She’s Losing Control

It had to happen at some point.

So far, in my colour film journey I had been a little too lucky, with the results looking as I was expecting: in other words, much like I would get from the lab. So it was only a matter of time until something went wrong!

“A matter of time” meant Sunday. When I pulled a roll of Ektar out of the tank that afternoon, I knew I had messed something up. Instead of bright orange, the film’s base was a sort of faded peachy colour. A bit like it was expired.¹ The colours looked otherwise okayish, in that when looking at them, they weren’t entirely unexpected.

Scanning the negatives confirmed that there were some shifts in the colour. I tried adjust them as best I could in digiKam (after scanning them flat in Silverfast 9²), but it has retained a sort of expired film look all the same.

I think that I’ve been a bit careless with temperature control. I recently mixed a 1 litre kit (instead of a 500ml one) and it takes a bit more time and a bit more care to heat the chemicals to 39C. Combine that with a small tub I’ve been using and I can see how there would have been plenty of variability across the four heated steps.

1. The film was expired (July 2023), but it has been in the freezer since I purchased it fresh in 2021 or 2022. ↩︎
2. Silverfast has a profile for Ektar in Negafix, but I’ve never got along with it. Too red and it seems give the film an overexposed look. ↩︎