Adox C41 Kit: Pro Lab Results at Home
Never been so impressed...
A new-ish option for developing color film at home from one of my favorite film companies, Adox!
And it’s AMAZING.
Adox C-TEC C41 Kit
I’ve never had results at home that have come out remotely close to my favorite professional film labs. This time though? 100% LOVED the results and it gave me more confidence to process at home.
This is actually what Adox says in their Technical Datasheet:
ADOX C-TEC 41 is a true C-41 process for all color negative films.
The kit is easy to use, delivering films which look as if they were dropped off at a professional lab.
I didn’t notice this sentence until after I had seen the first photos come up in the raw scan preview and thought to myself, hey that looks just as good as the lab! Is this for real?? (my literal first thought)
The kit comes with 6 small bottles which are all the same size. It makes for a compact package and it’s also super cute! I love their aesthetic and design, 5 stars from me.
Unfortunately, the only carrier I could find for this in the US is Freestyle Photo based in California. I prefer to shop now at B&H or CatLabs (510 pyro) or anywhere else really but at the moment there is no choice.
Please let me know if somewhere you shop has it and ships in the US!!
Also, Freestyle still charges you shipping for this product (likely due to it being liquid chemicals needing special ground shipping?) even if you go over their “free shipping” limit.
No instructions were in the package itself, but they are online. This is a bit annoying but not a huge drama. It saves paper and ink. Plus, there are “instructions” on the bottles themselves, but it’s not clear what temperature they need to be mixed at.
Reading the instructions online, I’m not sure it matters? I mixed them using water from the tab that was around 20C-40C. Hard to tell if it made a difference since I then warmed them up in the waterbath to 39C anyways for developing, but the results didn’t suffer from it.
Aside from that, the mixing was easy. The visuals in the instruction are top class and simple to follow.
I LOVE liquid kits - really don’t enjoy mixing powders.
I’d recommend gloves always and also having an eye wash nearby (mine is my shower) and wearing goggles or have some sort of protection from any splashes while mixing. I do it very slowly and carefully in or around my bathroom sink, so there usually isn’t splashing.
You can process film with this kit at lower temperatures than 38C. It will make development times longer, but a good workaround if you don’t want to deal with the higher temps.
With color chemistry - the times go up the more rolls you process as well. In the Cinestill kit I’ve used before, I always found the instructions confusing, but Adox’s kit lays it out for us in a simple way which I appreciate:
I love this kit if you can’t tell. None of my previous Cinestill kit results have come close to being this good in scanner! I usually had to make quite a few adjustments in post. And it’s so nice to have another home C41 kit that is under $40 but also that has incredible results.
Honestly, it’s what I expect from Adox though. :)
Here are more results that I shot on the Pentax 17, shot on Shanghai GP3 Color 400 film, not adjusted after the initial scan:
Shanghai GP3 Color Film 400 leans into greens and I would say these results are accurate to the colors from my first roll I had processed at the lab.
This is a low res scan cropped in half and it still looks great to me for what it is.
And here are more from the Pentax 17 shot on Ilfocolor 400 film (the color is similar to Wolfen NC500):
This is the first time I’ve shot this film so I don’t have anything to compare it to, but the colors are lovely!
Nobody wake me up from this dream I’m clearly having where I get these photos from home developing…please and thank you.
Cost Breakdown
This kit costs approx. $39 depending on where you shop, plus shipping.
It can develop up to 16 rolls of film if you don’t stretch it, which brings the cost of at home processing per roll to $3.25 - $2.44.
Interesting that Adox’s Technical Datasheet says “up to 16 rolls” where Freestyle says “12-16 rolls”…
Lab costs can range from around $10 - $20 for basic dev and scan (where I’m based), so savings tally to about $6.75 - $17.56 per roll and approx. $100-$300 per full batch.
Now, that is BASIC dev and scan. But really, I should be comparing HIGH RES scanning because that’s what I’m able to do at home with my Epson V600.
SO, if we look at it that way, I’m actually saving around $16 - $38 per roll and $200 - $600 per batch (considering a baseline $20-40/roll lab cost).
More Developing Cost Considerations
The comparison above excludes shipping costs, equipment costs, and time/energy costs. And for a lot of people, these costs outweight the benefits or savings of developing at home, especially depending on how many rolls per month are shot.
Equipment costs can be brought down to a very budget friendly level.
I bought my scanner (Epson v600) new back in 2016/17/18? for $200 but these can be purchased used from many places.
The developing tanks and reels and cups and thermometer and clips and whatnot cost me about $50-$80 including two tanks, but I started with one. And you can find these used too so it can be even cheaper.
The waterbath sous vide I got was $50 (don’t buy the CineStill one if you are concerned about budget, you don’t even need a sous vide if on a tight budget! I didn’t start with one).
As long as you have a bucket or plastic tote, you can make a 40C waterbath with boiling water, cold tap, and a thermometer.
You could even do this in a sink or bathtub or anything that holds water and is big enough to fit tanks and chemical bottles. I’d recommend a really good clean afterwards though depending on what your using…
I also have never used distilled water in my life and it’s been fine for me. However, depending on what kind of tap water you have, distilled might be something to look at if the tap is really unusable.
Is it worth it?
Whether or not it’s worth it for you to develop at home depends on a lot of things and it’s completely up to you to decide that.
If you shoot one roll per month and you can afford it and you want to try it out to see what the experience is like, why not? You can do whatever you want really! :)
Likewise, if you shoot 50 rolls a month and it’s worth it to you to send to a lab? Pop off QUEEN!
It’s summer and I’ve been shooting more so it saves me a lot of money to develop and scan at home, plus I have the time. I love the possibility of immediate gratification of processing in the morning and seeing the photos in my scanner by night.
Do you develop color film at home? Have you tried this kit yet?
I have to be honest and say this is by far my favorite kit I’ve used. Out of Bellini, Flic Film, and Cinestill, Adox takes top spot for me. Not that the other kits are bad at all, but from the four rolls I’ve developed so far, I’ve never seen results as good as these come STRAIGHT out of my scanner before. My jaw literally dropped on first scan preview.
Or maybe I’ve been doing things wrong this whole time until this kit and it’s really me that’s the problem. Could be…
Anyways, leave me some thoughts in the comments!!
~M
Thanks for this. I've been stockpiling my shot rolls of color with my Cinestill kit still unopened. The directions seem daunting! One thing you didn't mention is the shelf life of mixed chemicals. When Stored in collapsible bottles (to remove air from the chemical's surface) you can dev your estimated max # of rolls if you process them all within 6 months. That's my understanding from others who dev color at home. 6 months shelf life. But The shelf life can be reduced by 1/2 or more if stored with surface air.
I am not speaking from experience, but from many conversations and online instructions. So maybe you have a different experience?
great photos, the Ilfocolor looks great, from my shooting with Kodak Gold 200 and EkTar 100 this looks similar to both, Gold has more fidelity in the Green/red spectrum; and the EkTar has less visible grain, but still good colours, sharp, good job overall, esp. as its a home kit, normally from what others have said on YouTube, colour is finicky, exact temp and time, but this colour kit looks easy, like the Ilford 'simplicity' kit for Black & white {from YouTube videos of it}.