NEVER stick bags of chems in your mouth, even if sealed. I am a trained chemist with a background in both waste management and health and safety. This bag went through a ridiculous number of steps for decontamination before I covered the top part on white PTFE tape. Even then, I went and scrubbed my mouth after the intro.

E6 next please!! Streets are saying they're all the exact same

One clarification that I find important: In labs, developer "starter" is technically a restrainer, not an activator--it basically adds the chemicals/dyes that would leach out of the film, making freshly mixed developer 'seasoned' as if it has already had film through it, so it behaves the same from the first roll to the 100th (with replenishment). Starter is not needed with home development, but I have noticed that, when freshly mixed, the first couple rolls will often be slightly overdeveloped at 3:15. Anyway, I mention it only because the whole purpose of starter was hopelessly confusing to me when I first started doing color development.

21:02 HOLLY SHOOT! THATS WHY MY FIRST ROLLS WITH THAT KIT WERE FREAKING WEIRD! I am so glad I found you before I bought another flic film developing product. My B&W stuff is fine but the first couple rolls of color from the Eco kit were freaking weird. Like the base mask was the wrong color weird. Thanks for deep diving on this.

I’ve had great results pushing the Bellini kit to 20+ rolls over 6 months by simply squeezing the air out of the developer and putting it in the fridge

Let's keep it short and simple: This video just is great! Great structure, great research of facts AND great while understandable explanations. Thank you!

This is the best educational film I have seen on Youtube in a very long time. Difficult material described simply and concretely. You are not only a skilled chemist of high rank, you are an educator too! Applause!

Thank you for being so comprehensive! I love your passion and enthusiasm for this.
I really appreciate all of the information and the inserts for clarity.
SUBSCRIBED!

Great video, very detailed and well structured.

Finally, something that actually explains the problem I was having earlier this year! I had gotten the Flic Film Eco kit while it was half off somewhere, and while, yes, it did develop color, the result was horrible, with constant color streaking. I finally moved to the Bellini kit and have been loving it ever since.

Your videos are so goooood. I was about to buy the FPP "C41" kit and now know the reality

This is actually an excellent video. I can share a few things as well with 35 years working with C-41. I can’t say enough good things about Bellini. I buy their C-41 developer in bulk and use their starter. I follow the replenishment requirements and it’s some of the best chemistry I’ve ever used.  Definitely best in practice to separate your bleach and fixer. The Kodak Flexicolor is top tier. Replenishment instructions work perfectly. Separate bleach and fix at 6:30 for each so it adds a little bit of time to the entire process. About 20 minutes total with washes. You were also correct about the development time • 3:15 @ 100° +/- .25 degree. This is a standard machine process time. Keep in mind with leader card machines. The film is moving through the tanks continuously so there’s constant gentle agitation along with the circulation pumps moving the chemicals through the heaters and tanks. Dip + dunks use nitrogen bursts for agitation since the film is not moving through the solution the same way. The home process kits you have to vary your developer time just a little bit, depending upon how accurate your heated chemicals are, as well as how much agitation you are providing. Then there’s the concentration of the chemicals as you mentioned. If you’re not replenishing, you’ve got to compensate elsewhere. That elsewhere is one of four components: time • temperature • agitation • concentration.

Quick side note: The Cinestill CS-41, Arista C-41 sold by Freestyle in the US, and the Unicolor C-41 kit can be assumed to be identical. The instruction packets are the same as well as the packaging of the chemicals, albeit with different labels, and the SDS's are the same, with the Arista and Unicolor kits even mentioning the same manufacturer. Additionally all three kits take the same structure of 1 part developer powder and 2 part blix powder. This is not concrete evidence but I would be shocked if there was any difference between those kits.

Thanks Uncle Shaka. I was literally considering which kit buy as my first kit yesterday.

I just recently got into film development. And recently stumbled upon the Alaska film business where I'm in the region and bought powdered CineStill film the 2 bath color negative process. Something for a fun hobby.

I'm glad I watched this. I was going to get a powder kit assuming that I could just split it up and use small amounts as I needed it.

Awesome video. Finally getting the information I was looking for. Thankyou!

I have always been happy with Bellini's 1L kit for developing a dozen rolls of film, and I am happy to see it's one of the students getting a good grade. It's readily available in France, even from mainstream not-analog-focused photo stores

Very thorough video.  After watching your video I pretty much decided that I will continue to use labs for color dev.  I finally figured out how to use my Canon t7i with a macro and a 20mm extension to get the 35mm half frames to "scan". Now that I figured that out, I'm going to venture into experimenting with black and white dev.  Saw this video and learned color is not really for me at least at this stage. I've only been back in film for a couple of years. I had a Pentax 110 Auto stolen out my vehicle a long long time ago and found it again on eBay so I started back with the Pentax 110 Super Auto and it is fun.  But last year a couple of months before a cruise in the Caribbean, I bought an Olympus PEN FT and an EE.  Color in the FT and Black and white in the EE. I love the half frame format.  I had a blast an most of the pictures were a blast.  Thanks for the very well explained video.

I have a Jobo processor, which gives me excellent results with precise temperature control. I've been using the Cinestill kits with good results so far. Thanks for the great adivce! Andy