Steve Maniscalco Photography

How to Get Your Slide Film Cross Processed w/o a Hassle

Ever try to talk the guy at the mini-lab in to running your slide film through his C41 processor? Mostly you get a blank stare…followed by a firm NO. Not wanting to deal with talking a new kid in to it every time I cross process film, I worked out how to get slide film processed in C41, so far, every time.

It’s simple.

After shooting, I drop the film in a changing bag and crack open the can.  I then roll the film up and put it in a black plastic film bottle. It then goes to the drug store where I tell the kid I have an old camera that rips film.  He’s happy to help, and he never looks at the film in enough detail to realize it’s slide film.  In all likelihood, he wouldn’t know slide film if he saw it.

If he ever notices and calls me on it, my story will be that I thought it was color film and didn’t realize what I’d loaded.

Yes, I’m being selectively honest here (that’s called lying if you’re not a politician). I somehow manage to live with myself.

Cyanotype Toning, Further

Original image:

Bleached then toned with tanic acid.

I was very excited to find that my past failures with the tanic acid toning were primarily due to a lack of patience.  When the print is in the bath, not much seems to be going on.  After a few minutes of drying though, the effect is quite good.

Additional bath in dilute ammonia/water solution.

I've used an ammonia/water bath to clear the muddiness of tea toned images before and never noticed the color shift.  Without the brown tea staining, I can see that we get a definite red/magenta color. I rather like it.  In any case, it gives me another tone in my arsenal.

I think that in the future, I will always make a 2nd or even 3rd copy of every cyanotype...keeping the original and experimenting with toning the other copies.

Now I need some thoughts on what other chemicals I can throw at this process...

Before and After

Continuing on with my Cyanotype toning experiments.

When you first drop a cyanotype in the bleaching solution, the change that takes place is pretty interesting.  It doesn't just go pale yellow on you, that takes time.  At first, the print becomes a bit lighter and the cyan blue changes to something more like a straight or denim blue.  I've noticed this before and thought it might be a nice effect to go for on purpose.

So, for the fun of it, I dropped an overexposed cyanotype (too dark) in a very dilute bleaching solution. I pulled it out again when it looked about right and put it immediately in to a rinse to stop the bleaching. The result is another interesting variation on the standard cyanotype print.  It's encouraging enough that I think I might drastically overexpose a print or two and subject it to the short/mild bleaching.

Here is the result of my first test:

Cyanotypes

Two from last night's prining session.  

I believe I'm letting the paper site too long between sensitizing and printing.  I need to make more time to do it right.

9x6 cyanotypes from digital negatives

Toning

All I finished this weekend was one cyanotype toning experiment. I'm mixed on it at best.  

I used the toning kit from Bostick-Sullivan, which consists of a bleaching agent and a tannin based toner.  The bleaching agent was very efficient.  Within less than a minute, the original image was bleached as far as I wanted it to go.  If I use it again in the future, I'm thinking I'll dilute it a bit more so I can have better control.

The toner was a disappointment.  I mixed it at the highest recommended strength and still, all I got was a muddy grey image.  After about 10 minutes, I decided to throw in some strong tea to dye the whole thing brown.  The end image has its good points, but it still was not what I was hoping for.

Really, the scan is better than the original. The luminosity seen here is not so apparent on the print.

cyanotype from digital negative

Saguaro Flower

Digital negative from digial image on this one.

Grandmother

Not mine, my wife's.

Reprinting several cyanotypes for possible submission to a gallery.  This is one of my favorites.  

From a scan of a very old photo, restored in photoshop.  Digital negative on Pictorico OHP.