c-41 at home

[Chris Burke]

How hard or easy is it to develop your own color prints at home? I am going to purchase a simple dark room set up in the coming months. my first thought was that is was for black and white, then my girl friend suggested that we do color as well. I know it is different chemicals and probably a few different steps, but how much so and is difficult?

[Pavan Deep]

There's lots of cheap processing gear out there, whatever method you adopt I think C41 is very easy, especially if you're just developing negatives, but it gets a bit if you're doing prints you need to get a colour enlarger, I find it's fun and therapeutic when processing and developing your own prints and encourage everyone to do it.

 

Pav

[Jeremy Cavanagh]

I was shown how to do C41 processing for the first time yesterday. it was 16mm rolls in a Lomo tank and by the third roll the guy who showed me left me to it. To remove the remjet backing we used a combination containing borax and this worked perfectly on the first two rolls and not so well on the next three so perhaps topping up was needed.

[Heikki Repo]

For still photography, doing your color prints with RA-4 process is quite easy if you just get an enlarger with color head. Kodak's RA4 chemicals work in room temperature. It's very relaxing, even if it takes about 2 min 20 sec per bath.

[Charles MacDonald]

I was shown how to do C41 processing for the first time yesterday. it was 16mm rolls in a Lomo tank and by the third roll the guy who showed me left me to it. To remove the remjet backing we used a combination containing borax and this worked perfectly on the first two rolls and not so well on the next three so perhaps topping up was needed.

Are you talking about using C-41 to process Movie Film? the rem-jet is part of films intended for Movie use in ECN-2 Anytime I have tried to run some in C-41, I had to use the chemicals on a one shot basis as the rem jet is difficult to get out of the solutions, and will soak into the image layers.

[Chris Burke]

I am talking about C-41 for still photos. I know that motion picture film is different, but judging by some of the response I may try some after I get the still photos down. So what I gather is it is easy and therapeutic. Which means I will definitely do it. I love both b&w and color and being able to do my own prints at home is a very exciting prospect. Is there such a thing as an enlarger with both a black and white head and color head? I have always relied upon a lab and will still, but I would like to start experimenting at home.

[Mark Dunn]

You can just dial out the filtration for b/w.

[Brian Pritchard]

You also need the colour head if you are using variable contrast b/w papers.

Brian