Sunday 4 December 2011

E-2 (1968) in room temperature C41

OK so I haven't made any updates in forever, so here's a good one. I developed some E-2 Ektachrome-X which expired in the late 60s in room temperature C41 chemicals. The images were exposed recently (about  18 months ago, if I remember correctly) It's a bit cold here, so that's a slight lie, I did warm the chemicals from actual-quite-chilly room temperature to 72F, so that it would be the same temperature as yarnzombie used when he did E-4 in room temperature C41.
He used the following recipe, which I copied:
All at 72 Farenheit
Colour developer: 20mins
Blix: 8 mins
Wash
Stabiliser: a minute or so.
I've then hung the negatives above the radiator to dry.
There appears to be images on them, although they're fairly monochrome-looking, and a bright teal colour. The images should be comprised of dyes, rather than silver, as we've blixed the film, although after only 8 mins, there may still be residual silver in the images.
Whether or not there's colour information, I'm not sure, but it's definitely a way of getting an image from ancient film. I'll add images in a couple of hours or so, once the negs are dry and I can scan them.

SCANNED!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/msmoynihan/sets/72157628280654373/
I'm amazed at how good the images are. The variation across the surface made colour balancing difficult, but I think we can see that this has been a successful project! There appears to be a slight pattern from the backing paper, but never mind.