DIY Tank Processing (16mm)

[Daniel Joseph Lee]

Hi,

 

I already develop b&w and colour film at home (still film 35mm + 120), have managed to create good looking reversals (both C41 and E6 films) using xtol developer (as first developer) + c41 developer (as colour developer) and been experimenting applying b&w processing techniques to colour film.

 

Long story short - getting a 100ft 16mm tank (Im a student, will be using a modified Krasnogorsk-3, so 100 ft developing is all I need) - more or less have telecine sorted out too.

 

 

Just want to throw this out there - which films have the different (remjet?) backing compared to standard anti-halation backing on still films that will wreck my developing chemicals if not removed?

 

Am I right to assume an acetic acid bath will remove this for me? Or is only a water bath required?

[Charles MacDonald]

Just want to throw this out there - which films have the different (remjet?) backing compared to standard anti-halation backing on still films that will wreck my developing chemicals if not removed?

Am I right to assume an acetic acid bath will remove this for me? Or is only a water bath required?

All Known colour Negative Motion Picture films have REM-JET these days.

The current E-6 films are not likely to have at as they are re-designed still films to start with.

B&W Motion Picture film does not have rem jet.

Colour Print film USED to come with remjet but the newer stuff has dropped it to allow for water saving.

 

Looking at a sample of the film will allow you to tell quick as the dull black coating is quite distinctive.

 

The removal is done with an Alkaline solution, exactly opposite from a stop bath - which is why it will Gum up your developer..

 

The Kodak site does have most of the processing manuals hidden away, including the formula for the re-jet remover. In the MP processing machine the film is run through the alkaline solution and then wter is sprayed to carry the softened remjet away, BEFORE any other stage in the processing.

[Henri Titchen]

The Kodak manuals on cine film processing are located at:

http://motion.kodak.com/US/en/motion/Suppo...nline/index.htm

 

The manual related to Remjet removal is:

http://motion.kodak.com/motion/uploadedFil..._h242_h2402.pdf

 

These all apply to lab use. Amateurs use different methods. There are some useful tips on APUG regarding remjet removal:

http://www.apug.org/forums/forum216/37994-...torial-use.html

http://www.apug.org/forums/archive/index.php/t-55051.html

 

Henry.

Edited June 11, 2009 by Henry Titchen

[K Borowski]

Not to discount in any way what you've said Henry, but one does want to remember to take everything one reads on the internet with a grain of salt.

 

Some of the popular amateur methods produce professionally inadequate results.

 

I'd honestly recommend staying as far away from ECN-2 as possible.

 

Ditto on E-6.

 

B&W you can get perfectly good results, maybe better than some labs, but this only holds true for B&W.

 

 

Or if you want it professionally processed by hand, if you can get him to do it, I'd highly recommend Martin Baumgarten in Plattsburgh, New York.

 

He was one of the USAF's top film guys for decades, so he knows what he is doing.

[Freya Black]

Am I right to assume an acetic acid bath will remove this for me? Or is only a water bath required?

 

Noooooooo! Kep the acetic acid away from your film!!!

 

I've heard Borax works quite well for helping to soak off the remjet.

 

love

 

Freya

[Dominic Case]

I've heard Borax works quite well for helping to soak off the remjet.

Borax will soften the remjet coating, but as the remjet is actually fine particles of carbon, it doesn't actually dissolve in any solution: it needs to be physically removed. In a professional processing machine it is removed by accurately aimed jets of water which spray it off without it getting onto the other (emulsion) side of the film. In fact, getting the remjet off one side isn't so hard - preventing it from getting onto the other side is the tough part of the job.

[Simon Wyss]

Please excuse me for interfering. It is the other way round, rem(oving) jet (back layer) is soot gelatine that is softened in an alkaline prebath, taken off the film base in this very prebath by roller brushes and suction pipes directly adjacent to the brushes.

 

I think there has occurred a small error with the water fans elsewhere in the machines.

[Brian Pritchard]

Please excuse me for interfering. It is the other way round, rem(oving) jet (back layer) is soot gelatine that is softened in an alkaline prebath, taken off the film base in this very prebath by roller brushes and suction pipes directly adjacent to the brushes.

 

I think there has occurred a small error with the water fans elsewhere in the machines.

 

Not so, Dominic is quite correct, of course. The rem-jet is first softened and then passes into a spray chamber where the backing is sprayed off and buffed. There are sprays impinging onto the emulsion side to prevent the backing getting onto the emulsion. The pre-bath is formulated so that the backing does NOT come off in it; otherwise there would be backing floating in the pre-bath which would get all over the film and be very difficult to remove.

 

Brian

[Simon Wyss]

Well then we must be speaking of individual affairs. I refer to the Photomec and Arri machines which have brushes. I may be a bit out of touch with the latest techniques in mechanical processing.

[Andries Molenaar]

Not to discount in any way what you've said Henry, but one does want to remember to take everything one reads on the internet with a grain of salt.

 

Some of the popular amateur methods produce professionally inadequate results.

 

I'd honestly recommend staying as far away from ECN-2 as possible.

 

Ditto on E-6.

 

B&W you can get perfectly good results, maybe better than some labs, but this only holds true for B&W.

 

 

Or if you want it professionally processed by hand, if you can get him to do it, I'd highly recommend Martin Baumgarten in Plattsburgh, New York.

 

He was one of the USAF's top film guys for decades, so he knows what he is doing.

 

 

Plenty professionals and amateurs do E6 processing themselves with excellent results.

 

Baumgarten is of little use if you want your films back within 3 months or something and are prepared to make reservations ahead of time. Quite useless. And he applies about them same technique as others who process as a small scale lab. Nothing advanced there.

 

There plenty labs large and small in USA, Europe and other continents who do excellent work.

[Richard Tuohy]

The Kodak pre-bath is quite available, and even though it is enough for a huge volume (from the perspective of small tank processing) it is actually quite cheap. The 20 litre box cost me something like Aus$50. It works much much better than using borax alone. I have been experimenting with using the prebath with LOMO tanks for processing ecnII films. Lots of rinsing helps a great deal. But rinsing alone after the prebath isn't quite adequate to get all the remjet off - it gets of 98%, but no amout of rinsing with adgitation will get it absolutely all off. If you are working in a dark room you can spray the spiral with a jet of warm water to blast off most of the last bits. Also, when the film is hung on your drying rack, you can wipe the back of the film with a damp cloth to get remaining bits. I do this sequence of things for my own films, but I doubt whether LOMO processing of ecnII films will ever be quite up to professional level (unlike with e6 films where professional results are quite achievable given enough experience - its just down to the remjet for ecnII).

richard

[K Borowski]

Plenty professionals and amateurs do E6 processing themselves with excellent results.

 

Do you *own* an E-6 machine?

 

Are you currently seeking Q-Lab certification on it from the Eastman Kodak company?

 

 

If the answer to both of these questions is no, I'll still give you a shot to prove me wrong if you want to bet me that you can do anywhere near as-good-as a Wing-Lynch machine with 1/4 degree Fahrenheit (0.14°C) temperature control and Nitrogen burst agitation.

 

I've processed color by hand, which is why I advise against doing it.

[Robert Houllahan]

Here is a pic of the Remjet backing removal sprayers/buffers from our Treise 35mm/16mm ECN machine. You can see that the buffers hit the backing side and a set of jets both help remove the backing and keep it off of the emulsion. This is right after the tank that softens the backing.

 

I would think that a DIY backing removal box could be made by using a small pump and one or two buffers and a set of rollers and a small tank for the Borax. The buffer pictured on our Treise is for 50ft. / Minute and 35/16 so a small box for 16mm only should be made with a little DIY elbow grease.

 

One certainly can process ECN or E6 by hand and I do see it come through the lab for printing or Scan/Transfer. usually it has marks and remnants of perfs and remjet on it but that is sometimes what you want.

 

-Rob-

Backing_Removal.tiff

[K Borowski]

Here is a pic of the Remjet backing removal sprayers/buffers from our Treise 35mm/16mm ECN machine. You can see that the buffers hit the backing side and a set of jets both help remove the backing and keep it off of the emulsion. This is right after the tank that softens the backing.

 

Fortunately, E-6 doesn't suffer from the plague of remjet that, with the demise of Kodachrome-64 and the other K-14 films, ECN-2 now bares alone.

 

Or does ECP-2E still have rem-jet Rob?

 

 

The problem with all color films that some people even in the lab industry ignore, but I won't, is the myriad of color shifts and color problems that you run into with three different dye layers that aren't a big deal with the single layer of B&W (although most modern B&W films actually have multiple layers with different-sized grains to compensate better for over- and underexposure.

 

E-6 is a particular mess to work with because you have a high-contrast B&W developer and then a *second* color developer.

 

Development is the most critical part of the process.

 

 

With ECN-2 there is slop room because you can compensate in printing, and most problems like leuco-cyan dye retension or silver retension due to exhausted bleach or fixer are subtle.

 

So it's just as finicky, but you can fix problems somewhat in printing. Hell, you can even eliminate physical problems like base scratches with wet-gate.

 

With E-6, the camera original is the fiinal product. I've seen even high-end labs struggle to avoid color shifts on E-6. If you aren't picky they are no big deal, but when, say, a client wants their can of paint to be the exact color in say an advertising still or a commercial, color shifts or improper color rendering are a big problem.

 

The few still using E-6 professionally for clients will test the film with filters to eliminate built in bias and lab chemistry together, and they don't test the day of the shoot, so the colors one day had better be the same a week later or there could be hell to pay, like a reshoot.

 

If you are just playing with your own stuff, and are scanning it all anyway, a lot of this can be corrected in the digital realm easily too, but only to a certain extent. If you severely underdevelop because your temperature is too cold, it can still be "GAME OVER".

 

E-6 has a nagging problem to "go purple" in what should be neutral colors, like in the snow, even with proper chemistry stored under nitrogen to avoid oxidation.

 

As a hobbyist though, I can bet you don't have access to nitrogen burst agitation, oxygen isolation techniques, so your chemistry is going to go bad quicky; this means wonky colors as it wears out, or worse, you have to replenish it.

 

E-6 color and contrast are so finicky that even a lot of the pros use it one shot and then dump it, whereas negative systems are almost always replenished.

 

 

Kodak does did have a Q-Lab program that I couldn't find last night on the site where they actually had labs pay them to audit their control strips and keep them honest. This was Kodak's way of trying to ensure that people who wanted consistant results every time shooting their film could rest easy with Kodak's Q-Labs.

 

I don't know if that program still exists though. Professional E-6 is dying everywhere except big cities like NY, Chicago, and LA. And I don't want to dig up more information on the Kodak website because their tribute to Kodachrome, that tries to cover up the fact they killed it through deliberate subterfuge since 2001, makes me want to hit the bottle.

[K Borowski]

This is right after the tank that softens the backing.

 

I would think that a DIY backing removal box could be made by using a small pump and one or two buffers and a set of rollers and a small tank for the Borax. The buffer pictured on our Treise is for 50ft. / Minute and 35/16 so a small box for 16mm only should be made with a little DIY elbow grease.

 

Rob: Is the removal part before or after development?

 

I've heard conflicting information, some that says it can easily be done afterwards, others that say it has to be done before or during, I forget.

 

Do you think the after-processing approach might contribute to rem-jet adhering to the emulsion more often?

 

I would hate rem-jet flecks, but they do have a sort of nostalgic '60s Star Trek look when used in moderation.

 

 

But as for randomly added noise that could obscure a poignant scene in a movie or obscure an important detail, I don't see anything glamorous about deliberately- or negligently- processed footage.

 

Do this crap to prints, not your priceless camera originals! Bleach bypassing and flashing are the only two exceptions I would consider personally. Even push processing is somewhat needless in these DI days. Pull-processing is more-or-less dead.

 

Another thing to consider with scanning is that Digital Ice will try to remove rem-jet during the scanning process too, so you'd have to scan with it turned off and then try to keep negatives meticulously clean.

 

Keeping negatives meticulously clean, I can say from personal experience is an exercise in futility. The harder you try to clean them, the more damned dust seems to collect on them! ;)

[Richard Tuohy]

g'day Karl,

the backing removal is done prior to development. Ecn sequence is: prebath, backing removal, developer.

There is no rem-jet on modern ECP films.

cheers,

richard

[K Borowski]

Thanks for the info, Richard.

 

One other question, if you don't mind my going off the main topic of this thread, somewhat: What is the difference between ECP-2D and ECP-2E? Is that only to rid the process of the secondary solid-silver soundtrack, or something else?

[Richard Tuohy]

Hi Karl,

You are right. Proces ECP-2E differs from 2D in that 2E has no first fixer bath after the developer (well after the post developer wash) and no sound track developer application. 2E is thus a non silver soundtrack process. That much is true, though I personally have only limited experience with ECP processing. I process 16mm ECP in LOMO tanks using the 2E sequence - so far, only for my own film work. I don't have the capacity to apply a separate soundtrack developer. As such, I rely on the lower-fi dye image for optical sound. Using the type of projectors an abstract/experimental/independent film maker has easy access to, I don't notice much difference between my colour dye sound tracks and the tracks on my black and white (and hence silver) sound tracked films printed by me.

cheers,

richard

[Paul Bruening]

Has anyone tried to process first and remove remjet second? Let's say you'd be okay with discarding the solutions after each batch so you didn't care about that factor. Would the film make it through without remjet shedding and sticking to the emulsion?

[K Borowski]

Has anyone tried to process first and remove remjet second? Let's say you'd be okay with discarding the solutions after each batch so you didn't care about that factor. Would the film make it through without remjet shedding and sticking to the emulsion?

 

So, in addition to the rude comments you make about me, you completely ignore everything I say now too?

 

We discussed this already. . .

[Charles MacDonald]

Has anyone tried to process first and remove remjet second? . Would the film make it through without remjet shedding and sticking to the emulsion?

I have tried this with a still camera length of 35mm - you really don't want to go there! I think one of my Jobo film reels still has a bit of a black stain some 15 years later.

 

You CAN remove the gunk at the end, it is incredibly messy and you probably will get some black spots on your negatives which will make your finished production look like it was shot in a snow storm. have fun.

[Paul Bruening]

Can you remove the remjet in one whole step (on a short-ish roll about 200-245 ft long), keeping the film wet until finished. Then, process the emulsion side. In other words, will the emulsion tolerate being wet longer than Kodak's H24 time listings? If so, about how long will the emulsion hold up before sliding around or swelling beyond usefulness?

[Brian Pritchard]

Can you remove the remjet in one whole step (on a short-ish roll about 200-245 ft long), keeping the film wet until finished. Then, process the emulsion side. In other words, will the emulsion tolerate being wet longer than Kodak's H24 time listings? If so, about how long will the emulsion hold up before sliding around or swelling beyond usefulness?

I don't see any problem in keeping the film wet before developing as long as the time is not excessive. Leaving the film in solution overnight will cause the emulsion to come off.

 

Rem-jet is softened by any alkaline solution, developers are alkaline so this is why it is important to remove the backing before the film reaches the developer.

 

Backing can be removed from the emulsion by polishing the emulsion with silver polixh and then re-washing to remove the very fine scratches you have put on the supercoat. I have spent many long hours doing this after a lab problem in processing. It works very well. Of course you have to handle the film carefully to avoid putting scratches on the base side. Perklone works quite well for removing backing on the base side although the best soultion is to rewsh the film back through the ECN process.

Brian

[Paul Bruening]

That's good news, Brian. Thanks to you and Charles. I was going to try taking off the remjet last in full light. Now, I can consider taking it off first without having to rush the film right into the developer. That puts my current goofy-ass idea within the realm of possibility.

[Robert Houllahan]

That's good news, Brian. Thanks to you and Charles. I was going to try taking off the remjet last in full light. Now, I can consider taking it off first without having to rush the film right into the developer. That puts my current goofy-ass idea within the realm of possibility.

 

 

I would just caution that if you get the film wet and remove the remjet you would have to wind it into a spiral reel such that the film would not be wound together causing the emulsion to adhere to the base layer to layer. The nice thing about a processor is that once it goes into the soup the film is not tight wound together till it leaves the dry box.

 

Good Luck

 

-Rob-