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Old 23rd December 2017, 10:03 PM
Mike O'Pray Mike O'Pray is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Daventry, Northants
Posts: 8,969
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Welcome to FADU Paul. The best way to start colour (C41, I assume and not E6 slide film) is to obtain either a Jobo processor which can do both C41 colour neg and RA4 colour paper prints. They are not particularly cheap these days or a dedicated film processor. Both have a heated water bath to maintain the temp of the chemicals at 38C. Maintenance of this temp is quite important.

However even in a bathroom with the bath acting as a water bath it is possible to get close to the right temperature and use an inversion technique. I need to add the rider that as I have a Jobo I have not actually tried C41 with a bath of water and inversion.

Before you buy C41 chemicals, I'd try a wet run first i.e. sacrifice a cheap C41 film by pre-wetting it in a tank for say 5 mins with water at 38C and bath water around it at say 40C . Then pour in fresh water at 38C, invert for say 5 secs every 30 secs for the required time of 3 mins 15 secs and check the tank's water temp at the end. If it is within 0.5C of 38C this is probably close enough although strictly speaking the process talks of 0.2C. You can then modify the pre-wet time and water bath temp to get it as close to 38C as you can. If you can get it close then you can think of a C41 kit

All this will do is get you processed negatives. To produce prints requires a bit more equipment such as an enlarger, DUKA safelight etc.

Unless you have a light tight area that will hold an enlarger with a colour head, a Jobo for print processing or a Nova heated processor things can start to get complex

I'll leave it at that for now. I think we need to know what area of the house you have available for such stuff and what budget you have for processing and printing

Mike
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