Side-by-Side

Side-by-Side: ECN-2 vs. C-41 Processing for Kodak Vision3 Film

In the past several years, as film prices rise and film choices diminish, it’s become quite common to tap into 35mm film stocks that are ordinarily sold for motion picture use, and adapt them for still photography. Nudging us all down that path are dozens of companies (and even individuals) who are buying the motion picture stocks in bulk, cutting them down, loading them into 135 roll film cassettes, and selling them at retail, or via online marketplaces. While Eastman 5222, also known as Kodak Double-X, is a common black-and-white motion picture film that’s long been packaged and used for still photography, the practice is increasingly popular in the past few years for color films, namely Kodak’s Vision3 stocks. These films, however, have some unique attributes that make them unsuitable for most lab development, and challenging for home processing as well. Among them is the fact that technically speaking, they’re designed for the ECN-2 process (and chemicals), not the more common C-41 process of developing standard color negative films for still photography. In this article, we dive into the differences, and what you need to know to get great results from these films.

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Side-by-Side • Kodak HC-110: Dilution B vs. Dilution H

In this first of a new series of articles, we take a look at how, and to what extent, using two different common dilutions of Kodak’s HC-110 black and white developer impacts the resulting film images. Our novel approach to this series hopefully will make it extremely easy to see and identify the differences — an approach we intend to bring to a number of comparisons in the months ahead.

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