Home | Contact Us | FAQ | Search & Site Map | Link to Us
Sign In | Join | Other 45 Sites in Network
PhotoKB Home
Discussion Groups
Digital Photography
Digital PhotoDSLR CamerasZLR CamerasPoint & Shoot Cameras
Film Photography
35 mmLarge FormatMedium formatDarkroomFilm and LabsOther Equipment
Photo Technique
Nature PhotographyPeople PhotographyTechnique General
General Photo Topics
General TopicsAustralian PhotographyUK Photography
DirectoryPhoto Clubs

Photo Forum / Film Photography / Darkroom / November 2006

Tip: Looking for answers? Try searching our database.

Correcting leuco-cyan dye in developed C41 film

Thread view: 
Enable EMail Alerts  Start New Thread
Thread rating: 
Thor Lancelot Simon - 25 Nov 2006 18:56 GMT
I've been scanning many of my 4x5 C41 negatives.  Though I have what I am
fairly confident are correct profiles for my scanner (an Epson 4990) and
for the films I've used for the past decade or so, I find that some not
insignificant fraction of my negatives have _very_ strange color casts
when scanned, which can be quite difficult to correct in postprocessing.

In fact, looking at the color histogram for these negatives in Photoshop
shows a huge hole in the cyan channel -- which makes me suspect that much
of the cyan dye in the film either originally developed as, or converted
later to (is this possible?) the colorless leuco-cyan form.  I am not
tremendously surprised by this since I know about 50% of my film over the
years was developed with 2-part C41 kits, with combined bleach-fixes that
are notorious for leuco cyan problems (as I didn't know at the time).

If I can reprocess the film to give normal cyan dye, I want to.  But some
people have advised me that it should be possible to repeat only the fix
step; thinking about the problem (that the cyan dye is in the wrong
oxidation state) I think it may actually be necessary to repeat the bleach
step as well.  I have also seen recommendations to use a bleach for this
kind of reprocessing that differs from the standard C41 bleach.

Can anyone offer informed advice on this?

Signature

Thor Lancelot Simon                                        tls@rek.tjls.com
 "The liberties...lose much of their value whenever those who have greater
  private means are permitted to use their advantages to control the course
  of public debate."                    -John Rawls

Ken Hart - 27 Nov 2006 18:58 GMT
> I've been scanning many of my 4x5 C41 negatives.  Though I have what I am
> fairly confident are correct profiles for my scanner (an Epson 4990) and
[quoted text clipped - 18 lines]
>
> Can anyone offer informed advice on this?

You need to repeat the bleach step, and just for safety, the following
steps, wash, fix, and stabilize. Lueco-cyan dye is corrected in the bleach.

Signature

Ken Hart
kwhart@fullnet.com

prep@prep.synonet.com - 29 Nov 2006 13:00 GMT
> If I can reprocess the film to give normal cyan dye, I want to.  But
> some people have advised me that it should be possible to repeat
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> to use a bleach for this kind of reprocessing that differs from the
> standard C41 bleach.

> Can anyone offer informed advice on this?

You need to re-BLEACH the film, and then for saftey, refix, wash and
stabilise. You can use BLIX OK as long as it is airated and
regenerated properly.

If you know someone with a dip-dunk running, it may be easier to
just put it through the lot.

Signature

Paul Repacholi                               1 Crescent Rd.,
+61 (08) 9257-1001                           Kalamunda.
                                            West Australia 6076
comp.os.vms,- The Older, Grumpier Slashdot
Raw, Cooked or Well-done, it's all half baked.
EPIC, The Architecture of the future, always has been, always will be.

Thor Lancelot Simon - 29 Nov 2006 18:32 GMT
>You need to re-BLEACH the film, and then for saftey, refix, wash and
>stabilise. You can use BLIX OK as long as it is airated and
>regenerated properly.

I've seen suggestions from former Kodak chemistry development folks on
photo.net (I wish I could find the articles again -- their search facility
is awful) that it is almost impossible to make a combined bleach-fix for
C41 that does not impose some additional risk of leuco-cyan dye, and that
suppliers of "2 part" C41 chemistry with a blix are just basically ignoring
this problem rather irresponsibly.

Since I suspect this is why I ended up with this problem in the first
place (and looking at the color histograms of quite a bit of film of
different types that I know was _processed_ at the same time, but shot
under very different conditions, I see no other good explanation for the
hole in the histograms where a lot of cyan ought to be), and I processed
most of the film myself using developer-blix (or developer-blix-stabilizer)
chemistry one-shot, I think I will stick to the canonical process with
separate bleach and fix for any efforts to rectify it!

Signature

Thor Lancelot Simon                                        tls@rek.tjls.com
 "The liberties...lose much of their value whenever those who have greater
  private means are permitted to use their advantages to control the course
  of public debate."                    -John Rawls

 
Sign In
Join
My Latest Posts
My Monitored Threads
My Blog
My Photo Gallery
My Profile
My Homepage

Start New Thread
Enable EMail Alerts
Rate this Thread



©2008 Advenet LLC   Privacy Policy - Terms of Use
This website includes both content owned or controlled by Advenet as well as content owned or controlled by third parties.