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Can I get color OR black & white negatives from E-6 film


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I got several rolls of E-6 but only enjoy printing black and white prints in the traditional wet darkroom. Does anyone know if you can process E-6 to get color or B&W negatives to print in the darkroom? I know people are going to say "try it and find out.." and I probably will but I thought maybe someone could give me some idea of what to expect and also what chemicals/processes to try such as D-76, C-41, etc... I don't expect to get T-Max 100 quality but I wouldn't mind something like color negatives - which I've printed on black and white paper before and came out fine. Thanks.
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Processing E6 film in C41 chemistry, for an unmasked negative, isn't unusual.

 

Reversal films tend to be higher contrast, as that is what people expect.

That is also the reason for the small exposure latitude.

 

There are plenty of old, 10, 20, 30, 40 or more, years old black and white

films around, if you want to try out old film.

 

There are some that use old Kodachrome in black and white developers,

and since there are no running K41 labs, I suppose that isn't a bad thing.

 

There is an actual Kodak document about developing color negatives as

black and white, making prints, then redeveloping them in color.

-- glen

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E-6 film processed in black & white developer followed by stop (or water rinse) and then fixed will yield a slightly substandard black & white negative suitable for printing. That being said, I would process or have the film processed in E-6 chemistry, making a color slide. You can make black and white positive prints from these transparencies by first scanning them to digitize. Now you can make prints from the files using your computer and a digital printer. If this doesn't fit your fancy, you can contact print each transparency on black & white film, making an inter-negative and then print this inter-negative using your enlarger. You can also load your 35mm camera with black and white film and copy each at unity (magnification 1). You will have fun making these inter-negatives. It is a valid technique. Now long ago this was standard procedure.
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Hi Alan, The digitizing process doesn't really grab me but the other methods you mentioned seem interesting. Even if it's not top notch quality it just seems like something cool to explore. One question, if I was to process E-6 in black & white developer how would I know what temperature/time combination to follow? Would I just follow the instructions for black & white film? Thanks.
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E-6 colour film has 3 layers plus a yellow filter layer embedded. It's going to have soft definition - due to the emulsion thickness - and probably have a weird colour response if processed as B&W.

 

If that's what you want, go ahead.

 

Best to do a 'clip test' on a bit of exposed leader to get a development time. You just dunk a small bit of film in an eggcupful of developer at the right temperature and develop until the rear side of the film looks black or very dark grey. This gives you an approximate time.

Technically, you need to aim for a fully fogged density of around 2.4D for a nicely printable negative.

 

C-41 processing will give you something called 'crossed curves' that aren't correctable with any enlarger filter combo. You might be able to get acceptable colour after scanning, but it's going to be tedious.

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Follow the time/temperature chart for a black & white film of about the same ISO. You will find the resulting negatives quite good. As to the yellow filter layer --- there are about a dozen coats on E-6 film. The top emulsion coats are sensitive only to blue light. This sensitivity is the natural response of salts of silver. In other words, naturally grown crystals of silver bromine, silver chlorine, and silver iodine are sensitive only to light with short wave lengths, ultraviolet, violet, and blue.

 

Under these layers, the silver salts have been modified so that they gain sensitivity to green. These emulsions are in the middle of the stack. Below are emulsions treated to become sensitive to red light.

 

These modifications are called sensitizing agents, mostly dyes that alter the crystals’ color. They are naturally off-white-creamy towards yellow. Professor Hermann Vogel, in 1867 was trying to stop halation that plague them. These result when highlights are so bright their light punches through the film, hits emulation junctions, and the back pressure plate and are reflected back into the film from the rear. He dyed an emulsion yellow and the dye absorbed blue -- thus mitigating halation. To his surprise this emulsion gained green sensitivity. His graduate students at Berlin Technical experimented with other dyes and produced films sensitive to red. The results were orthochromatic and panchromatic emulsions.

 

The undercoats, sensitive to green and to red, never lose their sensitivity to blue. To avoid cross-talk, a yellow filter is placed just above them. A filter passes its color. Yellow is comprised of red and green, thus blue light is blocked preventing cross-talk. This yellow filter is simply dyed gelatin and is quite transparent. The yellow dye used is water soluble so it dissolves away into the waters of the developer.

 

Now the cyan, magenta and yellow dyes that form the colors we love in E-6 films are in a leuco state. This is Latin for white or in this case colorless. In other words they are incomplete dye stuff. During the routine E-6 developing process, a single missing ingredient is present in the color developer formula. When E-6 is normally processed, it is developed in a standard, non-staining developer. This yields a black & white negative. Next the film is chemically fogged (older formula films were intentionally light fogged.) Then the now fogged film is re-developed in a black & white formula that contains the missing dye ingredient. As the film is developed the second time, a positive silver-based image is formed. As this new silver materializes, it is attacked by oxygen dissolved in the waters of the developer. Now the newly born silver flake is speckled with silver oxide. This is the trigger that causes adjacent Lecco dye globules to unite with the missing ingredient. Now they blossom cyan in the red emulsion, yellow in the blue emulsion and cyan in the red emulsion.

 

So there you have it. Your black & white developer will do this trick quite nicely. Your finished black & white negatives will contain the Leuco dye but they won’t hinder much.

 

In the old days I was technical manager of 7 giant photofinishing labs each able to handle 20,000 rolls of film a day. Sometimes color film was accidently processed in the black & white developing machines. It was routine to make prints from these black & white negatives. Then we attempted to salvage them by putting them in the bleach step and then starting them afresh in their respective correct processes. The result was a substandard color film, perhaps not suitable for framing. This is the true origin of cross-processing. That was in the glory years of the photofinishing business.

Edited by alan_marcus|2
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