Well, after my first attempt at home E6, I loaded up four sheets of my expired Provia, and set about a test: Tripod, release, shoot a nice mugho pine at a few settings to try to get a feel for processing and whether or not the film is any good. I know, I know - I should really have a lab process these to remove that variable. But where's the fun in that? Besides, my local lab doesn't do 4x5 E6, and I'm too impatient to send these out (and too cheap to pay the $5+ a sheet, plus shipping, for the work).
Anyway, turns out my temperature control on my first processing was poor. I checked temps repeatedly and frequently this time, and it turns out that heat transfer is slower than you'd intuitively think. I filled the sink with as hot of water as we have, and let the jars soak. When the sink dropped to about 40C, I dumped the water and refilled. Kept doing this until the first developer was just over the 40.5C target. I kept the sink hot even for the second developer and the blix, though I think this might be overkill - I've read that temp is only really critical on the first developer.
Anyway, I got images on all four sheets, and the one I'd expect to look best, about a half stop under the meter reading, turned out fine:
The film has a decidedly strong orange cast to it - not sure if that's a result of the three-bath processing or the expired film. VueScan does a pretty good job removing it by locking film base color. Still takes a little tweaking in PS to get the colors close, but I think that's a crappy scanner issue. Regardless, I'll play around with this film, reacquaint myself with critical exposure, and when time comes for some important shots, I'll buy some new(er) film.
For anyone considering trying this, it's not nearly as hard as you'd think.
Scott
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