I finally got around to trying some color film processing at home. I used the Unicolor C-41 kit in the smallest one liter size which I got from Freestyle.
There is only one place left in Albuquerque that processes color on site, and it is clear across town from me. They charge six bucks for processing a roll of color. The Unicolor kit is $24 including shipping and will do a dozen rolls. Using Fuji 200, my total finished cost for a roll of color is about $4.50 each.
Color processing is not much different from b&w, though maintaining a high constant temperature and pouring the chemicals in and out of the containers requires a bit more care.
While I did not have a lot of confidence while working through the process for the first time, I found the scan results to be very similar to what I was getting from the commercial processor in terms of color, grain and tonal values.
I decided to produce my first color results using my Mercury II camera. It has a consistently reliable shutter, and gives me about 44 half-frame images on a roll of 24-frame Fuji.
La Crêpe Michel is the best place to eat in Old Town Albuquerque. We stopped in there earlier in the week. Started off with a good bottle of white and some escargot in a cream sauce. It only got better from there.
5 comments:
Wow! Processing your own color. Bravo!
I'm just getting around to trying my hand again at processing my own black and white at home. Haven't done it since the 90s.
You are braver than me!
Exciting! Everybody seems to have such fear of at-home color processing, but you're now the second photoblogger I read to do it and live to tell the tale.
I'm pretty much a cookbook kind of guy when it comes to film processing. There is quite a bit of discussion on the web about alternative methods in color processing, though, including stand development.
These are very decent results, and I am sure that the negatives had less scratches.
I like the shadow of that iron fence door.
I was pretty pleased with the outcome of my first roll. My feeling is that small glitches in the processing will be compensated for to a degree in the scanning process. We'll see if that idea holds up when I get to the twelfth roll.
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