photographic @ge - Processing E-6 Ektachrome & Fuji Films

Are you saving money, or is it just for fun?

I shoot a lot of Ektachrome and Fujichrome slide film and usually pay a lab to process it for me. And while most of us that process black and white film may think it is no big deal. Without even thinking if we will ruin our film, we eagerly wind it onto a reel, put it in a tank and add chemicals. A half an hour later we are admiring our handy work as we hang the negatives to dry.

Can the same ease of mind be found in developing our own E-6 films? Lets find out...

Do we put more value on our color film that we shoot than our black and white? We shouldn't, because if we ruined the black & white film we would still have to reshoot it or just deal with it just the same as if we ruined a roll of color film.

Could it be that we think the simple steps of developing, stop bath and fixing are not real difficult and have an idea that color is much more difficult? Indeed we are under the assumption that it is so, and the task at hand is to find out if it is myth or truth.

Tetenal 3 Bath Kit

We have two good choices in E-6 processing kits to process slides at home. Of course there is the Kodak E-6 kit, but the smallest size I can find seems to be a 5 liter mix and a six solution process. I will not say six step process since there is a water rinse between each step thus making it about a twelve step process. But this kit is about fifty five dollars, a healthy portion of our hard earned money to experiment with.

But it will process about 20 rolls of film which makes the cost of processing $2.75 each, plus .07 cents per slide mount makes a roll of 36 exposure cost $5.27 to develop. Most labs charge around $8.00 for a roll of slides to be processed and mounted.

Then there is the Tetenal kit also available in 1 liter and 500 ML sizes. The 500 ML kit is only around $16.00 and will process six rolls. That works out to about $2.66 a roll plus the mounts. So you would have a cost of about $5.18 per roll.

All in all you would save about eighteen dollars in processing after you develop the six rolls. While yes that is a significant cost savings, you must keep in mind that the mixed developer only last two weeks. So you would need to develop the six rolls within that time frame.

For this first trial run of home processing E-6 we chose to use the Tetenal kit, mostly due to the price and the possibility of wasting less money if the project didn't work out. And we did find one pitfall in the plan, and that was that our local camera store only carried the Kodak kit. We found the Tetenal kit on the web from Calumet and paid around 8 dollars for shipping which knocks a big dent in the cost savings we were figuring on.

Cost Is Not Everything

The actual premise of this test was not to see if we could save money processing E-6 ourselves. I know how satisfying it is for photographers when they see their black & white negatives come out of the tank, I figure it would be even more satisfying to see colors rolling off the reel as they were hung to dry.

I loaded a roll of Kodak Elite Chrome ISO 200 and a roll of Fuji Sensia ISO 200 into my developing tank. I had already read over the instructions previously so I had a good idea of the procedure already. The only issue I was concerned about was that the first four steps need to be at °100F + or - °1. Even though the box claims it to be a 3 bath plus, the process involves seven steps.

There is four chemicals and three washes plus the initial pre warming step. All totaled it will take about thirty minutes to process.

No Darkroom Necessary

While I do have a complete digital darkroom, my wet darkroom is kept stored in a cabinet in my kitchen. All that one needs for a darkroom to process film is a developing tank and reels, measuring graduates, thermometer, and bottles to store chemistry.

Since black & white film can be developed at close to room temperature it is not big deal to get prepared. But keeping the chemistry at °100 was thought to be a challenge. I ran the water from the faucet to °100 and filled a tupperware bowl with water and set the tank in it for the 5 minute pre warm. While that was happening I mixed the First Developer and made sure it was at °100. Once my pre warming step was complete I poured in the First Developer and began the process.

The steps are First Developer, Wash, Color Developer, Wash, Bleach-Fix, Final Wash, and Stabilizer. Once you get through the Color Developer the temperature variance increases to + or - °7. There is a tank inversion every 15 seconds with the two developers and the Bleach-Fix.

So for thirty minutes plus clean up time, I convert my kitchen into a processing room. I have a changing bag that I use to load the reels with so I never even need to go into an official darkroom. Even with my black & white I scan the negatives and proof them on an ink jet printer before going over to my neighbors darkroom to make enlargements.

When mixing up your chemistry, be sure to have the water above °100, if you mix the water at °100 with the chemicals from the foil packets at room temperature you will end up with chemistry that is about ten degrees to cold to use and will have to heat it up. If you place the graduate filled with the chemistry in a bowl filled with water that is around °120 it will heat up to proper temperature very quickly. So don't panic if you need your next chemical in two minutes and it is at °90. Put it in the water bath and relax, if you are in a water wash step it will not hurt if you have to extend it fifteen seconds to accommodate getting the next step up to proper temperature.

Hung Out To Dry

The process went along as smoothly as any black & white would have only with a few extra steps. When I pulled the film off the reels and hung them to dry, I noticed a pinkish grey tint to them. My head sank as I thought something went wrong and I assumed it was under fixed as it appeared like black & white film looks when the fixer is exhausted or too short of a immersion time.

Both the Kodak and the Fuji had the same appearance and seemed to be ruined. But I continued on and put clips on the bottom to keep them from curling as they dried. I went into the kitchen cleaned up my mess and walked into the family room to watch a movie with my wife. Luckily she didn't ask me if they had turned out, so I sat quietly and watched the movie.

Two hours later I went back to look at the film strip up close to try and tell what went wrong. But suddenly as quickly as my head had sank earlier, it was raised high once again. I was looking at two rolls of beautifully saturated and colorful film. I couldn't even tell which one was the Fuji film since they both were so excellently saturated with richness and color. By far this was the best looking roll of Elite Chrome that I have ever seen. This roll was even richer than the roll of Elite Chrome Extra Color I shot in issue 3's pro vs. consumer film test.

As you can see from the images in this pop up window that both highlight and shadow areas show great detail, with great saturation and contrast. I may have just found the combination of Kodak Elite Chrome processed in the Tetenal kit to be my favorite to use.

The second image in the pop up window is from the Fuji Sensia 200 and also has superb saturation, but a little bit too much contrast for my taste. And it could have been as a result of the roll of Fuji being shot at sunrise and would have shown a little extra contrast even if the lab developed it.

Conclusion

If I were a stockbroker I would be saying "buy, buy, buy", this is a very fun process, an inexpensive kit and very rewarding results. We plan to continue our E-6 test to include the Kodak E-6 kit after we deplete the Tetenal kit.

The results were so good in fact that we would hate to try any other E-6 films after looking at the beautiful results from the Kodak Elite Chrome. Plus the fact that I can buy the Elite Chrome at Wal Mart for under six dollars a roll compared to about eight dollars for Fuji.

As for mounting slides, if you purchase a box of 100 Pakon mounts, they come with a small device that makes mounting the images fairly easy. I happen to have a lighted slide mounter/cutter so the work getting the slides into the mounts was effortless.

If you have been processing black & white film you will find this process not to be much different. If you have not processed any film before, you will be able to enjoy this kit just as much. Sure there are some basics you will need to be aware of and I suggest processing a roll of black & white first just to get the hang of it. But actually you will spend almost as much ruining your first roll of black & white as you would if you ruined your first roll of slide film.