Hi Tony,
"I
n spite of claims of specialised QC you could find variance in film processing running from slight magenta to slightly too blue (these should normally have been checked in QC and chemicals added to balance the process!)." Yes, I know exactly what you mean, and if that was a Kodak Q-Lab they were simply not abiding by the parameters set out by Kodak. In 1995 I put my lab business into hibernation and took a job managing another lab in town. They were not doing as much custom work as I was, but I brought along all of my customers as well, which required a few changes in my new surroundings. That was also part of the deal. Now to the E6 process. It had been probably 20 years since I had done any Chrome processing, and that was E3. The lab I moved to was running a Noritsu E6 machine for processing up to medium format Chromes. Since I had a lot of work to do when I first landed there, it was probably a month or more before I had time to address the E6 process. I had at least done some reading to catch up to some extent. One day I asked the fellow 'in charge' of the E6 line to show me his graphs/plots of the process. Well, the absent look on his face told me everything I needed to know, so we went from there. When I asked how he managed the E6 line he said he would read the control strip and check the numbers on the densitometer. Obviously he had no idea of the history of his process, so I immediately found some graph paper I had brought along and began to plot the E6 numbers to see what was happening. Even though the control strips were close to expiry, it was very obvious that the process was at least a stop and a half overcooked. When I asked the fellow supposedly in charge he said they would simply tell their E6 customers to adjust their exposure accordingly. At that point I imagine the look on my face told him everything HE needed to know. After running more control strips and diluting the first developer a bit I approached the owner and told him that I needed to do some emergency surgery on the E6 line. I then made sure all of the racks were timed properly, as well as all chemicals at the proper temperature etc. That was about all I could do at that point, but after a week of work I at least had the process back to where we could tell our E6 customers to exposure their Chromes as indicated by the ISO number. About a month later I found myself at one of the Kodak buildings in Toronto for a four day Q-Lab seminar. Of course I was the only one there who had no experience with Q-Lab other that what I had read before I joined the group. I asked if they might perhaps forgive me for posing so many questions and they were all very understanding. Made it through the seminar and then one of the techs(John Ball) spent a day and a half with me at the lab, going through all of the procedures required to operate a Q-Lab. In 2000 I resurrected my own business in a building owned by another photofinishing company in town and of course they knew I had experience with the E6 process. About a year later they decided to get into the Q-Lab business and bought a used Noritsu E6 processor, with which I was very familiar. I helped them set up the Q-Lab and ran the process for a couple of months and then trained one of their staff to run it, since I also had my own business to take care of. After they were certified I also helped them with the process on several occasions, until digital caught on and the E6 process was phasing out.
Oh my, I did get carried away again, didn't I? As I mentioned earlier, once I start writing, the memories start flooding in. I do apologize for such a long story, but of course it's up to the reader to bail out at any time.
One note about Fujichrome. I recall back in the days when I was making 4x5 internegs to print enlargements from Chromes, the Fiji Chromes were always a pain in the nether regions. For a few years they couldn't seem to get rid of the green cast in the D-Max. None of the Kodak products exhibited this issue, but whenever I got a Fujichrome to print I would always make sure the customer would loupe the slide and make them understand that their deep shadows would carry a green cast to some extent. Eventually Fuji did fix that, after complaints from various sources, but until then it was not a good situation.
P.S. When I worked at the Toronto lab we had many shooters who would use the same routine you mentioned, have us process a 'test' trannie, take a good peek and then process the rest of the job. Or, shoot one trannie and process. Occasionally if there might be slight colour cast the photographer could add a CC filter to accommodate and shoot the rest of the job and get it in for processing the same day if possible.
Again, my apologies -
Gary