mix

The Jobo ATL 1000 is now up and running and I have put through 30 rolls of Fuji 160NS 120 colour negative film and 10 @ 4" x 5" sheet film through the processor using C-41 chemistry and every film turned out perfect. I used the Tetenal Colortec C-41 5 litre pack which was very straight forward to use, first add the three part developer mix to water in sequence and then the two part bleach/fix mix solution to water and finally dilute the stabiliser. The chemistry can be part mixed to extend the shelf life to 12 weeks for opened concentration or 6 weeks for fully mixed solution which I used.

I have built a unit to house the Jobo ATL 1000 film processor that supports the heated water storage tank, storage and mixing area, waste units and water pump. The unit is on wheels and can be moved freely.

Initially to keep things simple I house the water storage unit high hoping that gravity feed would provide enough water pressure for the rinse cycle but after the initial tests using water instead of the chemicals I decided I needed a water pump as the pressure and volume of water needed to clean the film was inadequate. I used a central heating circulation pump which can be seen in the photographs below on the rear of the cabinet and the pump is set to its lowest setting so not to exceed the bar pressure rating of the Jobo ATL 1000 colour processor. The water is heated to 38�C using a Nova proteinic heater that has a controller and probe to keep the water heated to a tolerance of 0.2�C which is critical in C-41 colour negative processing, the storage tank is also lagged to retain the heat.

With everything plugged and plumb in and tested it was time to pour in a very economical 330ml of developer, bleach/fix and water wash into the first three bottles of the processor which will process three @ 120 rolls of film. After the chemicals have been loaded the film tank is placed into the processor and the drain is turned off and the programme is set to C-41 two part. The lid needs to be shut before the processor can be turned on and must be kept closed to keep the temperature of the water bath constant at 38�C. The next thing to do is turn on the water pump to fill the processor's internal heated water bath that will heat the chemicals and film tank. It takes about 10 minutes for the correct temperature to be reached and then the processor springs into action automatically filling and emptying the chemicals in the correct sequence. 3.15 minutes for the developer, 4 minutes for the bleach/fix and about 5 minutes for the wash and then it starts its rinse cycle drawing on the stored heated water for a couple of minutes. The processor beeps when finished and then you can remove the film tank from the processor and immerse the film in stabilising solution for 1 minutes and then hang the film to dry for at least 2 hours.

Scanning the film on either a Epson 4990/V750 flatbed or the Flextight X5 scanner is a delight and white balance and tonal range is achieved without much effort. The first thing which stuck me reviewing the scanned film in PhotoShop was the rendering of the tonal range from light to dark areas, some of the film photographs were also taken with the School's Hassleblad HD3 and Nikon D2X and their raw digital negative struggled to initially match the subtle graduations and detail in the shadows and highlights and needed extensive additional in imaging software like Phocus or PhotoShop to get a better tonal range.

Processing your own colour negative film is relatively straight forward and immensely rewarding as long as a constant temperature of 38�C is maintained and timings adhered to. As soon as I process my first 4"x 5" colour negative the first thing which crossed my mind is to process a 10" x 8" colour negative which is my favourite format. To process 10" x 8" negatives as you need Jobo 3005 Expert Drum but it will not fit into the Jobo ATL 1000 as it requires a Jobo CPP-2 processor which are not made any more until I heard this recent news from Firstcall Photographic that Jobo is going to start re-tooling and making a new film processor : http://www.firstcall-photographic.co.uk/blog/?p=47 interesting times ahead.

Below are some examples of colour negative processed film.