Developing Kodak Vision3 for the Very First Time
This is our first attempt at developing Kodak Vision3 film in our Sri Lankan film lab
Vision3 is important to us because it allows us to explore film photography on a budget. In Sri Lanka, film usually costs twice the usual price due to shipping and duty fees.
Before we begin, let me share with you the results. We used Vision3 500T film and shot at 1600 ISO. Then we pushed the film about 1.5 stops while developing it.
Yep, there is more darkness here. That’s because this is a night shoot to test the limits of the film.
Now that you know how we shot it, let’s talk about how we developed it.
Getting Rid of the Remjet Layer
We start by using a baking soda mixture to remove the Remjet layer. We heat a liter of water to about 40 degrees Celsius and add one tablespoon of baking soda. After washing, it seems like we have successfully removed the Remjet layer.
We also wash it multiple times to ensure that there is no more Remjet. However, in the end, we learned that we were wrong. More about that in a moment.
Developing with C41
We didn’t use ECN2 simply because we couldn’t source it. However, we had plenty of Cinestill C41 kits, so we were not afraid of ditching the chemicals in case we messed everything up. Besides, Cinestill recommends using C41 for their Vision3 films.
We pushed the film about 1.5 stops because we shot at an ISO of 1600. That was the only change we made to the standard C41 development process. Fortunately, everything went well, and the C41 chemicals came out clean as usual. Therefore, there was no need to dispose of the chemicals. Yeah!
Oh! No Remjet
After the final wash, we took out the film, but unfortunately, there was still Remjet residue left on it. We tried to remove it by hand inside a bucket of hot water.
The excess Remjet layer easily came off when we rubbed the film by hand. We also washed it multiple times to ensure that there was no remaining Remjet, as it could potentially affect the scanning process.
So, just using a baking soda mixer is not enough.
We need to clean it at the end as well.
Scanning
After the film dried, we noticed an issue: it was difficult to find blues in the film. This is a common problem when there is a blue color cast. We shot with a tungsten film (Vision3 500T), which is designed for warm light, but there were many daylight LED bulbs at the location.
This is the result that came out from the scan. Wow, this is bad:
We had to do a lot of color correction to remove the blue color cast and get the colors to look as natural as possible. We could do some of these corrections in bulk, but there were some edge cases where we had to intervene.
Is It Worth It?
Developing this film takes a bit more time than a typical C41 film, and we also had to spend time doing color correction. However, color correction may not be necessary if we use a Vision3 daylight film or an 85B filter.
On the other hand, we now have access to a high-quality film that costs only a third of Porta 400, and even less expensive than Kodak ColorPlus. This is a deal breaker for us, as it makes shooting with color film more affordable in Sri Lanka.
Therefore, we will continue to develop and potentially re-spool Vision3 in Sri Lanka at AnalogDreamz. Stay tuned for more updates.
