Getting ready to do E6 processing with a Jobo expert drum...

[Steven Ruttenberg]

...and a kick starter rotary machine. From what I have read, rpm doesn't seem to matter much, but too me, if too fast won't work well. I was gonna start with 25 rpm reversing to process 10 sheets of 4x5 E100, Provia100F and Velvia100. I won't mix the film types though.

Should it be continuous or reversing or does it matter? Is 25 rpm too fast? I don't think so. Don't think it is too slow either given that till now I was using the Stearman Press SP-8x10 to process 4 sheets of 4x5 E100 where I did a decent first agitation by rocking the tray back and forth and then every 30 seconds did a 15 second slow rock of tray back and forth. So far the sheets look good.

This is why I settled on a reversing pattern at 25 rpm. Not too fast, not too slow, and imitates the rocking back and forth.

Thoughts? Gonna try this out tonight.

[angusparker]

You are braver than me. Let us know how it goes. I'm intimidated by the temperature control and toxic chemicals. But maybe I should have a second look....

[Steven Ruttenberg]

E6 is easy peasy so is C41. Just like black and white, but hotter.

[Vaughan]

Should it be continuous or reversing or does it matter? Is 25 rpm too fast? I don't think so. Don't think it is too slow either given that till now I was using the Stearman Press SP-8x10 to process 4 sheets of 4x5 E100 where I did a decent first agitation by rocking the tray back and forth and then every 30 seconds did a 15 second slow rock of tray back and forth. So far the sheets look good.

With tray processing the sheet is continuously submerged. With rotary the sheets are alternating between covered in the chemical and completely out. One of the hazards is uneven development due to standing waves forming in the liquid: regularly changing the rotation pattern prevents these, and reversing the direction is the simplest method.

If you look inside a well designed tank like the JOBO 2520, there are ridges inside that are unevenly spaced. These are there to break up the fluid flow and prevent patterns from forming, which would create uneven development.

[Steven Ruttenberg]

With tray processing the sheet is continuously submerged. With rotary the sheets are alternating between covered in the chemical and completely out. One of the hazards is uneven development due to standing waves forming in the liquid: regularly changing the rotation pattern prevents these, and reversing the direction is the simplest method.

If you look inside a well designed tank like the JOBO 2520, there are ridges inside that are unevenly spaced. These are there to break up the fluid flow and prevent patterns from forming, which would create uneven development.


Good to know. It will be nice to do 10 sheets of slide and color negative at a time. Even bw when not looking to do special development techniques.

[PatrickMarq]

E6 is easy peasy so is C41. Just like black and white, but hotter.

Indeed, for E6 just more products because I use the Bellini kit. Remember the first time my film came out: all milky white. But that seemed normal after drying wow.

[Steven Ruttenberg]

Processed the first 10 sheets of Provia100F. RPMs at 25, reversing. So far all looks okay. A couple of the skies "appear" to have a yellow tint to them, but they are also over-exposed it appears. Had this on a different slide when hand processing. Developed at 105F. The final rinse water ended up being warmer than 105, but doubt that would hurt anything.

Of note, when mixing the full volume of chemicals, I mixed the color developer at 2.75:1, water:color developer instead of 2.2. I don't think this would affect anything given how rough measurements are even using beakers like I do.

Question, if dilution for color developer is a bit more than should be, would increasing the time for color developer, like 15-30 seconds help? Or is it really needed to account for a slightly weaker mix?

To note: After practicing taking the lid on and off the 3010 expert drum, when it came to actually removing after developing, it was stuck tighter than a frogs a**. One method is to just keep working (would still be working it) another was to blow into the hole and a third was to buy the foot pump. I blew into the hole, took a lot of air pressure, when it popped it felt like getting punched in the mouth. I should have expected that being an engineer :). Cut my upper lip a bit below my nose. Not bad.

I immediately went to BH and ordered the foot pump. Will be here Friday!

[Steven Ruttenberg]

And I like it. To develop 10 sheets of 4x5 in the amount of time to do 4, is excellent. Even for black and white when your not developing for a special method. Most of my images I try to make right in camera. I am starting to experiment with bleaching, using pyro again, push and pull processing, etc.`

[Tin Can]

Great story well told

I won't JOBO

However I have tiny quiet air compressor with 2 filters at 15 PSI, very controllable DRY air

In HVAC room

for dust and...




Processed the first 10 sheets of Provia100F. RPMs at 25, reversing. So far all looks okay. A couple of the skies "appear" to have a yellow tint to them, but they are also over-exposed it appears. Had this on a different slide when hand processing. Developed at 105F. The final rinse water ended up being warmer than 105, but doubt that would hurt anything.

Of note, when mixing the full volume of chemicals, I mixed the color developer at 2.75:1, water:color developer instead of 2.2. I don't think this would affect anything given how rough measurements are even using beakers like I do.

Question, if dilution for color developer is a bit more than should be, would increasing the time for color developer, like 15-30 seconds help? Or is it really needed to account for a slightly weaker mix?

To note: After practicing taking the lid on and off the 3010 expert drum, when it came to actually removing after developing, it was stuck tighter than a frogs a**. One method is to just keep working (would still be working it) another was to blow into the hole and a third was to buy the foot pump. I blew into the second hole, took a lot of air pressure, when it popped it felt like getting punched in the mouth. I should have expected that being an engineer :). Cut my upper lip a bit below my nose. Not bad.

I immediately went to BH and ordered the foot pump. Will be here Friday!

[Steven Ruttenberg]

Great story well told

I won't JOBO

However I have tiny quiet air compressor with 2 filters at 15 PSI, very controllable DRY air

In HVAC room

for dust and...

I have a Rolair with separate storage tank. Very quiet. I have five filters on it and an ion air nozzle. If my house ever get's complete, I will have a dark room and my office both on separate Minisplits with no connection to the rest of the house's AC system completely isolating those rooms and keeping them positively pressurized, No dust getting in there.

[Vaughn]

I have been using the 3005 and the 3006 Expert Drums for several years on a Unicolor motor base.

Several things about removing the lids:
1...Never stick your head over the top if using air pressure. Friend needed eye surgery due to this (using foot pump).
2...If using air pressure, fill as far as possible with water first. Water does not compress and less air/force will be needed to remove lid.
3...Don't stick the lids on so tight! Easy does it, and they'll come off easier and still not leak.
4...Don't use air pressure -- gently tap drum's lower edge of its lid on edge of table top etc, working around the lid, and gently lifting the lid off. Combined with #3, no damage is done to the drum.

My motor base turns the 3005 and 3006 drums at 15 RMP. I manually lift and switch the direction of the rotation of the drum every minute or so...the auto rotate feature switches direction before one full drum rotation with these larger diameter drums, so I disabled it.

[Steven Ruttenberg]

Got next set of 10 done. It is interesting to see your mistakes, etc from 2-4 years ago for the first time. And to also see some development issues. Like I have a couple slides got these weird fat lighter wavy lines. Only in the sky. Won't know for sure what they are, but pretty sure was not there when I took the image.

I also noticed that when you over-expose slide (Provia100F so far), yes it is lighter density, but also becomes way magenta cast and in the super exposed areas can get a crispy yellow. Almost like it was over cooked.

They I have been exposing slides is to find the brightest and darkest areas of my scene, and take the average. I was doing this to avoid losing shadow detail. This seems to work okay, but also seems like it could be hit and miss, especially if you average wrong which I have been known to do. Will know better when I look at my notes.

What I am going to try to do next for determining exposure for my slides, is to still take the average, but back off by 1 stop. Ie, if brightest is ev 16 and darkest is ev 4, the avg is 10. So if you put ev 10 at middle gray (Zone V if you will) that means the brightest is 6 stops brighter or Zone 11 (blown out) and darkest is at Zone 1 (practically useless for a slide most of the time imho)

If scene permits, then I would use a reverse grad ND to tame bright. If I pull back one stop, still blow out highlights, and end up with darkest at Zone 0. Slide film just doesn't have enough latitude in stops to accommodate that scene.

I could expose for the brights and try to develop for the darks, but having never tried that would be an experiment in and of itself. Don't know if pulling a couple of stops will force the darks to be underdeveloped or what. Not much I can do about it now. A lot of these were taken years ago

Another bit of wisdom. Make sure to check the notch codes prior to loading for development. I had a Tmax100 in same film holder as Velvia100. You can guess what happened to the Tmax. Beautiful clear image :)

[Vaughn]

Steve, do you pre-wet the film before adding developer to the Expert Drum?
For B&W, Jobo recommends it...not sure about color, though. At 15 rpm, I think it does have a benefit getting the developer to well-wetted film a bit more evenly than dry film.

[Duolab123]

If you go to jobousa there's a document about expert tanks. Recommendation is 50 rpm. This is what I use with CPP3. I use 3005 to develop paper as well as (rarely) 8x10 film.

[Larry Gebhardt]

I use 50 rpm with expert drums for color, per Jobo’s recommendation.

Regarding opening the tanks with air, if you fill the tank to the top it creates a very low drama lift instead of pop with the foot pump. I wouldn’t use compressed air given the cost of the expert drums.

[Steven Ruttenberg]

I will try the 50 rpm next set of 10. Yes, I prewet, but I forgot to do it for that batch and the next batch. The newest batch looks okay though. But looking at the development errors, it is obvious it was trapped air bubbles and the developer running down portions of the negative. It only takes an extra few seconds before full coverage to ruin the film.

[Steven Ruttenberg]

I use 50 rpm withe expert drums for color, per Jobo’s recommendation.

Regarding opening the tanks with air, if you fill the tank to the top it creates a very low drama lift instead of pop withe foot pump. I wouldn’t use compressed air given the cost of the expert drums.

Agree. Gonna try the jobo foot pump.

[Steven Ruttenberg]

Processed 40 sheets of slide film today. I love that thing. Looks lime I need to work on my exposure determination for slide film. Many come out a bit over exposed but useable.

[Gary Beasley]

I found when doing E4 and later E6 the color developer goes to completion and I could extend the time and get richer looking color. My hand developed slides always looked better than the ones I sent out to be machine processed. This should cover your question about diluting the color developer. Your apparent overexposure might be from the color developer being underdone. As the first developer is the critical one it should never be diluted more, timing is critical there unless you are pushing the film.

[ic-racer]

Fill the Expert drum all the way to the top with water. Then top removal with the pump is no big deal. The top just lifts up smoothly. Just press down on the pump with your hand, takes very little force.
The water will overflow out of the tank when the lid comes off, so do this in the sink.

[Vaughn]

I use 50 rpm with expert drums for color, per Jobo’s recommendation.

Regarding opening the tanks with air, if you fill the tank to the top it creates a very low drama lift instead of pop with the foot pump. I wouldn’t use compressed air given the cost of the expert drums.

Have you counted the number of revolutions per minute? I am curious if the 50 rpm setting actually turns a drum the diameter of a 3005 Expert drum that fast.

[Larry Gebhardt]

Have you counted the number of revolutions per minute? I am curious if the 50 rpm setting actually turns a drum the diameter of a 3005 Expert drum that fast.

I have not measured it, but next time I process some film I'll try. My ATL 2000 has 25, 50, and 75 RPM options. My perception is they are probably close to that, with the 50 RPM feeling twice as fast as the 25 RPM. Part of the problem with measuring it will be that the drum reverses every turn or two, so the rotation speed is not constant. What ever it's doing is working since the film comes out nice and even, including at the slow speed which I use for black and white.

[Steven Ruttenberg]

Fill the Expert drum all the way to the top with water. Then top removal with the pump is no big deal. The top just lifts up smoothly. Just press down on the pump with your hand, takes very little force.
The water will overflow out of the tank when the lid comes off, so do this in the sink.

I like that idea!

[Steven Ruttenberg]

I found when doing E4 and later E6 the color developer goes to completion and I could extend the time and get richer looking color. My hand developed slides always looked better than the ones I sent out to be machine processed. This should cover your question about diluting the color developer. Your apparent overexposure might be from the color developer being underdone. As the first developer is the critical one it should never be diluted more, timing is critical there unless you are pushing the film.

I believe the developer was good. I processed 40 sheets and many were exposed normally which leads me to believe I need to modify how I am metering in the field for slide film

[Steven Ruttenberg]

Have you counted the number of revolutions per minute? I am curious if the 50 rpm setting actually turns a drum the diameter of a 3005 Expert drum that fast.

I have not. I use it on oscillate so it kinda doesn't matter? I use an after market rotary machine. Works pretty slick. I have two of them so I can set one up while the other is doing its thing. Could use two more. :)

[Steven Ruttenberg]

I think for really critical work, ie, the ones you just cant f up, I will hand process in a tray regardless of film type. I have processed 60 sheets of 4x5 now in the jobo and have about an 11% failure rate in that the development was uneven or streaky, what appears to have been airbubbles stuck to the film, stupid stuff like that. I may have to rap the tank on counter harder.

[Tin Can]

Keep it simple

I had a hard time learning Sheet

I made my entire system as mindless as I could

Then never changed anything

and I won't

[Duolab123]

Nothing magical about processing sheets of E6, other than the price of film. The expert tanks are splendid when teamed with a Jobo CPP processor. I can't afford much 4x5 Ektachrome, beautiful stuff though.
First developer times and temperature are ultra-critical. I would run a test before committing precious frames.

[Vaughn]

I have not. I use it on oscillate so it kinda doesn't matter? I use an after market rotary machine. Works pretty slick. I have two of them so I can set one up while the other is doing its thing. Could use two more. :)

No, it does not matter...I was just wondering what the actual drum rpm would be, compared to the setting used on the Jobos.

On motor bases such as the Unicolor or Beseler, the motor speed is constant and the diameter of the drum/tube will determine actual rpm. The diameter of the Expert Drum 30xx series is about 8 inches and it takes awhile for the wheels of the motor base to turn that 25 inches of circumference. If the Jobo processors spin the drums on their axis, then the rpm would be consistent over different diameter drums and tubes at the same setting, I'm guessing.

I am just trying to imagine a 3005 drum rotating over three times the speed of mine (my 15 rpm vs Jobo's 50 rpm)...:cool:

[Mal Paso]

Wow! I never tried a drum. I built a 1 gallon water jacketed E6 batch line from welded ABS sheet and surplus Kreonite parts. I would turn it on in the morning and process when I got back from the shoot. It would process 20 4x5s at a time and you could replenish. Is this One Shot use of the chemistry?

[Steven Ruttenberg]

Wow! I never tried a drum. I built a 1 gallon water jacketed E6 batch line from welded ABS sheet and surplus Kreonite parts. I would turn it on in the morning and process when I got back from the shoot. It would process 20 4x5s at a time and you could replenish. Is this One Shot use of the chemistry?

I have done 40 sheets on 500ml of chemical. Using Unicolor C41 powder.

I accidentally did constant rotation tonight. Didn’t seem to hurt anything.

[Mal Paso]

I have done 40 sheets on 500ml of chemical. Using Unicolor C41 powder.

I accidentally did constant rotation tonight. Didn’t seem to hurt anything.

I don' think agitation is as critical with E6 as it is with B&W. The Kodak film hangers that would hyper develop the edges of B&W film seem to be fine with E6. I custom built film hangers then switched to Evolution hangers to improve the B&W processing. Standard tank agitation was lift the rack from the tank every 30 seconds alternating tilting forward and back.

Thanks for the info!

[Steven Ruttenberg]

About 60 sheets and no problems. Love this Jobo drum.

[Tin Can]

About 60 sheets and no problems. Love this Jobo drum.

Good news!

Love your website

[Steven Ruttenberg]

Good news!

Love your website

Thank you! Been busy trying to finish my home.