Poor Outcomes Developing E6 At Home - Need A Little Help

[SlickPapillon]

I went ahead and bought some the Arista E6 processing kit and so far have developed two rolls. Never developed E6, only B&W, and I'm having some learning curve adjustments:

1. First roll came out way too light with greenish hues, can't make out very much. I think what happened was the temperature fluctuated too much.

2. My second roll came out kind of milky looking, the whole thing is a little pink too. The images are much better on this roll but overall too light. I kept everything at 105 this time, the only think is I may have pre-washed a little too long. I'm hoping my next roll comes out better, what can I do differently to get away from that milky effect and get better images?
Also can this be from using expired film? Maybe even cross contamination of the chemicals?

Using a Jobo bath for color processing
**I'm moving upward to LF film in the next few months and would love to get his little problem solved - using 120 right now and I'm losing 12 images every time I mess up, so I need to figure it out. New chemicals are on their way just so I can mix them exactly to specification without using math to adjust. Shooting only 'good', non expired film and bracketing each image just to make sure the 'lightness' on the film isn't my own overexposure problem (it's been known to happen..)

Anyone else experience light images like this while developing E6 at first?

[Jim C.]

Others that have used the Arista E6 chems may offer better advice, but one thing that that stands out
in your post is -
" New chemicals are on their way just so I can mix them exactly to specification without using math to adjust. "

If you didn't mix the chems as per Arista's instructions that may be the root of your problems

I will be switching to Arista's E6 chems as soon as use up my last Kodak E6 kit.

[Pali K]

I process a good bit of E6 at home and I can tell you from experience that temperature for the first developer have to be exact. Any guessing there will ruin your images. Color developer is a little more forgiving.

I never tried Arista kit because I started processing C41 with Tetenal kit and I love the quality of these chemicals so I went straight to Tetenal E6. I buy the 5 liter kit and mix chemicals in 500ml working solutions. Math has never been a problem for me and going to 500ml from 5l is very straight forward.

Regardung your issues, I once tried to use 2 week old working solution where the first developer was clearly milky and I got blank slides with very faint image. Upon reading the detailed instructions later (yep later), I found out that the first developer can easily become contaminated from the vapors of the color developer. I keep chemicals in open top bottles during processing so I can see how this happened easily in my situation. I now keep first developer as away from others as possible and can safely use chemicals that are upto 4 weeks old. The key is to keep them in air free bottles which I do using the Tetenal spray.

In summary, you have no wiggle room for first developer and pretty much anything can screw up this 1st step. I use jobo cpp2 prpcessor and jobo drums and after being careful with my chemicals and temperatures, I get beautiful slides. Better than my local lab actually because the local lab has a tendency to scratch my slides.

Another important note for you to keep in mind is that underdevelopment doesn't shift colors but overdevelopment does. Underdevelopment is always much better for slides in general so anytime you adjust or guess anything, aim for underdevelopment not over.

Tetenal recommends increasing development times for 4x5 and 8x10 film but I find that 120 roll time (lowest values) are best and consistent regardless of the format I process.

All of this info is based on my own results and I am by no means an expert on this. Hopefully others who have more experience will also chine in to give you more tips on better results for next time.

Good luck and let me know if there is anything I can help you with.

Regards,

Pali

[ImSoNegative]

for some reason I never had any luck with the arista e6 kit, I had always used the Kodak kit until they quit making it, always had good results, after several rolls trying the arista kit unsuccessfully I finally gave up.

[SlickPapillon]

Yea, Jim, I tried to do the fancy math right from the get-go. So along with the expired film, temperature, being a novice E6 developer, varied exposure etc. the chemicals were that extra variable I couldn't afford to dance around with. Here's hoping round 3 will yield better results. Thanks for your reply.

Thanks Pali, thank you for sharing your insight and experiences. I can see how I've kept my solutions open, and possibly vapor contaminated the first developer. My second time around was much less sloppy than the first, but still left plenty of room for improvement. I'll keep you posted on my progress

[SlickPapillon]

I'm going for the Tetenal this time - I like to stick to 1 method, but I'm scared of the Arista kit now lol

[domaz]

You mention your second roll came out milky looking. My experience with the Kodak E6 kit was that the film always came out initially milky looking and the "milk" effect would eventually fade and return to normal. This is assuming your wash and final rinse was done correctly.

[jp]

I used to do E6 once in a while with the Arista chemicals and it worked fine; this was 20 years ago so things could be different. Temperature was the biggest thing to be perfectionist about. Cleanliness and consistency next. It worked well and saved plenty of money.

[vinny]

There's likely nothing wrong with the chemicals. Follow the instructions with any kit, that's what they're for.

[Preston Capes]

Yea, Jim, I tried to do the fancy math right from the get-go. So along with the expired film, temperature, being a novice E6 developer, varied exposure etc. the chemicals were that extra variable I couldn't afford to dance around with. Here's hoping round 3 will yield better results. Thanks for your reply.

Thanks Pali, thank you for sharing your insight and experiences. I can see how I've kept my solutions open, and possibly vapor contaminated the first developer. My second time around was much less sloppy than the first, but still left plenty of room for improvement. I'll keep you posted on my progress

Expired film, guessing temperatures and times are a recipe for disaster with a process where there is so little wiggle room.
Try some fresh film in correctly mixed developer at the correct time and temp–like the others said keep to the script, don't go off road.