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Processed my first E6

P

Patrick Dixon

Imagineer
I bought a cheap Jobo CPE2 from eBay, cobbled together a drum, and dug out the 4x5 reel I got as part of job lot with something else.

After a few days of practise, I managed to perfect the art of loading 4 sheets in the reel in the dark, and when my E6 5L kit arrived this morning, I was ready to go ....

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These are 4x5 E100VS that I shot the other evening using a Symmar-S 210mm and 135mm respectively, and the old Arca-Swiss.
 
Nice, colours look good. Do you think you'll get through 5L though? It goes off very quickly and doesn't age gracefully like B&W and C41 chemicals do.
 
Dunno - why, do you want some?

There's enough for 20 batches one-shot, which would be 80 sheets with the tank and reel that I've got, or twice that if I run each mix of chemicals through twice. And I've got 40 sheets of e100vs in the fridge to use up ...

The leaflet says the chemicals will last 3 months if I get some concertina bottles.

I'll have a go at 120 too.
 
Thanks for the offer but I bought a ltr kit last week, I don't usually make it through that tbh. You can one shot but you don't need to, you should be able to get around 8 - 10 processes out of each 250ml batch so 5 litres should last aaaages. In theory :) Three months is about maximum IME, it starts giving underexposed negs and colour shifting after that, this image was processed with dead chemical:
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If you have some spare, give it to Cesare. Unless I've missed it, he still needs to try E6 with his processor.
 
Patrick,

Looking good so far!

I'm also using a CPE2 and have had good results from a Tetenal 3 bath E6 kit. Did you go 3 bath or 6 bath? Also, does your CPE2 have one or two speeds? They seem to have changed the model a couple of times during it's manufacture.

Cesare
 
Cesare

I used the Fuji-Hunt kit which is 3 bath. My CPE2 has two speeds, the bottles have been repaired for leaks and one of the ceramic heater element stand-offs is missing, but other than that it seems good. Well worth the £67.

There's one on there now for £100 bin if anyone fancies a go.
 
As for capacity of the chemicals etc, i've found that it's very easy to get decent results with fresh chemical one shot, but that it goes off quickly if reused. I've found therefore that if I want to process multiple films i'm best to either one shot it, or to reuse the chemical as part of the same session rather than expecting it to last across developments.

With my 2553 tank, I get very good results with 3 120 films in one batch with 330ml of chemicals. If I then immediately reuse the 330ml I can process up to another 3 120 films. If I did this each time i'd get 6 120 films per 330ml, or 18 per litre. This is 90 films for the 5L batch.

Chances are though that the chemicals will start to suffer with age, and so i'll not get the second run always. Also, chances of getting exact multiples of 6 films to process in one go is a bit slim ;-)

Cesare
 
Patrick Dixon said:
Cesare

I used the Fuji-Hunt kit which is 3 bath. My CPE2 has two speeds, the bottles have been repaired for leaks and one of the ceramic heater element stand-offs is missing, but other than that it seems good. Well worth the £67.

There's one on there now for £100 bin if anyone fancies a go.
Click to expand...

I have only one ceramic heater stand-off in my processor and it seems ok :)

I have tried a small fishtank pump to move the water about to speed up the warming time from cold, but this doesn't seem to make much difference for me. My preferrred technique is to fill the processor bath with warm water and to heat the chemical bottles to roughly the right temp in the bathroom sink. I can get the time to get to 100F down to 20 minutes without much trouble using the above techniques.

My processor has the lift, and this does make life very simple. I use the slower speed with my processor even though i've a feeling i'm supposed to use the faster one for film processing. Seems to give good results so there is no complaining.

E6 seems to need plenty of tempered water for rinsing. The 1L jobo bottles are the same size as the 600ml ones, so you can use these in the waterbath if you want more plain water.

I've got a couple of delta 100s to process, so it's xtol time...
 
Processed a C41 120 film yesterday - slightly less successfully.

I used the smaller 1500 tank, and not having the correct roller propped the end up to keep it level. But due to not understanding that I had to use the cap, I lost about half the chemistry into the tempering bath during the process. I got away with it with the 2500 tank, because it has a deeper shoulder and the chemistry doesn't leak past the funnel!
 
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