A Batch of E-6

On Saturday May 1st I finally ran a batch of E-6 chemistry on my Jobo processor and developed all the color transparency film that I had accumulated.  I had 39 sheets of 4x5 dating back to the beginning of 2017, and two sheets of 8x10 from 2014.  

The chemistry I was using was a Kodak E-6 kit that expired in February of 2008.  It was only 13 years out of date.  But most of the film that I was processing had also hit its best before date around the same time.  And, when I shoot color film I most often put a color polarizing filter onto my camera.  So needless to say the images are always quite vivid and sometimes almost garish.  Any color shift from out of date materials would hardly be noticed.

I even messed up one tank, with ten sheets of 4x5 in it, and ran the reversal bath before the first developer, in error.  I thought the images would probably be lost but I continued with the rest of the steps just in case.  Much to my surprise the images look relatively normal... perhaps a little muted, but nothing too serious.

Unlike some of the Rapid Kits that are on the market the full Kodak E-6 process is rather involved.  The steps include the following...  First Developer - 6:30, Water Rinse - 2:00, Reversal Bath - 2:00, Color Developer - 4:00, Pre-Bleach - 2:00, Bleach - 6:00, Fix - 4:00, Water Rinse - 4:00, Final Rinse - 1:30.  After this I gave the film a quick bath in clean water, then a rinse with a mist of distilled water, and then hung them to dry.  

It took me most of the afternoon and evening to run through the five tanks of film needed to process everything, but now I am completely up to date.  It will probably take me several years to accumulate another batch of film and repeat this process.  Needless to say, at that time, I will start with fresh chemistry.

I procrastinated about this for some time.  I still had my Jobo processor set up in my dark room as I used it a couple of months ago to run all of my color negative film.  It is ideally suited to color processing as it maintains a constant temperature [38C in the case of color] in a water bath, and has an automatic agitation system to rotate the tank.  I have a lift on my Jobo which allows me to fill and drain the various chemicals in room light, without having to open the tank.  
Now that this is all out of the way I can move on to some other projects.  A tidying up of my darkroom work space is desperately needed.  After that I will process some black and white film, and move on to some printing.  Several friends have requested copies of prints, and I have some images that I want to frame and hang at the cottage.  I also need to start chipping away at printing for the "Coal in Alberta" exhibition coming up in the fall.

This one is the oldest in the batch and dates back to January of 2017.  I shot this in west central Saskatchewan, when I was returning home to Edmonton.  This was on one of my trips to Saskatoon for the exhibition of my Procession West Show.  I can't remember if it was when I delivered the prints, picked them up, or on the in between trip to attend the opening.  I shot this with my Ebony SV45TE view camera and a Schneider 135mm lens.  It was taken on Fujichrome Velvia 100F, with no filter.  The film expired in July of 2007... shortly before the chemistry.