Color Negative Shadow Bluish

Hi, I have some problems about color neg. c-41 process.

I'm a new user of Noritsu V30 film processor. I'm using Champion brand c-41 chemicals. Since the day I filled in 52 rolls I have processed.

My problem is; last 5 rolls have a bluish colors on shadows and too much contrast.

 

* Developer temperature is fixed at 38 degrees.

- Did I have problems with replanisment amounts?

More details needed.

What changed?

Different batch of film?

Different shooting conditions?

Different paper batch?

 

Too much contrast sounds like over development, but without more information or seeing some results it's almost impossible to diagnose the issue.

The problem is likely in the bleach or the fix or both. You can try to re-fix by swishing a roll in fixer. Then wash and dry. If this fixes the problem, then you found the culprit. Did not solve? Re-bleach and re-fix. I would attach one roll to a leader card and run it from beginning to end through the machine. It will not harm the film to go through the developer again. The re-fix first only test only eliminate or condemn the fixer. If the re-bleach and re-fix test works, both are suspect, however, likely it is just the bleach that has gone bad l by under replenishing. Hope this helps.

Thank you for your information and support,

 

Here are the results. I did refix and rebleach again but the result did not improve.

 

Top photos direct scan from Fuji Frontier Sp3000

Bottom photos have some fixes on scanning.

 

Note: I shoot always 1 or 2 stops over.

 

If some auto colour correction was involved, I would expect the blue shadows. The auto 'mix to grey' metering would apply blue-cyan (or complement of) filtration to compensate for the sunset sky.

 

Were all the affected rolls exposed in a similar light?

Yes, 5 rolls that day I was exposed to the same light conditions. Maybe I am delusional, I might have experienced this because of the light conditions.

In that case it's probably a printing or scanning issue.

 

Look for any 'auto colour' feature and turn it off. Sunsets should be exposed and printed as a normal daylight white-balance. Otherwise you lose the impact of the red/orange light and get a grey overall effect.

 

Always a good idea too, to run a control strip through the processor before any critical job, and to include something like a Macbeth color checker in the first frame of a roll.

I don’t see a processing problem. Outdoor shadows are lit by a very large blue light source, the sky. Fixes can be done in post processing as you have done, with some fill strobe lighting or with a warming filter on the camera lens.

To me it looks like the same problem I have shooting a snow scene - the light meter is trying to make a very light background middle grey resulting in blue snow. You need to open up more. Or spot meter the subjects skin. Or meter a blue sky away from the sun. You are shooting into the sun and bright water. Of course the meter will close down too much.