20th Century film reels

[Joel_L]

Hi,

After not doing much with photography for a while, I started playing with my 4x5 again. I usually use my Jobo for processing anything color and my Unicolor film tank for B&W. I bought a 20th Century 4x5 reel that fits the Unicolor tank and thought I would be set. Problem is there are the central spirals that have a nub on the end to hold the film onto the reel. I've tried 5 sheets now and they all have a stripe down the center where the spirals are. All I can think of is that as the drum rotates, developer runs of the spiral and onto the film causing that area to over develop relative to the rest of the sheet.

Each sheet I am positive was loaded as recommended by 20th Century.

Anyone else see this?

 

[MattKing]

Are you loading the sheets emulsion in, or emulsion out?

 

[Joel_L]

Per 20th century emulsion is in. The spirals contact the outside.

 

[MattKing]

Try re-fixing and re-washing the sheets - that may actually be anti-halation that hasn't cleared.
If that is the problem, you could deal with it by using a tray to do the last half of the fixing stage.

 

[Alan9940]

I have found this to be a fairly common issue with these types of reels and playing around with agitation technique usually resolves it. I've never had this issue with my 20th Century 4x5 reel, but I did with a Nikkor style tank that I use. I use hand inversion agitation with all these types of tanks and it took a bit of practice to arrive at a solution.

 

[Joel_L]

I think in a full tank using inversion it would be fine. I'm using a rotary which I do believe is part of the problem. In the mean time I 3D printed a different reel design that I think will work better for my process. Will give it a try today.

Thanks

 

[Joel_L]

I also tried as Matt suggested and refixed the sheet, no change. To cover all bases, I also tested the fixer and it cleared a piece of film in 2 minutes.

 

[Joel_L]

The reel I printed was a success. Sheet comes out fine. Reel is easy enough to load.

 

[Alan9940]

Happy to hear you found a workable solution.

 

[fiddle]

I had the same thing with the same real happen on a few sheets. Never happened after, guess I was off my game rotating that day.

 

[westopher]

Anyone else see this?

Joel, thanks for this post; a friend referred me to it. Yes, I HAVE seen this. When I started using the 20th Century reel, it worked well. But in the time since, I've also been seeing air bells on some negatives (generally 120 film), and worked to make my inversions less aggressive — more like orbital motions than a true full inversion. Apparently, at least for these 20th Century reels, a big mistake, as I began to see precisely what you described and showed, much to my dismay. I simply didn't make the connection.

But as I kept seeing this, I had to get to the bottom of it, and it indeed does seem that these reels require full-on, complete inversions, and I guess if I'm worried about bubbles forming in the solution, I'll use more solution...

Good to see I'm not alone in this, although it does make me want to try a Stearman, MOD54, or something else at this point.