Home-dyed film

[Happy_french_chemist]

I’m exposing to you my last experiment.

I was wondering which effect I could obtain from dying a film. It’s not new, it’s used for years in commercial films, but I decided to test my own.
This is a first test with a simple film and a visible dye, in a home-lab and a small tank.
But I also hope to observe effects (increased speed ? Color sensitivity changed ?)

The film used here is polypan F. I choosed it because it is cheap (20€ for 90m !!) and, more interesting, it has no anti-halation layer. This is quite interesting because the dying involve a prolonged stay in water before exposure which may dissolve anti-halation layer.

The process :
Film used : Polypan F
Color Dye : Eosine @ 0,2 %weight in water (2% solution commercially available).
I used metal tank and reels, fearing plastic ones would be more difficult to wash.

Dying : the film is rolled on a reel in the dark, laid into the tank which is filled with the dye solution, agitated, hit to remove air bubbles and let for 30 min. Then, the tank is emptied and rinsed with water (filled, one agitation then discarded).
Then reel are unrolled in the dark and the film are suspended to dry before to the rolled in a cartridge (2 hours).


Firsts observations :


The reversibility were tested on films wasted by daylight :

4 pieces of film were immersed in an increasing time in water then fixed to check the final result. Water was changed every 10 min.

A last piece were thown in LC29 and it turned black.

It takes time (1H30) to remove the dye. It is released in the developer and the fixing bath so it can be a problem !

Following tests will be carried with real images to test effect on colors.
The results will be compared to the film without the dye.
Finally if a color effect is observed, to investigate it, the dyed film will be compared to the raw film, shot with a filter the same color of the stain in front of the lens.

Stay tuned.

Interest on the first results : if washing is not long enough, there is still a stain at the end of the process. On the bright side, with eosine, one can have the grade filter into the negative 🙂

 

[charjohncarter]

Very funny post at least at first. But you wrote, 'Aside from that, I'm exposing to you my last experiments.'

You should have written, 'Aside from that, I'm coming out with my last experiments.'

But an interesting post, thanks.

 

[newspaperguy]

Perhaps the pun was intended?

 

[maddoc]

Interesting experiment at least ! 🙂 No problems with dust ? No lifting of the emulsion from the film-base ?

 

[charjohncarter]

Sorry, if some are offended by my post; it was a joke. Nobody has more guys/lesbians in their immediate family than me. And we don't I guess have propitoral restriction that some do. But like I said it was as someone said a good post

 

[Happy_french_chemist]

I removed a joke which could be misunderstood and were not intended to be offensive.

@maddoc : no problem of that kind, at least with that film (polypan F).

I'm preparing color test shots 😀

 

[oftheherd]

Interesting. I look forward to the results of further tests.

 

[Happy_french_chemist]

Bad surprise, the is a very important base fog on the dye negatrive.
Have to work on that...

But, on the bright side, effects are obtained :

Here the dyed film :

Here the raw film :

You can obserev taht, relativeley to each other, the zone yields not the same density.. It an unfinished paintong of flowwers with is still an array of color blobs.

I've also made photos on delimited color squares.
The maths and graphs soon.