C-41 Reversal Shennanigans

[htmlguru4242]

Some of you might find this interesting.

Ok - so I had a couple rolls of Rollei (AGFA) digibase 200. Seeing as how it has a clear base, I figured that I'd repeat my experiments from a few years ago and try reversal-processing it. I shot it at ISO 400 (one stop underexposed). I processed them in D-76 at 100F for 5.5 minutes, washed, re-exposed to light, and rolled it back up into the can.

Processing it at the local one-hour photo gave some ... interesting results.

Looking at the emulsion side gives a monochrome ambrotype-like image. It's an [overexposed] positive image. Looking at the image by transmitted light gives a negative-looking image with strikingly positive reds and blues. Looking through the base, with the film sitting on black surface gives a color positive image that is very brown in tone. The film has a strong orange/brown color to the base.

I put the scans that the lab gave me into Photoshop, and inverted them to give positive images. I'll post what came out in a few minutes.

[htmlguru4242]

Ok - so here are a few of the shots, inverted in Photoshop ... yes I know that that's a dirty word around here.

[SkipA]

Grainy, but very interesting. The colors don't appear true, but it is a fascinating effect.

Whatever on earth made you think of trying this?

[zsas]

Interesting for sure! I like it. I once did similar, though shot slide (Ektachrome 64T) at 200, processed in Xtol, then fixing in C-41 non-hard fix, then bleaching in potassium ferricyanide and potassium bromide, then running the film through C-41, got this interesting one too....

[Arctic amateur]

Interesting. Is this the CN200 (C-41) or CR200 (E-6) film?

[BMbikerider]

Which just goes to show that C41 film is just about indestructible whatever you process it in

[htmlguru4242]

This is the C41 version. As to why I did it? Who knows ... lol. It seemed like an interesting idea.

I'm going to bleach the film tonight to see if clearing out the extra silver makes it somewhat clearer.

I don't know if the Noritsu processing unit at CVS did any color correction on the scans, but I want to take an optical look at these and see what they really look like.

[htmlguru4242]

I bleached these about 10 minutes ago, with dichromate bleach. I'd forgotten how nasty that stuff was, ick.

The negs. are still drying down, so they have a little bit of a purple cast, but I can almost call this a success.

There was a *ton* of silver left over from my initial development, and it has all cleared out. There are pretty good positive images on the film. Reds and greens are strikingly visible, but a lot of the other colors fade into a sort-of murky brown.

I'd accidentally left a dim green safelight on while I was unloading the film from the roll, so these could be fogged. I'll post some snaps of the actual positives once they're dry.

I think that I'll shoot a few more rolls and see if I can't come up with something that gives a good image.