Re: SP-445 C-41 experiences?
Thanks for the update esearing. One suggestion to reduce chemical carryover into the bleach and fixer is to use a 100F/39C 3 minute plain water rinse bath after stop, bleach and fix baths. This reduces chemical carryover, but liquid carryover (water) into subsequent baths is still a phenomenon, although less concerning in my view. The 3 minute bath between chemicals is endorsed by Photo Engineer on the other analog-intensive photography site.
Re: SP-445 C-41 experiences?
Thank you for the tip re the measuring cups esearing. Yes, this could simplify things! I just had a look online, and saw these things here... http://www.ebay.com/itm/Bellemain-4-...-/272579180482 - which look like they might be ideal. Is that similar to what you are using? They don't ship to the UK from this site, but I'm sure I'll find something similar here.
And re rinses, yes that's something I believe in a great deal - although in my darkroom setup there's a limit, since I don't totally trust the warm water purity coming through a rather old boiler. So I have to pre-temp my tap water for this, which limits my capacity. At the moment I do 5 rinses after bleach and 5 after fix (in a sort of blown-up Ilford rinse procedure) before going to cold running water before final stabiliser. I could add another rinse after stop bath of course as you suggest chassis, will try this next time.
I think for me, the main concern I have with carryover is from the developer - that's why I added the one-shot stop bath. Once the films are in the stop bath, it should be less of an issue from there on, because you can take more time to empty all the following chemical baths since they run to completition. And with more time available, tipping the SP-445 back up and over several times, it is possible to at least reduce the carryover a fair bit. It just doesn't seem a great idea to do this at the end of developing, where that could mean remnants of un-stopped developer sitting on parts of the film for an extended time.
For anyone reading this thread to this stage, and contemplating using their SP-445 for C-41 for the first time, I should say I'm very happy to recommend trying it. (At your own risk, of course! :-))
I was initially surprised that I found relatively little online about people doing this, although there are a few people who posted images processed this way on flickr. Some of them are doing this at a lower temp, and some at 100F / 37.8C.
If you want to go for 100F / 37.8C as I do, I'd suggest to give it a few runs with b/w materials first and see how long it takes you to get your developer out and your stop bath in. And well worth reading the suggestions posted by forum members in this thread, thank you for these!