a hot water bath.
 
Great! What I would also like to know is, WHY you do that. OK, besides the fun, which comes along doing things yourself.
With bw there is so much difference when you dev. yourself - but is that with colour too? Does the neg turn out different (if you do everything as you should) if you develop yourself compared to the ones you give away for development to a lab? As I understood the C-processes are one standard ?Is it just for the fun why you do it yourself? Besides that you don't have to wait if you develop right after finishing a roll...
 
FrankHarries said:
Great! What I would also like to know is, WHY you do that. OK, besides the fun, which comes along doing things yourself.
With bw there is so much difference when you dev. yourself - but is that with colour too? Does the neg turn out different (if you do everything as you should) if you develop yourself compared to the ones you give away for development to a lab? As I understood the C-processes are one standard ?Is it just for the fun why you do it yourself? Besides that you don't have to wait if you develop right after finishing a roll...
Click to expand...
I'm a complete beginner to B&W processing, only started last month. However I'm already very interested in shipping a few Tetenal kits down-under, as processing at home is so much more convenient than getting processing done at a minilab.

Changing bag, Paterson tank, you do the processing yourself in 20 minutes with a minimum of fuss. I don't have to ride a few kilometres to some horrible mall to drop a roll of film in, and then either wait half an hour, or ride back to work and pick up the roll the next day. I don't have to tell some halfwit three times that I want `develop only'. I don't have to worry that the negs haven't been washed, cut or sleeved properly. I don't have to listen to the manager tell me about his latest Nikon digital camera range, and how because the Yashinon on my Lynx wasn't designed with CAD it won't be sharp or produce decent results.

Plus, 20 minutes standing around at the bathroom sink inverting the tank every minute is actually quite relaxing.

From what I've heard about C41 home dev, it sounds just as easy (and faster) than B&W home dev. I only wish I could get chems locally.
 
I've used the C41 Tetenal kit last year with good results. I develop the film and then scan the negatives. For 35mm, it's only a small saving, but for medium format it's a big saving to do it myself.
The only caveat is to keep track of how many times you've used it and not keep it for too long. I'd not shot that much colour and so while I'd got good results over a six month period, the next time I shot a colour film and developed it was after eight months and the negatives were almost clear!

Just stand your chemical bottles in some really hot water for about ten minutes or so before you start developing, to bring them up to temperature.
 
I used to do it a lot then Kodak stopped offering the standard hobbyist C-41 chems. I did it is because it was quick and very cheap for medium format, most 35mm I just had done at the 1-hour. I have a set of the new "small tank" chems but I have not sat not to work out the mixtures.

E-6 Kodak kits are still available and very economical, compared to a pro lab.

An e-6 6x6 shot with Kodak Chems:
Isolette-E6-Brody.jpg
 
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