Diafine and the strange case of the transparency film

DaireQuinlan

As a bit of an experiment last week I shot a roll of Provia 100f (fuji transparency film) and then developed it in a combination of B&W and C-41 developers.
First development stage was Diafine, once that was done the film was taken out of the tank and exposed to light as a reversal step (in normal E6 this step uses a chemical to fog the film). Then it was thrown un ceremoniously back into the tank and put through a full C-41 process.

Rather amazingly, the results weren't that bad. Colours were good, there was a blue cast that was reasonably easy to remove in post. The only drawback is that the resultant slides look about 3 stops underexposed, and as anyone who's shot slide can tell you, thats 3 stops too many luckily the coolscan didn't have too much difficulty with them.

One reason I did this was to experiment with different developers on colour materials. E6 and C-41 are kinda boring in a way, zero variability to them. Looks like I need a much more energetic first developer though to get usable slides.

Here's what I've uploaded so far. These have been levelled and corrected for that aforementioned blue cast.









-edit- Screwed these up when posting from my phone originally last night. Opera mini didn't like the way Boards does its editing ... -edit-

Mellor

I think you have the tags wrong, specificly the [/url] tag, and they aren't on the same line


Fixed below.

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

DaireQuinlan

Last two from this roll, I'm going to shoot another over the weekend and overexpose by a few stops, see if I get decent slides off the bat ...

Rojo

Interesting work! Looking forward to seeing more results... :-)

sineadw

I love them! Very interesting quality.

I'm gonna have to pick your brains about colour processing one of these days. Is it as expensive/technical/dangerous to small people as I've heard?

DaireQuinlan

sineadw wrote: »

I love them! Very interesting quality.

I'm gonna have to pick your brains about colour processing one of these days. Is it as expensive/technical/dangerous to small people as I've heard?

It's neither expensive nor technical. It's considerably cheaper than getting them done somewhere else for a start, I'm down to about 1.50 euro a roll I'd say. 45 squid for the fuji hunt 5 litre pack in gunns, and that lasts me all year, which is typically 30 or so rolls of colour film. Plus there aren't any fingerprints, scratches, dust, or stupidly cut negs to deal with in scanning. It's a win win.

I think most people are reluctant to do it because of this perceived difficulty in keeping the times and temperatures exact, but really only the developer step has to be in any way precise, and I'm pretty lax, I scan all my colour negs so colour corrections are essential anyway. Who cares about a degree here or there eh ? Whats 15 sec between friends, huh ? It all comes out good in the end If you can do B&W then you can do colour.

With regards to dangerousness I actually don't really know. C-41 which is what I do is more benign than E6 apparently, I think no more dangerous than some B&W devs. Besides I'm always careful. One set of stuff for all my development and chemicals and it's all kept out of reach of prying little hands. I'd say there's probably more dangerous stuff under your sink.