Robert S. Pohl ... : Color Film Processing

Saturday, December 28, 2013

Color Film Processing

Over the past week or so I have been working at processing my backlog of color transparency film. This is mostly large format 4" x 5" sheet film, but there are also a couple of sheets of 8" x 10" film, and several rolls of medium format film. I started out by mixing up a batch of Kodak E-6 chemistry. I was a little leary... as the expiry date on this batch was 2008. I decided to give it a try anyway, but then made the careless mistake of not properly warming up the processing tank prior to starting the processing sequence. My first four tanks of film were all too dark, and the colors were somewhat off. I attempted to salvage these images by scanning them and attempted to correct the colors in Photoshop. Of course as I am color blind this is a bit a challenge and reinforces my need to stick to Black and White. Here are the results of that first batch. I decided to set aside this outdated chemistry and mixed up a fresher batch of Tetenal Colortec 3-bath E-6 to continue with processing the rest of my film.

I found this task particularly challenging as not only to I struggle with being color blind, and unable to determine between certain colors, but also, most of these images were shot with a Cokin Blue/Orange color polarizing filter, which imparts a reddish to purplish tone to many of the images. On top of these issues, the chemistry was out of date, and in some instances the film was also out of date, which also imparts some unusual color casts. The next couple of batches that I processed after Christmas were a lot more consistent.

Southern Alberta Badlands, 2011