A FEW
THOUGHTS ON E6
By Bill
Broadhurst (Area 3/15)
I have home processed trannie film since the days
of Dufaycolour, through E3, E4, until, on
retirement I came against
E6 and a dodgy water supply. So for some years I used a lab until
it
gave up doing E6, tried another lab with mixed success and finally
Fuji lab which came up
with a less than satisfactory rate of about
10%. So I returned to W&M
Buying
a 10 metre roll of the Club`s Konica I had a short length left over
after filling my
cassettes which seemed ideal for a short test.
Mixed a brew and tried out a few of what were
intended as test shots
and processed OK. So OK in fact that one agency took two and
another
three of these `let`s see what happens shots`.
A few days later, in the same
mixing, a second full film, disaster. Horrible over-all yellow.
Look
up the Club handbook. "contaminated colour developers".
Where?, How? What did I do?.
Start
again with a different formula. Exactly the same result, colour
developer contaminated.
Penny dropped. The plastic bottle I was
using had been used previously for other developers,
probably C41,
suggesting that it took a couple of days for the contaminant to
dissolve from
the plastic. So, new clean bottles all round and the
next batch of films, about 5, very
acceptable. So! A continuous
supply of new bottles seemed desirable. Where from? The
supermarket,
which sells milk in plastic 1 pint bottles. These seem ideal and
will hold 600ml
almost brim full. Drink plenty of milk. plenty of
clean bottles.
My
second thought concerns the reversal stage in E6. My method is by
re-exposure. After 1st development I use the sodium acetate/acetic
stop bath for one minute followed by one minute wash, three second
changes of water and then transfer the reel to
a translucent 1 litre jug and cover it with wash water. I
then use a flash gun at it`s maximum output and give three flashes
from the rim of the jug, turn the el over and repeat with three more
flashes. Carry on with the remainder of the process. Seems to be
satisfactory, so much so that I wonder if any-one has any reason to
urge towards hemical reversal.
Third
point, agitation and temperature. I carry out development with the
tank half submerged in a water bath at 38 top 39 degrees, but my
darkroom is at room temperature, say 18 to 20 degrees. Thus the
lower half of the tank which contains the developers has the
temperature well maintained at 38 but the lid is not. So, if I carry
out the usually recommended inversion agitation then each time the
solution circulates round the lid it will surely lose some heat to
the colder lid. I don`t do it. I use a tank with a rotary reel so
that the solution remains below the level of the bath water and,
checking with a thermometer I find that temperature remains constant
throughout.