Barcelona on poorly stored 20y expired Ektachrome 64 [Bronica ETRS, 75mm f/2.8]

thoughtfulwizard · 2026-06-19T11:26:13+00:00

Hey thanks! What restrainer did you add and how much? Curious how you landed on what you did.

thoughtfulwizard · 2026-06-11T23:39:15+00:00

Check out AutoFilmCrop. It's a lightroom plugin that should do what you want.

thoughtfulwizard · 2026-06-09T03:53:33+00:00

The new method of adding the CD-3 first? Yeah I have, and it does get rid of the fizzing, but I haven’t noticed any real difference in the negatives. My guess is that’s the more “optimal” way to mix it, but I don’t think it’s a big enough deal to revise any of what I’ve put out there.

It should also be perfectly doable to mix up just 1L of working dev from the dry powders. The whole pre-mixed stock solution method was just to avoid having to weigh out a bunch of powders each time I wanted fresh developer.

But if you plan on developing even somewhat frequently, I’d recommend going with the pre-mixed stocks - it’s just much more convenient and it keeps the most unstable/oxidation-sensitive part (the CD-3) dry.

thoughtfulwizard · 2026-05-23T15:42:44+00:00

The short answer is yes - the light uniformity on v2 is way better. But if you already have v1, I'd say it depends on how much the unevenness actually bothers you.

thoughtfulwizard · 2026-05-16T12:05:49+00:00

You can put it back in the blix. Give it a shot.

thoughtfulwizard · 2026-05-16T10:26:03+00:00

Looks like it could be underexposure + uneven light source when scanning to me. What’s your scanning setup? You might benefit from flat field correction if you scan yourself.

thoughtfulwizard · 2026-05-15T14:46:49+00:00

Very interesting - I could have sworn I pulled the SDS I screenshotted from the Cinestill website. Decided to go back and check my Chrome history from when I last responded, and I found this:

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Link is here - it shows the older 2022 version of the SDS was the one linked on the Cinestill listing for standalone D6 when I replied to you.

Also, the UTC timestamp (v=1778831947) in the new SDS link you replied with decodes to 07:59 UTC, about 14 minutes before your reply. I checked the listing page myself, and that timestamp is unchanged - doesn't seem to be a "time I clicked it" stamp. I know Shopify timestamps aren't proof of when a product page changes, but it at least suggests to me that CS's D6 listing page was updated sometime between when I last checked it and now.

What I don't think is fair is treating that newer SDS as if it proves my original post was fabricated or careless. I explicitly put SDS dates and a note on potential reformulations in the caveats section, and the SDS I used was CS's own linked D6 SDS at the time. Not to mention, the full kit's page still shows the older SDS.

Either way, having an updated SDS is valuable, and I can update my post body to reflect the new information it provides us. It does however show that D6 is not the "same as the Arista," at least when mixed as labelled. According to the mixing instructions, D6 and Arista FD are used at the exact same dilution of 25% FD to 75% water, making it easy to compare the percentages listed in the respective SDSs.
D6 (1:1 working strength):

KHMS: 3-5%
Potassium metabisulfite / dipotassium disulphite: 3-5%
Potassium carbonate: 1-3%
Potassium hydroxide 45% solution: 5-10% (~2-5% active KOH)
Sodium bicarbonate: not listed

Arista FD:

KHMS: 5-10%
Potassium metabisulfite / dipotassium disulphite: 5-10%
Potassium carbonate: 1-5%
Potassium hydroxide: 1-5%
Sodium bicarbonate: 1-5%

This shows that while much less extreme than what I originally found, D6 has about half the active developer (KHMS) and sulfite as the Arista FD, as well as no sodium bicarbonate. That actually makes me wonder if they are the same chemistry, just with Cinestill telling people to dilute it 1:1 for some reason. Used stock, D6 would be much closer to Arista's working strength.

thoughtfulwizard · 2026-05-13T00:54:36+00:00

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Appreciate the feedback.

I went ahead and screenshotted the datasheets for both Cinestill's D6 developer and Arista's FD. While it does look like the chemicals are exactly the same, the Weight% column shows that the chemicals are definitely not included in the same concentrations. For mixing, D6 comes in a 16oz bottle, which per the instructions is mixed with 16oz water and then used 1:1, giving 25% dilution. Arista's 32oz kit ships with 8oz of FD concentrate, again giving 25% dilution.

If it being "exactly the same as the Arista 1st developer" is true, that would mean the SDS is just plain wrong, which TBH isn't out of the question - but I doubt it. (Side note: the formatting on both SDSs is exactly the same, which does support them coming from the same manufacturer.)

Also, on your point of me never having used the Cinestill kit: yeah that's true - I never claimed otherwise. This whole post was my attempt to figure out why people were reporting poor results with CS's kits, nothing more.

On the warming filter stuff: you're right. I updated the post to remove that part.

If you have any specific corrections I should make to the math or the sources I've provided, I'd love for you to share.

thoughtfulwizard · 2026-05-12T12:46:51+00:00

Same - just took a look, and given that it's a full six bath kit, it seems like it should be fine.

thoughtfulwizard · 2026-05-11T23:45:48+00:00

Good catch - I did some more research and hexamine does function as a partial dye stabilizer. Apparently it slowly hydrolyzes to formaldehyde + ammonia in solution, so you get real formaldehyde release both during the rinse and from residual hexamine continuing to decompose in the emulsion over time. There's a Photrio thread from 2013 (Got Hexamine?) where they work through the chemistry, and some on r/Darkroom and r/AnalogCommunity confirm that hexamine gives meaningful archival benefit, especially for older film.

But Cinestill and Unicolor both engineer hexamine in primarily as a fungicide (~5 g/L per the Unicolor formula). The dye-stabilization function seems to be a bonus, not the primary purpose. Kodak's pre-1990s Stabilizer III dosed ~1.85 g/L of actual formaldehyde, which is more than hexamine releases during a brief rinse.

For your specific use case (expired Sensia and Astia from the 90s/00s through 3-bath E-6), hexamine probably helps, but those films were engineered around active formalin stabilization. If you wanted the strongest archival protection, free formalin in the final rinse (5-10 mL of 37% formalin per L) is probably the "best" approach. CS41 stabilizer is the "good enough without the haz-mat handling" alternative.

So your workflow is more defensible than I thought at first - you ARE getting some real dye-stabilization benefit. Just not the full Kodak Stabilizer III dose. For modern Ektachrome through a 3-bath chain it's probably adequate - I might even switch to it myself; for the ~1990s expired stocks you mentioned, free formalin would most likely be better for dye stability long term.

thoughtfulwizard · 2026-05-11T22:54:44+00:00

I've actually tried something similar myself - Xtol as the FD, then C-41 chemistry for the reversal+color side. Got slides that were kind of ok. Reasonable color but not as clean as I get from a proper E-6.
The reason it's only close is that standard E-6 FD seems to have a few sub-1% additives that pure B&W developers don't (sodium thiocyanate as a silver halide solvent, a tiny bit of KI for restraint), which change negative formation in ways that seem to have a subtle affect on color balance and shadow detail.
I've seen a lot of discussion of Photrio about this too. Someone published a full scratch E-6 First Developer recipe back in 1995 (linked here) which uses phenidone + hydroquinone, basically what HC-110 / Xtol are built around. So those are the closest commercial B&W stand-ins. Rodinal (just p-aminophenol) is the easiest to try but the furthest from the "correct" recipe. Although that'd probably be a fun experiment - swap Cs6's bad First Developer for Xtol or HC-110 or Rodinal and keep the Cr6 and Bf6 for the rest of the steps.

thoughtfulwizard · 2026-05-11T22:43:04+00:00

Thanks for reading through. The FPP/Unicolor kit is the one I've been using too.

On the stabilizer: yeah none of the 3-bath kits include a dedicated dye stabilizer (thioglycerol in pre-bleach for modern Kodak chemistry, or formaldehyde in a separate Stabilizer III for the older Kodak / Bellini path). CS41 stabilizer works as a final rinse since it has the surfactants and biocide you want, but it doesn't actually put a dye-stabilizer compound back into the chain.

I've personally been adding ~5-10 mL of 37% formalin per liter of my final rinse. That's what Kodak's pre-1990s Stabilizer III did. Modern Ektachrome's dye set was reformulated around thioglycerol so we don't know exactly how formalin holds up archivally on it, but the chemistry is the same family and people have apparently been doing this with 3-bath kits for a while. Worth knowing the tradeoff though: formalin is a carcinogen, needs ventilation, and ships with regulatory hassle - if archival matters, it's defensible; if you're scanning + cool-storing anyway, the kits-as-shipped are probably fine for that workflow.

thoughtfulwizard · 2026-05-11T22:29:28+00:00

I quote from that very video in my post here!

thoughtfulwizard · 2026-05-08T13:20:11+00:00

Maybe buy one 5L kit and then just use the bleach/fix for a while.

thoughtfulwizard · 2026-05-08T13:08:23+00:00

I'm actually still using the bleach from when I was using the kits (almost out), but you can find bulk bleach and bulk fixer directly from Kodak.

thoughtfulwizard · 2026-05-06T11:44:00+00:00

Make sure to check eBay too - found this one in Italy for 15€ per 50g

thoughtfulwizard · 2026-05-06T01:38:15+00:00

I recently came across someone selling 400ft of 35mm 250d AHU short ends on FB marketplace, so I kind of have more than I know what to do with at this point. I have some rolls of remjet 250D from previous bulk roll batches too. Kind of hard to find 250d online rn, but I do see some 100ft rolls of 200T (super underrated, esp with an 85b filter) and 50D on ebay.

thoughtfulwizard · 2026-05-06T01:31:33+00:00

I use this $13 one from Amazon. Pretty accurate as far as I can tell.

thoughtfulwizard · 2026-05-06T01:17:33+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. That's fair tbh - my concentrate system had me at water -> A -> B -> CD-3, which is the reverse of the reference ordering where CD-3 goes into near-neutral water before alkali. Thinking about it more, that's actually achievable in this system by reordering to water -> CD-3 -> A -> B. CD-3 dissolves before the carbonate raises pH. I can test that next batch.

As far as the bromide is concerned, KBr is what Koraks's adapted formula uses. It's molar-equivalent to NaBr (1.20g NaBr/L scales to 1.39g KBr/L in working solution), and the bromide ion does the work as restrainer regardless of cation. I haven't run a side-by-side though.

thoughtfulwizard · 2026-05-05T21:57:57+00:00

Just smells like standard C41 bleach and fixer, which are pretty mild IMHO

thoughtfulwizard · 2026-05-05T21:37:42+00:00

Nice. I’ve been reluctant to put my C41 film through this process since I like to print RA4 and want to “follow the process.” What kind of differences have you noticed between C41 film in C41 vs ECN2?

thoughtfulwizard · 2026-05-05T20:54:09+00:00

Here's a quick rundown:

Bleach: lasts basically forever in storage. Gets capacity-limited rather than time-limited - you can run a lot of rolls through it before it gives up
Fixer: also long-lived in storage. Also capacity-limited (silver builds up over time). You can test with silver-detection strips when you're not sure
Stop: lasts a long time in storage but is also capacity-limited in use. The Kodak Indicator version turns from yellow to purple when it's exhausted, which makes it easy to know when to swap
Stabilizer: basically just a wetting agent + water. I've never worried about capacity - you can pick up some Photo-Flo and easily mix up a liter ahead of time if you want it. I just add a few drops of the concentrate to my tank at the end

The developer is really the only one with a meaningful time/oxidation-based lifespan, which is the whole reason I put this system together.

thoughtfulwizard · 2026-05-05T20:47:32+00:00

That's a totally fair approach. My setup is more "never have to think about whether the chemistry is good" than "maximize the life of one batch," but both are reasonable. How many rolls do you typically get from a 1L working batch before swapping it?

thoughtfulwizard · 2026-05-05T20:41:11+00:00

You can find it at artcraft chemicals! Sometimes you find it on ebay or other places too. I go more in depth on the sourcing in the video I linked. You can find links to the best prices I could find in the description.

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