[Leica] More on Pushing C-41 films

[brad at bradbrad.com (brad daly)]

the problem is the way the machines work.  on a dip-and-dunk machine 
it's fairly easy: you just get the machine to leave the film in the 
developer an extra 30 seconds (i think it's 30) per stop.  on a 
motorized transport machine, it's more difficult as you have to stop 
the workflow of the entire machine (imagine stopping a whole assembly 
line so you can take longer welding on a car door or something) in 
order to leave the film in the developer.  at the lab in which i 
worked, we *could* push C-41 film, but it involved stopping the 
workflow on a continuous transport machine.  for this reason, we never 
did it when there was other film in front of the film being pushed, 
though we were fairly certain that extra time in anything after the 
developer would *not* hurt anyone's film; we just didn't want to chance 
it.  in theory we also could have pushed a film by raising the 
developer temperature, though we never tried this.  it might have been 
a good idea if we'd ever had a really large batch of push film but 
would have been impractical mostly because of the long time it would 
take for the developer to cool back down to normal temperature.

suffice to say, a pro or semi-pro lab probably *can* do it, depending 
on their machinery.  they may not, however, want to do it.

--
brad daly       
brad@bradbrad.com
http://www.bradbrad.com

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