A Fast Way to Develop Color Film

Tired of multi-baths and the steps needed to process color films? The C-41 process requires many steps, but if you use the Nova Pro-speed 41 film developer kit you can reduce the whole procedure to only two baths.

The Nova Pro-Speed 41 kit allows to reduce the steps to process color films. Only three step are needed: Developing, blix and washing. With great results!

The kit is composed of a tube and two little bags, all containing the chemicals in powder. You need two 1 liter bottles, one for the developer and the other for the blix.

You must dissolve (in this precise order) the contents of the tube and then the contents of the small bag in 800ml of cold water (why don’t use hot water at the processing temperature of 38 degrees celsius? Simple: because if you use hot water the chemicals will react before mixing it together!). Then you must fill the bottle to have 1 liter of developing solution. Do not breathe the dust! Protect the hands, eyes and face!

In the second bottle you must dissolve the contents of the big bag in 800ml of water. Again do not breathe the dust and protect your hands, face and eyes! Then you must fill the bottle to make one litre of solution.

Now you must heat the two bottles at the optimum temperature of 38 degrees (but you can process the film between 26 and 43 degrees celsius, changing the developing times from 9:00 to 1:45 minutes. These times are written in the data sheet. At 38 degrees the developing time is 3 minutes and 15 seconds). After the first bath, you can recover the developer solution in the bottle for the next time.

The second process, the “blix”, requires 3 minutes at 38 degrees, and the time varies from 6 minutes to 2 minutes when the temperature vary from 26 to 43 degress celsius. In this process, the agitation must be continuous.

Then you must wash with hot water (refill your tank 5 times and agitate for 30 seconds every time).

If you need to push your film, you can do it, increasing the time of the first bath. For example at 38 degrees you can push one stop increasing the developing time of 1 minutes. This kit allows you to push from 1 to 3 stop and to pull 1 stop. So if you are using for example a 400 ISO film you can push it at 800, 1600, 3200 ISO or pull it at 200 ISO. Please note that pushing a color film gives a blue/cyan dominant!

The kit allows you to develop 12 rolls of 135mm format film! Sometimes I love develop my color films at home because the slight variations of temperature and developing time, make the photos are always different from one bath to another!

written by sirio174 on 2012-04-19 #gear #tutorials #c41 #tutorial #tipster #development #color-film #nova #quick #develop #film-processing #nova-pro-speed-41 #two-baths #blix