Kodak c 41 how to#

One advantage to liquid conentrates, though, is that you need not mix the whole liter at once: you can mix a smaller amount, maintaining the right proportions. Start with 690ml of water (a temperature of about 49☌ is recommended), then mix in 100ml each of part A, B, and C, in order, then 10ml of Starter. With the liquid kits, the developer comes as four separate bottles of liquid concentrate. Wash your mixing container after the blix (you won’t be tempted not to it is quite ugly), then mix the relatively innocent-looking stabilizer powder into a liter of water. (You cannot mix the two blix packets separately to make two steps.) (Don’t close the container and shake it, though).Ĭommercial labs always use separate bleach and fix steps in C-41 processing, but the powder kit combines the two into one step. You can’t see through it to tell if it’s fully dissolved, so stir it well to make sure. It looks like prune juice and smells worse. Starting again with 800ml of warm water, first stir in Blix A until dissolved, then Blix B, then bring it up to a liter (it won’t take much more water, be careful not to add too much). The two packets “Blix A” and “Blix B” get mixed together to make one liter of blix. Stir the powdered developer into 800ml of warm water until it’s dissolved, then add water to bring it up to one liter and stir some more until it’s clear (it is colored, but you can see through it).

Like many black-and-white chemicals, the developer and blix need to be mixed with warm water, with 110☏ or 43.5☌ recommended. The powder kits include four packets of powdered chemistry. “More toxic” is relative, though: the chemicals are not especially dangerous. If you get any on your hands, wash them right away, and definitely don’t inhale the powder. Mixing the chemicalsĬolor chemistry is more toxic than black-and-white, so be correspondingly careful. Timing needs to be more exact than with black-and-white, so don’t use an egg timer. Some people wash out and use plastic soda bottles or glass liquor bottles. Fancy glass bottles are actually cheaper than plastic. These are disappearing from B&H, but they still have a small selection. You will need three (or four, if using separate bleach and fixer) one-liter bottles to store the mixed chemicals. They’ll also sell you a Unicolor powder kit, but they want $52.49 for it. If you’re desperate, Freestyle Photo sells Tetenal liquid kits, and will ship them via ground with ORM-D restrictions, but they want $44.99 for a one-liter kit. You can use a stabilizing final rinse instead of the stabilizer in the Tetenal kit. Kodak’s chemistry for small-tank development is called “Flexicolor SM” and has separate bleach and fixer. The Film Photography Project Store also has several C-41 kits they can ship you. You can look for a Unicolor C-41 Development Kit ($33 at that link), which is pretty much the same thing. If you do, the kit may be branded as Jobo rather than Tetenal it’s the same thing. If you’re in or near New York City you can pick it up in person at B&H or Adorama, but if not, you may find it difficult to get your hands on one. B&H claims it was always supposed to be labeled as hazmat and they were shipping it before by mistake. Unfortunately, the photo supply stores are no longer willing to ship it. It’s $32.50, makes one liter of each chemical, and will process 12 rolls. All the chemicals you need are included, in powder form. I use this one and this one.įor chemicals, the easiest way to get started used to be the Tetenal C-41 Press Kit. You also don’t want one that only reads two-degree increments. Some thermometers made for black-and-white processing at room temperature don’t read that high. You need one that will read well above 100☏ or 40☌.

The only thing to check is that your thermometer reads high enough for color processing. You also do not need a darkroom, just load your film into the tank in a changing bag as with black-and-white.

Those Jobo machines are expensive, and I don’t even see them for sale anywhere any more. You do not need an automatic processing machine. If you’re already processing black-and-white film, you have everything you need except the chemicals.

Kodak c 41 how to#

If you don’t know how to process film at all, start with black-and-white, not color. I’m assuming you already know how to process black-and-white. Here are step-by-step instructions to get you started. If you can process black-and-white, you can do C-41. This couldn’t be further from the truth: it’s easy. The common notion about C-41 (color negative) processing is that it’s too complicated and difficult to easily do at home. Home Processing of C-41 Color Negative Film Home About Visited States Map Home Processing of C-41 Color Negative Film