Cooking Up Some E-6

By Kevin Lane

When I got my first quality camera in 1980 (Minolta XG-1), I immediately began shooting slide film. It was an easy call, as Uncle Jonesy shot slide film exclusively, and old fashioned slide shows were THE way we viewed photos. It was very social; a bunch of friends would come over, there would be food, and we would fire up the projector and turn off the lights. As the years went by, I just kept on shooting slide film, mostly Kodachrome. When I got married and the kids came along, I documented it all on slides, and now I have hundreds of them in my closet.

Then Kodachrome went away, film in general became harder to find and process, and I made the move to digital. You all know about how I have returned to film photography in the last two years, shooting color and B&W negative film. But lurking in my freezer were five rolls of Fuji Sensia 100 slide film, which had expired in 2008. Having become quite comfortable developing my own color negative film with a Unicolor C-41 kit from the Film Photography Project Store, I thought it was time to try out Unicolor's E-6 kit for slide film. The process is nearly the same, the main difference being the addition of a 2nd developing chemical and washing steps after each developing stage. In the washing stages, the water should be at or near the developers' temperature of 100º F.

My first attempt at E-6 back in the summer was a fail because I misread the directions and had my temps too high. My second attempt a few weeks ago went better, but trying to keep the temps at specified levels for all the chemistry and washings was not easy. When I looked at the film, I really couldn't be assured that I had done it correctly. Some colors did not look right.

Then came my sous vide unit. In case you don't know (and I didn't until a few months ago), sous vide (French for "under vacuum" is a cooking method whereby meat is cooked while sealed in a bag and submerged under heated water. A sous vide stick heats and circulates the water, so that the meat is cooked slowly but uniformly. The stick can be set to a specified temperature and time. Photography hobbyists have been using a sous vide stick to heat developing chemistry to the proper temperature and keep it there until it is used.

1st developer is in the tank;
2nd developer is ready and 100º F

When a separate thermometer is used to measure the chemistry temps, you can determine just where to set the sous vide stick temperature to get the chemistry up to the correct temp. Using the sous vide stick this way takes away a lot of the guesswork and worry and helps enforce a uniformity and consistency in a developing workflow, and uniformity and consistency are the keys to getting better results.

Back in October I shot a roll of my expired Fuji Sensia in my Minolta X-700. The photos were mainly around the Chattanooga and eastern Tennessee area. Then in December I found my sous vide stick at ALDI for only $49.99 and took the plunge. I filled a plastic waste can with water, put my chemistry bottles and the sous vide stick in, set the temperature and let it do it's thing. I found that my chemistry gets to the needed 100º F when the sous vide is set to around 108º F, but room temperature and plastic vs. metal or glass bottles may change that for you. You have to experiment. Once I found it, though, I did not have to worry about my temps. And as for the washings, I would fill up my gallon pitcher with tap water, measuring the temp as it came out of the spout. I figured that temperature is not as critical for the water as it is for the chemistry, and the results back me up.

Nothing beats seeing slide film when it
comes out of the tank!

Speaking of results, here are some shots from the roll. If this is the result that I can expect from developing slide film at home, then I will be shooting a lot more of it in 2019, namely Kodak's newly released Ektachrome.

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