P3D Re: DIY E-6

[Joel Alpers <joel.alpers@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

E-6 Developing
--------------

There have been some good postings as to why you might NOT want
to do your own E-6 processing, so to balance them out I'll give
my reasons for doing it  ;)

I buy the Kodak 1-gallon E-6 kit. It costs $45 at B&H, and only
$78 at my local camera store (which also charges over $13.00 for a 
roll of E100S, BTW. Sheesh.  They put outdated film out for sale
for $7.00 a roll, and say, "Hey, it's half price!!"  Anyway...)

The kit does 32 rolls of film, and by buying an additional 
bottle of the First and Color developers, you can do another
32 rolls. So about 64 rolls of film for what works out to
around $1.30 a roll (not counting my time, of course!)

My local "pro" lab charges about $7.00 for a roll of E-6. Yes,
you can do better in larger cities or via mail order. I don't
like mailing my film out. I'd rather destroy it myself. <grin>

So for me and the choices I make, there is a cost savings.

I also like the ability to do easy push/pull processing, and the
control I get over when I get results. If I take some film on a
Sunday and just have to see it, I can.

I process in a Bessler drum, usually doing 4 rolls at a time. With 
my setup, this is just the recommended capacity for the developers,
so they don't "get old" on me.


It's not for everyone! But I enjoy it and am happy with the results.


B/W Slides
----------

I'm just getting started in this. I've collected some info about
it on the WEB which you may find useful:

  http://www.frii.com/~rkymtmem/reversal

At the moment this is not accessible from RMM's WEB page, as I'm still
working on it, but you may find it useful. There are an almost bewildering
number of B/W reversal processes, but all are quite similar when you
start looking at them. I've been experimenting with the process that Hans
Dietrich wrote up, with some success (and a couple of failures ;)

I'd be happy to discuss it with anyone on the list, but since it's probably
not of interest to many (if any), so if you do want to talk about it, why
don't we take it off-line to email?

Joel.


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