The Story:
Elizabeth’s grandmother, Mary Ruth, is a very sweet woman and an active reader of my little substack. A couple months ago, she emailed me that she had some old film that had been sitting in her house for years and asked if I had any interest in developing it. I was so excited at the prospect of rescuing some lost memories. She had no idea what photos would be on them, so I was going in totally blind. When I got the film, I saw little handwritten notes on some of the boxes, so I prepared my chemicals and got to work!
Refresher on Cross-Processing Film:
If you recall, I wrote an edition on cross-processing Kodachrome a month ago. If you need a re-cap on the process here you go!
Developing Kodachrome requires a very complex 17-step process called K-14, designed only for this film stock. Processing took place in professional labs with trained chemists and specialized machinery. It is virtually impossible to replicate the K-14 process, so the only way to develop remaining rolls is cross-processing in black and white to create a negative. Any color film can be developed in black and white chemistry and for expired film, it often yields more reliable results. Over time, color emulsions can degrade, causing color shifts and quality loss. Black and white developers draw out an image by developing the silver grain in the film and leaving a monochrome iteration of the color image.
I used Kodak HC-110 black and white developer (it is considered one of the best for old films). I used dilution B, which is 484mL of water with 16mL of developer concentrate.
The last tricky part about Kodachrome is removing a sticky black layer called Remjet. This layer protects the film from scratches, halation, static and other damages and it is normally removed in the first step of K-14 processing. But for black and white development, I simply remove it in a final step by using my index and middle fingers as a squeegee and running them down the film under a running shower until all the Remjet is removed. The full process is as follows:
1. Load the film in a Paterson reel and tank in total darkness.
2. Wash the film in water that is roughly 68°F to warm it up to temperature and prepare it to evenly receive the developer.
3. Pour the developer in and agitate (invert or rotate the tank) for 30 seconds and then agitate for 5 seconds, every 30 seconds for 11 minutes.
4. Water stop-bath for 1 minute at roughly room temperature .
5. Sprint fixer for 5 minutes at room temperature with the same agitation pattern.
6. Wash for 5 minutes with running water at roughly room temperature.
7. Manually remove Remjet under running water (I use my shower) with two fingers. This can take up to ten minutes of continuously rubbing off the Remjet.
The Results:
The film was not cold-stored so there is degradation and loss of sensitivity. This caused the images to be grainier and darker. Elizabeth’s grandmother has spent her entire life in North Carolina, so the heat didn’t help the preservation of the film. However, I am just excited that any image was recovered.
Fun Fact:
These photos were made on spring break in 1985 when Elizabeth’s mother, Emily, visited her sister, Charlotte, in Reno, NV with their parents, Horace and Mary Ruth. They then drove to San Francisco as a family. The hotel in San Francisco informed them that there were no rooms left, so Horace asked them “If the President of the United States came here and needed a room, what would you do?” Hotel staff responded that they had a room for that scenario. Horace said, “Great, I want that room,” and he got it.
This goes hard Alex
shut out california and mary ruth!!!