Kodak Gold 200 & Adox C41 kit - help with troubleshooting heavy colour casts

I do not have access to my old trustworthy C41 lab anymore, and those I've tried recently have given me very problematic negatives, so I've decided to go back to doing my own processing.

A little premise to get this out of the way: I scan my negatives, and I will one day use my negatives to produce RA4 prints (thank you @koraks, I blame you for this ) so I'm interested in only the very best results. No dominants, no crossovers is my goal. I am NOT interested in 'fixing' the casts in Photoshop and playing with curves until I get what I want. I want negatives that are conforming to the standard EVEN if my current primary purpose is to scan them.

With that out of the way.

I have previous experience with developing my negatives at home - years ago I used the Tetenal Colortec product. I was happy about the results I got.

I have therefore decided to purchase a couple of boxes of the new Adox C41 kit, as I've read it's essentially Tetenal Colortec resurrected.

I have followed the instructions here as closely as possible


Some details about my materials and methods:

• three 35mm rolls of Kodak Gold 200 (sn 7928015 exp 1/27) store bought. Exposed @160 in a Nikon F90X using centre-weighted metering. Same lens (AF-D 50mm f/1.8)
• Paterson tank, all 3 rolls loaded simultaneously
• Chemistry prepared on day 1 using drugstore bought distilled water. Chemistry used on day 2. Chemistry stored in brown chemist glass bottles 1L each.
• Temperature control: sous vide device clipped to container filled with water. Developer bottle, Blix bottle, and 1L water bottle set in sous-vide bath to reach temperature for 2hrs. Sous Vide set to 38.1
• Thermometer: I've used a Kaiser analogue thermometer as well as a baby fever digital thermometer to sample the temperature WITHIN the developer bottle and to double check the sous-vide is working fine. The two thermometers show a ~.3 C discrepancy. I set aside the Kaiser analogue and continued only with the digital fever thermometer, hoping it would be more accurate given planned usage scenarios (perhaps I'm wrong?)
• Paterson tank already loaded with 3 reels and rolls also placed in water bath together with chemistry bottles for 5 minutes to 'pre heat'. A heavy weight was placed on the tank to prevent it from floating.

I've used the 'lab timer' app to time the development as above. After 5 minutes of pre-heating, and suspecting pre-heating alone wouldn't bring the temperature of the CONTENT of the tank to temp, I've gone ahead done a pre water bath as indicated in the Adox instructions, hoping to bring the entire content of the tank to 38 C.

Having sampled again the dev temp within the developer bottle and made sure it was 38 C, development started. I ONLY used the Paterson stick to agitate during development and blix. 2x clockwise, 2x counterclockwise. Agitation as indicated in the pdf. I blixed for a total of 5 minutes instead of 4. Tank, dev, blix were kept in the sous vide controlled bath for the whole duration of the development. The tank was only extracted from the bath to pour out the developer back into the bottle. The tank was then placed back in the bath and blix was poured in. Blixing happened, once again, fully in the bath.

Wash was performed at the tap, via a Paterson wash hose connecting to the mouth of the tank, with sampled tap water temperature of about 35 C. Stabiliser for 1 minutes and negatives hung to dry.

Results

The negatives are clean, they appear - to me- to be uniformly developed, present no streaks or other artefacts. They are however, giving me strong, difficult to correct colour casts when scanning them.

It is important to note I am NOT seeing these casts in the negatives developed by my 'trustworthy' old lab, and I'm NOT seeing these in the negatives I used to develop with the old Tetenal kit. My scanning workflow is fixed and I know I can get much better results right out of the box from Gold 200.

I'm really not sure on what I'm doing wrong. If I have missed reporting on any other crucial methodological points please let me know.

One thing I can add on top of the above is that the orange base I'm seeing appears to be somewhat 'yellowish'.

Here is a picture of the negatives I'm getting compared to a negative developed professionally by the 'old trustworthy' lab.

Negative that scans correctly ('old lab') top. My result with Adox C41 bottom.




Sadly, the two negatives above are from different Gold 200 batches, so I can't exclude differences in orange mask hue across batches (is that a thing? Would variation be so strong?).

Anyhow, any suggestions welcome.

albireo said:

Sadly, the two negatives above are from different Gold 200 batches, so I can't exclude differences in orange mask hue across batches (is that a thing? Would variation be so strong?).

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That was my first thought because I can't find any errors in your methods. When was the control film developed by your old lab purchased, shot, and developed?

albireo said:

I ONLY used the Paterson stick to agitate during development and blix. 2x clockwise, 2x counterclockwise.

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The only other thing I can think of is the above, and a long shot. Maybe this could be another factor. Even if this is what is indicated in their instructions, it seems low compared to a lab machine that would be doing continuous agitation. I use the agitation stick for blix, but do closed-tank inversions for the developer, where thoroughness of mixing would be more critical.

Finally, have you RA4 printed the control? If not, are you sure the ones you developed now are not the good ones, and the previous lab ones the bad?

albireo said:

I blixed for a total of 5 minutes instead of 4.

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This may be the problem. Why not adhere to the instructed 4 minutes? With B&W, you can fix for longer, but for color it's more critical. The bleach, as part of that Blix mix, also needs the correct time.

loccdor said:

Finally, have you RA4 printed the control? If not, are you sure the ones you developed now are not the good ones, and the previous lab ones the bad?

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Ah sorry. Forgot to mention this. I don't have RA4 printing capabilities but I did send some of the old negatives out to print to an RA4- capable lab and the results were wonderful. They also scan extremely well without any local colour curve editing, so I'm going by the assumption that the 'old' ones are the reference I want to get back to with my home processing.

For what it's worth, the C-41 and E-6 kits I have used have not been time critical for the blix, so long as you don't under-blix. Their instructions for processing at lower temperatures than 38C quickly cap out the blix's time at 8 or 10 minutes, while the time of the developer continues to increase as temperature drops. I could be mistaken but I doubt an extra minute of blixing time is going to hurt you here.

film4Me said:

This may be the problem. Why not adhere to the instructed 4 minutes? With B&W, you can fix for longer, but for color it's more critical. The bleach, as part of that Blix mix, also needs the correct time.

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Exceeding bleach or fix time by one minute should not have any significant effect on color balance. Most often, the reason for color errors is in developer. Either the temperature is wrong, the developer is oxidized. or is contaminated. Very significant deviation of the pH ot fixer (or bleach fix in press kits) could affect the color balance.

albireo said:

A little premise to get this out of the way: I scan my negatives, and I will one day use my negatives to produce minimally filtered/unfiltered RA4 prints

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You can´t make decent RA4 prints without color filtration. The colors will be very much off this way.

Samu said:

You can´t make decent RA4 prints without color filtration. The colors will be very much off this way.

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Thanks. I removed that from my post. My aim is still to get reference-quality negatives that print easily, and scan easily.

albireo said:

My scanning workflow is fixed and I know I can get much better results right out of the box from Gold 200.

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"Fixed" in what way?

albireo said:

Sadly, the two negatives above are from different Gold 200 batches, so I can't exclude differences in orange mask hue across batches (is that a thing? Would variation be so strong?).

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No, variance wouldn't be nearly as high as shown.


It helps that you posted a "reference" and your negative side-by-side, but since shots are not of the same scene take at the same time it's hard to make conclusions about differences in high/low densities, but there is a clear difference in Dmin densities. Yours seem to be ridding high in R and G channel. I'd consult Kodak Z-131 paper to get to ideas what could be causing this. Since Adox C-41 is (at least I think) a monopart developer (so hard to get the mixing wrong) there will basically only be temperature, time and agitation that you can change to try to bring down R and G channels. I'd guess trying lower temperature and/or shorter time. Remember, 3:15 is from the start of pour-in to the moment the development is completely stopped (either by a stop or bleach(fix)). Also, your "reference" negatives might not be actually within specs.

Again, "fixed" scanning workflow might play its part. Colour cast should be easy to correct. Colour crossover... less so.

brbo said:

Since Adox C-41 is (at least I think) a monopart developer (so hard to get the mixing wrong)

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It appears to be a three part developer, four if the water is counted.

For what it is worth I notice the exact same thing with C41 film I develop at home - a noticeably yellow base vs older lab-developed C41 film. In my case I am using Kodak Flexicolor chemistry, and I have noticed this phenomenon across different film stocks (Gold, Ektar, Portra, Ultramax.) I've not been able to pin point the cause either. I suspect it is temperature variance.

Luckily, as brbo says, a color cast is fairly easily corrected in the digital realm. You may need to entertain adjusting your "fixed" workflow to accommodate these negatives. I know this doesn't answer the question of why your negatives are coming out with the yellow base, but at least you will have usable photos!

Good point about the pouring in/pouring out practice, @brbo - I didn't mention anything about my routine.

The Adox C41 manual doesn't offer explicit advice so I went back to the original Tetenal C41 pdf here


In accordance to the above, what I do is I start pouring out the developer 10 seconds before the 3'15', so at 3'5''. I pour in the water bath as requested in the Adox manual (from a bottle of distilled water also in the sous vide controlled bath) with water going at 3'15'' and agitate with the stick for 20 seconds. I pour this water out and start pouring in the blix at the 31 seconds mark.

So I think timing should be reasonably good.

What I'm concerned about is temperature control. One thing that might account for what I'm seeing is that I haven't sampled temperature within the tank DURING development. I am doing all processing in a quite cold service bathroom at approx 18 degrees ambient temperature. Pouring the dev from its bottle into the tank takes approximately 8 seconds and in the process the dev is exposed briefly to colder ambient temperature before entering the tank. I do not know if this results in a significant drop of temperature and if this means dev temperature does not recover and doesn't go back to 38 in the following 3'15''.

Is this a possibility that might explain what we're seeing?

radialMelt said:

For what it is worth I notice the exact same thing with C41 film I develop at home - a noticeably yellow base vs older lab-developed C41 film.

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Aren't you concerned by this discrepancy in what is described as a standardised process? I would. And I am completely happy to go back to pro-level processing to get back to the results I was getting.

Luckily, as brbo says, a color cast is fairly easily corrected in the digital realm. You may need to entertain adjusting your "fixed" workflow to accommodate these negatives. I know this doesn't answer the question of why your negatives are coming out with the yellow base, but at least you will have usable photos!

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Would you rather modify 10 established variables in your workflow or cancel out 1, the most recent? I prefer to troubleshoot the newest variable, and if no troubleshooting helps, cancel it out by going back to trustworthy lab processing.

Is the "heavy colour cast" consistent from roll to roll, and removable with a simple change in "filtration"?
Or does it involve crossover as well?
If just the former, it may not be an issue.

A few thoughts.. 5 minutes preheat isn't long enough. You have to heat the air in the tank first and heat the spools and film. Due to the air heat transfer is slow inside the tank. This takes much longer then you'd think. In my case, using FUJI chemicals I had to agitate my patterson tank once per second for the full duration AND add almost 15 seconds to the development time to get my test strips into spec. I'm not using BLIX but separate bleach and fix steps so my results may not be representative or what you're seeing.

Also with such a low volume of fluid + agitation its hard to keep that temperature constant for those 3+ minutes. You might try starting 1/2 degree high and measure the temperature when you pour out the chemicals.

-Eric

MattKing said:

Is the "heavy colour cast" consistent from roll to roll, and removable with a simple change in "filtration"?
Or does it involve crossover as well?
If just the former, it may not be an issue.

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I cannot answer this question at the moment as I do not have access to control strips.

film4Me said:

It appears to be a three part developer, four if the water is counted.

https://www.fotoimpex.de/shop/images/products/media/70131_5_PDF-Datasheet.pdf

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Thanks! I must've had it mixed up (pun intended) with some other kit (probably their RA-4 kit).

albireo said:

In accordance to the above, what I do is I start pouring out the developer 10 seconds before the 3'15', so at 3'5''. I pour in the water bath as requested in the Adox manual (from a bottle of distilled water also in the sous vide controlled bath) with water going at 3'15'' and agitate with the stick for 20 seconds. I pour this water out and start pouring in the blix at the 31 seconds mark.

So I think timing should be reasonably good.

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Times seem good. The plain water stop is not, I'm afraid. Go to blix immediately or use acidic stop.

I have no chemistry of physics knowledge to back this up, but it seem to me that killing developer as quickly as possible would be better than slowly. Seem pretty possible that displacing/killing the developer in the middle (G) and lowest (R) layers of the emulsion is slower with just water than with acidic stop.

brbo said:

Yours seem to be ridding high in R and G channel.

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In other words, excess yellow dye formation.

albireo said:

In accordance to the above, what I do is I start pouring out the developer 10 seconds before the 3'15', so at 3'5''. I pour in the water bath as requested in the Adox manual (from a bottle of distilled water also in the sous vide controlled bath) with water going at 3'15'' and agitate with the stick for 20 seconds.

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Replace the water with a stop bath of something like 1% acetic acid. See how that goes. IDK why anyone would recommend a water bath between developer and bleach; you'll basically be continuing development with an extremely dilute developer. This may affect the outcome and since the yellow layer is the top of the emulsion stack, it's conceivable that this is the problem you're looking at.

brbo said:

Seem pretty possible that displacing/killing the developer in the middle (G) and lowest (R) layers of the emulsion is slower with just water than with acidic stop.

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I think you've got it backwards. The negatives are evidently too yellow. The only dyes in there are cyan, magenta and yellow, in that order counting from the base of the film. There's too much yellow - or too little of both magenta and cyan, but my money is on excess yellow if I look at the benchmark piece of film. I think additional development is taking place in the top layer of the film, which happens in the very dilute and unintentional 'second developer'.

Ericc said:

A few thoughts.. 5 minutes preheat isn't long enough. You have to heat the air in the tank first and heat the spools and film.

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The air in the tank has no appreciable mass. The mass of the spool & reels is also quite small in relation to the mass of the developer. There'll be a small temperature shift if the pre-heat is short, but it won't be as bad as you seem to believe. It's true that a 'dry pre-heat' can take long since the plastic tank will offer reasonably good isolation (poor heat transfer). However, in practice, it works just as well to start with developer that's 0.5-1.0C hotter than the target temperature and just skip the pre-heat altogether.

PS: @albireo, the 'bad' negatives will likely print OK with adjusted filtration. Since filtration is in a home setting virtually always relative and not necessarily absolute (i.e., the filter 'pack' depends to an extent on the film, scene, lighting etc.), it's normal to see some variation. I get the desire to get it perfectly right, and evidently you didn't manage this time, but try not to beat yourself up over minute variations. In the end, what matters is if you get an acceptable (within your standards) print. I'm sure you can get one from these negatives by reducing the yellow filtration.

koraks said:

Replace the water with a stop bath of something like 1% acetic acid. See how that goes. IDK why anyone would recommend a water bath between developer and bleach; you'll basically be continuing development with an extremely dilute developer. This may affect the outcome and since the yellow layer is the top of the emulsion stack, it's conceivable that this is the problem you're looking at.

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hmmm very, very interesting. Thanks. Noted and will try this.

Interestingly - this intermediate water bath is not present in the original Tetenal instructions



Also - something I've just realized, these instructions differ from the Adox one in another point - they mention a 'pre heat' not a 'pre bath' of the loaded tank.

koraks said:

I think you've got it backwards. The negatives are evidently too yellow. The only dyes in there are cyan, magenta and yellow, in that order counting from the base of the film. There's too much yellow - or too little of both magenta and cyan, but my money is on excess yellow if I look at the benchmark piece of film. I think additional development is taking place in the top layer of the film, which happens in the very dilute and unintentional 'second developer'.

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You are, of course, right. I forgot to make translation to film's CMY "structure" after looking at RGB densities and then got the "explanation" part wrong because of that. Your explanation makes perfect sense.

I do think that I got the solution right (straight to bleach or using stop bath). When I first developed my C-41 I noticed something similar to what @albireo is showing here. My negatives were denser and more yellow/brown compared to lab processed negatives. I too used water as stop and was basically too slow at stoping the development part.

albireo said:

Also - something I've just realized, these instructions differ from the Adox one in another point - they mention a 'pre heat' not a 'pre bath' of the loaded tank.

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Unicolor has it different again, "Pre-Soak". I prefer Tetenal's idea of pre-heat, sitting the tank in a bath of hot water. When using Unicolor, I skip it's pre-soak, and pre-heat instead, I use Unicolor if Tetenal is not available, but I get good results from both. Argintix was pretty good as well, but it seems to have disappeared from the market.

In my opinion, there's no substitute for "text book" processing with color film developing (instructed temps and times), and if the film isn't right, then there's something wrong with the film, or the C-41 kit isn't as good as it's claimed to be. I used a Russian C-41 kit once, and to be frank, I'd only use it in emergencies after seeing what it does. Maybe not all Russian kits are like that, but the one I bought was .. terrible. It was separate bleach and fix, not blix.

Again, and it's only my opinion, "text book" simplicity and prudent use of time during the process might be of benefit, having everything heated, every bottle and jug in it's place, ample work space and good organizational skills to get the process done in a reasonable time leaving nothing to drag on longer than necessary. Not saying you don't do this already, just saying that, in my opinion, it's beneficial to, over time, perfect the process and the organization of it. However, your 18 degree ambient temperature poses a risk to the sustainability of your higher temperatures for the developing. The only problem I've had with C-41 film, and it's not necessarily a problem, is with Fuji masks, they appear more of a red/pink orange after doing text book developing. They scanned ok, so I didn't worry. But this topic holds my interest because I have my first roll of 120 Kodak Gold 200 nearly fully exposed and I will get to develop it soon after exposure, in fresh chemicals after which I'll check the mask color and post back in here with a pic of the developed film.

albireo said:

Aren't you concerned by this discrepancy in what is described as a standardised process? I would. And I am completely happy to go back to pro-level processing to get back to the results I was getting.

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I am and once I'm finished with my stock of chemistry I'm considering going back to the lab.

albireo said:

Would you rather modify 10 established variables in your workflow or cancel out 1, the most recent? I prefer to troubleshoot the newest variable, and if no troubleshooting helps, cancel it out by going back to trustworthy lab processing.

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Oh I'm with you. It wasn't clear to me it the time what your objective is. I was just suggesting you could still have a usable image.

film4Me said:

However, your 18 degree ambient temperature poses a risk to the sustainability of your higher temperatures for the developing.

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Nah, don't worry about that. Moreover, he kept the tank submerged during development. This means it wasn't exposed to room air in the first place. Besides, even if you keep the tank outside of the tempered bath, it doesn't cool down that fast. One can compensate for it if it does happen; this requires a trial run to determine the delta-T before/after 'development' (using plain water in a tank with just some empty reels). If this turns out to be, let's say 2C (which is generous), you can start at 39C so the final temperature is 37C and the average is still right on the mark.

brbo said:

I do think that I got the solution right (straight to bleach or using stop bath).

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Yes, yes, agree!

albireo said:

they mention a 'pre heat' not a 'pre bath' of the loaded tank.

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With 35mm I've never observed a difference when using a pre-bath. I'm sure there's a marginal, measurable difference, but the fairly dramatic yellow shift you got is not explained by this factor. I always use a pre-bath with 120 and 4x5 to prevent surge marks along the edges of the film. YMMV.

Give it a try with a regular stop bath instead of a water rinse between dev & blix; I'm optimistic that this will help.

koraks said:

With 35mm I've never observed a difference when using a pre-bath. I'm sure there's a marginal, measurable difference, but the fairly dramatic yellow shift you got is not explained by this factor. I always use a pre-bath with 120 and 4x5 to prevent surge marks along the edges of the film. YMMV.

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Could you expand on that little if you have time. Is preventing surge marks the only reason you use a pre-bath? I've read about other reasons such as "soften the emulsion"and "pre-heat the film". Personally I don't use pre-bath for any film, but my mind can be changed on that when I start doing 4x5 color if I see anything looking like surge marks. I haven't noticed surge marks on B&W 4x5s yet. The tank is an Angelus Light Tight room light tank, the lid clips down. Now, if the surge marks you're experiencing are on the edges of the film, would that matter, or are the marks intruding into the image?

film4Me said:

Could you expand on that little if you have time.

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That's hard to tell because I never bothered to measure the difference; I can only state with confidence that I never observed a difference during printing, scanning or evaluating the negatives visually of a prebath vs. preheat vs. no pre-anything.

film4Me said:

Is preventing surge marks the only reason you use a pre-bath?

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For 120 and 4x5, the main motivation is indeed to promote even development. But I often also use a pre-bath with 135, in which case it serves mostly to bring everything up to temperature. As I pointed out, it's not a big factor, but since it comes at no cost, I generally add this step anyway.
The function of a pre-bath in terms of doing something with the emulsion has been discussed extensively, mostly in the context of development time. It remains a contentious topic. On the one hand, there's the argument concerning even wetting and possibly softening the emulsion, on the other hand there's the argument that the pre-soak water needs to be displaced by the developer which can affect the rate of development (which is marginally slower).

film4Me said:

I haven't noticed surge marks on B&W 4x5s yet. The tank is an Angelus Light Tight room light tank, the lid clips down.

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The surge marks I've observed manifest in regular round tanks like the Jobo 1500 and 2500 series. Surge marks are very closely related to tank and (if present) reel or hanger geometry and flow patterns within the tank and around reels/hangers.

film4Me said:

Now, if the surge marks you're experiencing are on the edges of the film, would that matter, or are the marks intruding into the image?

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I generally don't waste time fixing problems that don't affect the image. I'm also not sure how I'd be able to recognize surge marks in areas with no image density...

Thanks for taking the time to answer koraks. I'm still wondering though, how a pre-bath would prevent surge marks. I'm searching the Net to learn more about it, and so far I've found that surge marks are caused by :vigorous agitation" (I take that to mean *very* vigorous), and the direction of the marks is along the film, "horizontal marks". Nothing about pre-baths yet, so did you find out by experimentation?

On the topic, something I'd like to suggest for albireo, is to develop just one film at a time, rather than three films in the one tank together. The times for pouring and emptying may be too long for C41.