Home

10%

emulsion

By Ellie Pritts

November 25^th, 2017

my love for film hasn't faded

When I first really got into photography, dSLRs had not become widely used and accessible yet. While this makes me feel old, I'm also very grateful that I was able to catch the tail end of film photography being more or less the industry standard. I learned a lot in the darkroom, and those skills continue to be useful even now in our hyper-digital age.

all the fujifilm

I really got back into film about two years ago when I found a great deal on Amazon for packs of expired Fuji Superia film. I bought a bunch of it, shot it all, and these are some of my favorite photos from those rolls.

You'll see that as time went on, I got progressively more and more experimental with my film and processes. So these are going to be the most "normal" photos, I promise :)

Superia x-tra 400 and 800

All of the photos above and below were taken with Fuji Superia X-TRA 400 or 800. As you can see, I had a pretty bad light leak problem with one roll. I actually like how the images from that roll turned out, but I'm glad it remedied itself shortly after. I prefer how the 400 speed roll ended up, the 800 was too grainy for my taste. Even the 400 wasn't quite as clear as I wanted at times but I'm overall happy with the end result.

kodak yellow

The photos below are a mix of Fuji Superia X-TRA 400 and Kodak Portra 160. Can you tell which ones are which?

Fujichrome Velvia 50

This roll was a bit of a splurge for me compared to the deal I got on the Fuji Superia rolls. It seemed like a really interesting and different film to try out. It's slide film, and at ISO 50 it's the least light sensitive film I'd ever shot, so that was a challenge. I decided to load it up for a trip to Minneapolis, where most of the following photos were taken.

cross processed green machine

If you're familiar with Fuji Velvia film you know that it typically looks nothing like these crazy green photos I have. If you're not familiar with Velvia, you probably also noticed that these photos are indeed, quite green. This is because I opted to have this roll cross processed.

Cross processing is developing one type of film in chemicals intended for another type of film. In this case, Velvia is color slide film but it was developed with the chemicals they use for regular color film, called C-41 processing. C-41 chemicals aren't "right" for my type of film (color slide film is developed with E-6 chemicals), so they dramatically alter the contrast and color balance of my film.

fuji eterna 400 - a complicated love story

True story: I just took a few rolls of Fuji Eterna to an established lab in L.A, where even the ultra pretentious know-it-all photo tech admitted he had never heard of my film. I suppose I should celebrate my extra hipster points for bringing in such an apparently obscure film. But by the time I was able to finally take these rolls in, I had been working to figure out where/how to get them processed properly for nearly a year! So I wasn't in the mood to gloat, I guess.

Let's start at the beginning. Take a look at the photo below in all its muddy, grainy glory.

film by the foot

The lackluster photo above was from my first test roll of Fuji Eterna.

Fuji Eterna was a common film used for motion pictures. It comes on large reels containing hundreds or even thousands of feet of film. I was gifted some surplus reels of this and immediately got to work looking up how to roll my own film. I was beyond ecstatic. I'd never have to buy film again! I rolled a half dozen rolls right away and soaked them in different solutions. If you have unlimited film, might as well get weird with it right? So imagine my disappointment when I got my first (untreated) roll back and it looked like the image above.

The day after I got my negatives back, my film lab called me and kindly asked that I not bring them the Eterna rolls again. My dreams dashed, I headed to Google to figure out what the hell was going on.

the remjet curse, lifted

After some research that I honestly should have done at the get go, I learned that the reason my film looked so terrible and my film lab hated me was because my film was treated with an anti-halation backing called rem-jet. Rem-jet is a coating that helps prevent light from reflecting off the shiny metal material used to make the pressure plate behind the film on a motion picture camera.

This rem-jet coating is a major pain. Film treated with it needs to be processed differently, and I could not for the life of me find a lab that would process it in quantities less than a hundred feet! Ever determined, I decided to go ahead and shoot my experimental rolls anyway and try to remove the rem-jet myself afterwards.

wine, bleach and Lime juice, oh my!

The photos above were soaked in wine and/or bleach. I am in love with the black triangle patterns that crop up all over this roll. I'm not even totally sure what caused them. This roll was pretty sticky and I know the film stuck to itself a lot, so perhaps some of the emulsion got ripped off?

That was another lesson I learned in this process; the importance of thoroughly rinsing and soaking your treated film in water before you dry it out and use it. The wine and lime juice rolls were hard to advance and I definitely ripped a lot of sprockets trying.

The photos below are some of my favorites color wise. These were treated with pickled jalapeno juice! I think.

just add baking soda

As you can probably guess, I was able to remove the rem-jet from my film after all. All it took was some baking soda and warm water and a pitch black room and a hair dryer and several hours of time...

For real, I should tell you the process I had to go through to get these images. First I rolled the film by hand with a bulk loader. Then I soaked the roll in some strange concoction I threw together. The next day I rinsed and soaked the roll in water overnight. Then I set it out to dry for a month or so. After that was the easy part, shooting the film! Once I was done I had to open the film canister, unroll the film from it's reel and then load it onto a special reel that goes into a tank for developing. I poured a baking soda and water mixture into the tank and mixed it all up and poured it out. I repeated this a few times, and then rinsed it all out with water until the water ran clear. Finally, I unrolled the wet film from the developing reel, wiped it down with a microfiber cloth and went to work drying it with a hair dryer. Once it was dry, I loaded it back onto its original reel and THEN it was okay for me to take it to a lab to get processed. Oh, and did I mention that pretty much every step after shooting the film has to happen in complete darkness?

happy accidents

I learned so much from playing around with this film. Look at the trippy image below! I'm absolutely in love with it.

IS IT ART?

While I admit I was pretty ecstatic to see how these long-awaited rolls turned out, some of my favorite pictures were hardly pictures at all. These frames awash with colorful light leaks and odd chemical patterns really captivated me. Obviously I did not set out to create them with any intent, but they are so beautiful it's hard not to be struck by them. Or maybe it's just me.

that's all folks

I'm really excited to keep experimenting with this Fuji Eterna film now that I have the process down. It's laborious for sure, but I think the end results are worth it! I know 15 year old me would definitely agree.

Below: old school selfies on film at age 28 and 15.

Button Label

The Tom Project

Uncovering the archives of the late Tom Pritts, one photo at a time.

Read

GRAIN

my formative years in film

Read