Developing your own color slides and negatives?

[Xithras]

What's involved? I've always heard about people running their own darkrooms, but how difficult is it to develop color film? I spend a bit of money developing film that ultimatly just gets digitized anyway, and was thinking that self-developing might allow me to cut those costs. I just need to convert my exposed negatives to developed strips, which can then be fed into my slide/negative scanner.

[Xithras]

1. Nobody does this?

[blue sky at night]

2. trust me, the variations involved with temp. and stability of the..

process makes no sense to the home darkroom enthusiast. The cost, time and effort to accomplish consistent development would far outstrip any savings. A mini-lab will charge you about $3.00 for a roll of negs and I am sure you already know about how much a roll of reversal costs. Many labs are struggling to keep their E-6 machines in control due to lack of production. I work in the business, and have worked in labs for 25 years...leave it to the processors and use your time for other tasks. Now if you want to talk black and white; go for it.

[Xithras]

4. Interesting. So there's a big difference between B&W and color?

I was under the impression that the process simply involved placing the negs in chemical A for x minutes, chemical B for x minutes, and then rinsing and hanging.

Basically, I'm trying to figure out how to keep my cost per shot down right now. I buy my film by the case so my film costs alone are about .12-.15 cents each (unless I break out the Provia...then it gets a LOT more expensive) which is acceptable to me, but I'm spending about $7 a roll to have a decent photo lab develop my film which is adding about 30 cents a shot on top of that. I guess I could start taking my film to the cheapie labs, but I'm worried that most one hour jobbies have no clue what they're doing if I ask them to push or pull a roll.

Any other ideas on how to get the costs down?

[regnaD kciN]

3. What are these 'slides' and 'negatives' you speak of...?

Some new form of memory card? Why would you need to 'develop' them? Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me...

:evilgrin:

[Deja Q]

5. Ugh. Still, with slides and negatives you don't need to spend $50 for

software that purportedly repairs the image because the memory card fried... :evilgrin:

[FloridaPat]

6. I've done B&W, slides, and color negatives. They are all basically

the same. With color slides or negatives, you get bottles from your camera store to hold the chemicals. These plastic bottles are tested so that nothing gets in with the chemicals. Plastic bottes at Walmart might have a seepage problem. You can never tell. Anyway, I think there are 3 chemicals. (It's been ages since I've done them.) Use distilled water to dilute the chemicals.

Now here is the critical piece - you need a very very good thermometer that can tell you the temperature within 1/2 of a degree. You get these at camera stores too.

Now the instructions tell you what temperatures to use and therefore how long to use the chemicals. I usually went with 100 degrees. You need a plastic or metal canister to hold the film and some way to put the film in the canister so no light reaches the film. Closet or changing bag.

Temperature is critical. And maintaing the temperature throughout the entire process is critical. I use a cooler. I put in hot water around 115 degrees and the chemicals in the cooler. I let things cool down to the 100 degrees I'm shoot for and I'm off. When I fill the canister, I put the lid back on and put it in the cooler also to maintain the temperature. If you have more questions, let me know.