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X-mas crossed: processing slide film with the Naniwa Colorkit N

Text and images by Christoph Hammann for Japan Exposures

Germany is full of Christmas fairs this time of the year. They are to be found in every larger town and even in some villages. Visually, they are an assault of colored lights, vivid vendor‘s stalls and people mingling and socializing while sipping Glühwein (mulled wine) and nibbling Lebkuchen (gingerbread).

C Hammann Naniwa Cross Process Review

What better to represent this mood photographically than cross-developed color slide film? So I found myself visiting the Nordhausen Christmas fair on the first Advent Sunday with my Nikon S3, Nikkor-P.C 1:2 f= 8.5 cm lens on it and Fujifilm Provia 400X in it.

Back home, I developed the film as if it were a C41 color negative film. I used the Naniwa Color Kit N with exactly the same procedure as in my previous article. Cross-development is always kind of an experiment, and you get surprising results.

As I said, Glühwein is an important part of the German Christmas fair experience, this vendor was happily counting his revenues.

C Hammann Naniwa Cross Process Review

These fellows seem to have consumed a fair amount of the spiced red wine.

C Hammann Naniwa Cross Process Review

The tonality lends a dystopic mood to the cosy scene, colors are rendered a bit off, gradation is steep and saturation is way up for some colors and rather subdued for others.

These are the results if you choose to scan the cross-developed slide film as a color negative film. It looks that way, too, minus the orange mask.

But sometimes you chance upon a „negative“ that makes sense as it is. So then you can of course scan it as the slide film that it was before you mistreated it in C41 chemistry. This is what that looks like after some levels and curves in Vuescan:

C Hammann Naniwa Cross Process Review

Here, of course, we‘re no longer at the Christmas fair, this is the facade of Jenoptic, one company that split off the east german branch of Zeiss.

After some straightening in Photoshop, you get the instant Warhologram that is the image at the top.

This is what this picture would have looked like had I scanned it as a negative:
C Hammann Naniwa Cross Process Review

I think I like both ways of treating cross-processed slide film in post-processing. Each one has it’s own creative possibilities.

So, if your lab would scoff at you for such an unreasonable demand, why not try it yourself? Dunk the wrong kind of film into the Naniwa Color Kit N and see what you get. It’s easy and fun!

Merry Cross-mas!


Christoph Hammann is a fine art photographer from Waltershausen, Germany. He works with traditional film and silver halide papers as well as digital post-processing and alternative printing techniques. His website is “Mostly Black & White”.

Developing color negative film with the Naniwa Colorkit N


 

Text and images by Christoph Hammann for Japan Exposures

When I took up a new project this fall, I decided to try my hand at developing color negative film. This is supposed to be difficult and prone to developing errors. In fact, though I had bought some Fuji Pro800 rollfilm and a Naniwa Colorkit N C-41 developing kit earlier, I held them back for just such fears. Then when the fall color got very intense this year, I couldn‘t go on photographing in black & white. The first two rolls of 120 film I dropped off at my local photo shop, getting a digi-evangelization in the process. They came back developed rather grainy and the test prints were off-color. Having them developed wasn‘t cheap either!

This I can do better, I thought.

Turns out I was right! Here‘s the material I used:

The temperature was kept constant at 30 °C with a Jobo Temperbox TBE2, essentially a heated water bath with a thermostat and receptables for bottles, graduated beakers and the developing drum. I collected some exposed rolls of Fuji Pro800 and proceeded to mix the solutions.

The Naniwa Colorkit N comes with concise, clear instructions in English in addition to Japanese, for which I was grateful…

Mixing the solutions

The developer takes on an appealing pink color once mixed. The blix (short for bleach/fixer) on the other hand is of an ugly brownish cast and smells bad.

Developer and Blix

Ready to start developing. Times for all C41 process films seem to be the same regardless of ISO, as long as you expose them at their native ISO. So this is how those automatic minilabs work! The kit comes with tables for dev times for push development plus one or two stops, too.

Pouring back the developer and getting ready to blix it.

Watering at about 30 °C and for a defined time, this washes out some of the orange mask. My first two self-developed rolls of color negative film hanging to dry!

Rinsing and drying

This works for sheet film, too. I used Fujifilm 160 NS 8×10 in film, the developing drum this time was an old Durst Codrum originally meant for the Cibachrome process.

It has ridges inside so the film comes into contact with the chemicals from both sides and takes 200 ml of solutions.
Sheet film processing

Getting it out of the drum without scratching the delicate, wet emulsion is best done with the drum filled with water to the top.

To end with, here are some results.

The shot at the top is the 8″x10″ nighttime shot, I was delighted that the film could render the different colors of lighting and had such a high latitude and subtle graduation of tones. Exposure time was 8 minutes at f/45.

Diffugium

This picture is from the fall colors project called „diffugium“. The Fuji Pro800 rollfilm proved to be quite fine-grained, the negatives were easy to scan and the pictures were versatile in post-processing in Photoshop.
Diffugium

For example, as this picture from the same roll of film (but from a different project) shows, it is easy to increase saturation and still keep good colors.

I will definitely be using these films and the Naniwa Colorkit N for current and future color projects.

Coming soon: Christoph will use the Naniwa Color Kit N to cross-process some slide film.


Christoph Hammann is a fine art photographer from Waltershausen, Germany. He works with traditional film and silver halide papers as well as digital post-processing and alternative printing techniques. His website is “Mostly Black & White”.