Chauncey Walden
28-Feb-2008, 09:56
The closing of my nearest lab for color processing prompted me, with some trepidation, to try it myself. I ordered a Unicolor C41 kit and an Arista E6 kit from Freestyle and cranked up the temp setting on the JOBO. When I pulled the lid off the drum and got my first look at the color negs it was an O.S. moment. What had I done wrong? The answer became apparent as they dried - nothing! Why have I never heard (or why don't the instructions mention) that they are going to look very weird until they dry? The next night was E6 time and as I opened the drum to look at my two sheets of 5x7 Velvia 50, the last I had:-( , I told myself they would look different when they dried (I hope, I hope). And, they did. They had a little curl when I took them out of the drum but this went away with time. By the way, this was Velvia with an expiration date of 1994/02 and the next batch was Fuji 50D with a date of 1990/11 and they could not have turned out any better. I'm still sorry my lab closed, but I'm very happy I have an easy alternative.