question about C-41 kit for home developing

[Omerhecht]

Hi all,

i shoot LF and also with a mamiya 7.
I am looking in to starting doing my own C-41 (color) film processing at home.
needless to say i do all my BW and want to get in to color as well.
does any one have any experience? i have a small jobo machine i am thinking of using for this.
My question is about the developers, i found one on ebay (item number 280623661733) - can any say if this is any good?

any other ideas are welcome!

thanks!

 

[dfatty]

Can't tell from the auction what brand the chemicals are.

A very popular C-41 kit is the Rollei Compard kit sold at Freestylephoto.com (currently out of stock, prob because it's pretty popular). There's a huge thread on APUG about it. I've used that kit with a jobo and it works pretty well for me, and I didn't have any b&w developing experience. So this should be easy for you. Also, the Rollei kit has a separate bleach and fixer instead of a combined "blix" like the kit on ebay does; the separate chemicals are supposed to give better results (color, sharpness).

The Tetenal kits are also popular, you can get those at B&H. IIRC those have the "blix" too, though.

Good luck!

 

[Omerhecht]

thanks for the fast response.

BH shows the tetenal kit discontinued, and for some reason the rollei kit seems to be out of stock for a while now 🙁 (i saw it a few weeks ago, could it also be discontinued??).
ive read mixed opinions about the Bleach+fix VS blix with good and bad reviews going either way, i guess its a matter of what i can actually get that is in stock...

open to any other suggestions.

 

[dfatty]

freestyle has the unicolor kit, and it looks like it's actually in stock. yeah, the rollei has been out for a while, but supposed to be back in stock next month. i hope that's true!

 

[Mackinaw]

I decided to try my hand with C-41 a few weeks back and picked up the Unicolor C-41 kit from Freestyle. Easy to mix up and fairly easy to process. You do have to hold the developer temperature at 102 degrees F for 3 - 4 minutes which I do with a water bath. You also have to add to the developer time the more rolls you process. If not, your negatives will be a bit flat after the third or fourth roll (120). Overall, I'm satisfied with my results.

Jim B.