In my never-ending search for strange and unusual ways to develop film, I was reading up on developing color C41 film in black & white chemicals. I’ve done that before, it basically just turns out like black and white film. You can see an example here.

But some people went on to suggest that you can continue developing this already-developed film in standard C41 chemicals. The theory being that your standard B&W developer should develop the film without respect to what color it’s developing, so some colors will come out overdeveloped and others underdeveloped, at random. Then the color developer should bind the proper color dyes to the oxidized silver particles.

Here was my process: Rodinal 1:25 6min followed by standard Tetenal C41 development (pulled by 0:15)

Prediction: Overdeveloped by at least one stop, and basically the correct color palate, but in different ratios.

Actual result: About a stop UNDERdeveloped. Definite color shift, not just a slight color imbalance. Very unpredictable results.

Conclusion: WIN.

Epilogue: I can’t find anything on the internet about an actual term for this process, so I’m going to coin a term for it. You heard it here first, folks: HYBRID PROCESS. You’re welcome.