Agitation and Dense Negatives

I have been shooting film for a while now, but I've been developing my film at home for a little over a year now. Earlier this month, I developed a roll of 35mm HP5 I shot at box speed over the summer (left). The negatives turned out super dense compared to other rolls of HP5 I shot and developed on the same camera (right).
I have read the Ilford trouble shooting guide, and know it's not an issue with my camera or meter (a Minolta Maxxum 7000, I got this particular body 2 years ago to replace the one my father had handed down to me). The meter is working, and the pics on the roll were taken on different days and times in different locations, so the light was always different, and none of the rolls I've shot since have shown this issue throughout the whole roll (And actually, last pic is a scan from the roll. I remember being worried it would be UNDERexposed because of the heavily wooded location). I always make the same dilution out of Arista liquid developer and HP5 is the stock I taught myself development on, so the time was definitely the same.
For future reference, since I'm still refining my developing skills, I was wondering

1) How much agitation is TOO MUCH agitation that could cause a problem like this?

2) Although the negatives are dense, they seem to scan okay (last photo). Is a dense negative like this a dealbreaker for things like printing? I was able to scan them fine using my plustek, but as they're photos from an out of state job I had this past year, it's of a location I probably won't return to, so it's this or nothing for the shots.

It really looks like over exposure.

Neal said:

It really looks like over exposure.

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I agree. This looks like overexposure not overdevelopment. I expect this is user error of some sort - either setting the meter incorrectly or misinterpreting your meter readings.

How much did you agitate? Sometimes I agitate continuously (tubes), sometimes 5 sec every minute, and sometimes semi-stand. You have to find the correct development time for your choice of agitation.

I agree with others, as it looks like over exposure in the camera.

I always suspect operator error first when I have problems; I am usually right in my suspicion. The problem is rarely the equipment or materials, it's me.

I'm assuming the film was fresh and properly stored (i.e. not in the glove compartment). The reason I state this is that the fog is a bit higher on the problem negatives.

To me the higher fog suggests over development. Possible causes are: wrong dilution of developer; not setting the timer correctly; a sticking timer.

It could also be overexposure. Have you had normal negatives since the problem roll, indicating the problem probably isn't in the camera? Possible causes of overexposure are bent/dirty DX sensing fingers; a wrong setting on the ASA dial; a sticky aperature; a failing shutter; and all the other things that Ole' Murphy might invent.

I don't think that you could agitate the film enough to cause this effect. Just agitate per Ilford's/Kodak's instructions and all will be well.

Andrew O'Neill said:

How much did you agitate? Sometimes I agitate continuously (tubes), sometimes 5 sec every minute, and sometimes semi-stand. You have to find the correct development time for your choice of agitation.

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I was doing 10 secs every minute, but I just did a roll at 5 secs every minute and liked the results better. I developed this before I changed methods, hence why I thought over agitation might be the problem

Were different lenses used in the two sets of images? Sometimes certain lenses may require exposure compensation with certain cameras.

Nicholas Lindan said:

I always suspect operator error first when I have problems; I am usually right in my suspicion. The problem is rarely the equipment or materials.

I'm assuming the film was fresh and properly stored (i.e. not in the glove compartment). The reason I state this is that the fog is a bit higher on the problem negatives.

To me the higher fog suggests over development. Possible causes are: wrong dilution of developer; not setting the timer correctly; a sticking timer.

It could also be overexposure. Have you had normal negatives since the problem roll? Other causes of overexposure are bent/dirty DX sensing fingers or a wrong setting on the ASA dial.

I don't think that you could agitate the film enough to cause this effect.

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I have shot other rolls, including one I shot 2 weeks ago and developed the next day, with no issues.

I didn't keep the best notes on this roll (I recently downloaded a new app that has allowed me to keep much better track of rolls and shots as I shoot them), and it's possible I set the ISO wrong. But, given that my camera has TTL metering and I use it in aperture priority mode, the meter should have given me correct readings, even if I set a different ISO than the DX code. I may have pushed it and accidentally developed at box speed, but then (to my understanding) it would look under developed.

I also generally suspect user error. The learning curve with developing my own film has been trying to pinpoint at what step I made the error. It seems like consensus is overexposure, and I suddenly remembered I had some digital shots I took on the same trip. Looking at the metadata, this was taken later in the evening. I have a feeling what happened is I was trying to get more light, and ended up overcompensating and chronically overexposed the shots.

ogxtina said:

I was doing 10 secs every minute, but I just did a roll at 5 secs every minute and liked the results better. I developed this before I changed methods, hence why I thought over agitation might be the problem

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Welcome to Photrio.
While employing the two methods you describe may result in different results, those results won't be that different.
The main function of agitation is to ensure that the developer that is actually in contact with the film doesn't exhaust, leaving relatively fresh developer unused, in different parts of the tank. The two options you describe will do that in almost the same way, and give you almost exactly the same result at the end.
The one much more consequential variable that you didn't mention is temperature - how sure are you that you didn't use too high a temperature for the development? A few degrees C off - or even a few degrees F off - will cause a much greater change than the type of variation in agitation you describe.
And by the way, I will respectively disagree with those who believe your negatives reveal variation in exposure - this does look like over-development to me, based at least partially on the edge printing characters.

I can't tell if the edge printing is darker on one due to development or due to the uneven illumination behind the film.

Agitation schemes should not be employed to control negative contrast. Use development time and/or dilution for that.

Agitation is primarily to ensure even development. Settling on an agitation method that works for you and the film you're using (120 film is particularly finicky about agitation) should be targeted at that.

A secondary use of agitation is to promote the formation of edge effects and local contrast. The method here is to minimize the agitation and still come up with evenly-developed negatives. Minimal agitation techniques are tricky and not really what's being discussed here, though.

As for the OP's negatives, it looks like overexposure and lots of flare to me. I would imagine that the meter readings were taken from the darkest areas of the scene, which fooled the meter into giving more exposure. That said, for contrasty scenes like this without development time changes to control contrast, an overexposed negative that still retains highlight separation along with the desired shadow detail is the best you can hope for.

Best,

Doremus

Judging by the density of the frame numbers, it seems to be over-developed.

Augustus Caesar said:

Judging by the density of the frame numbers, it seems to be over-developed.

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And that is how I feel. OP is using HP5, a film that I am well versed in. I've been using it since the mid 90's. To my eye, it looks over developed, not over exposed. OP stated that he saw an improvement when he reduced the agitation from 10 sec per minute, to 5 sec per minute...which is what I do with this film.

No need to become agitated by dense negatives,,look for what you may learn from your mistake.

ogxtina said:

1) How much agitation is TOO MUCH agitation that could cause a problem like this?

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This really isn't about agitation.
Your negatives look overdeveloped, and most of them look overexposed, too. The one with the waste bin that you provided a bigger scan of, looks more or less correctly exposed. The frames at the top row look overexposed by a stop or two.

The rate of development is dictated by the inherent activity of the developer, dilution of the developer, development time, temperature and agitation. From this set of parameters, agitation is the least significant. In general, if you stick to Ilford or Kodak recommended agitation (i.e. agitate constantly for the first 30 seconds and then an agitation cycle every 30 or 60 seconds), you should be fine - always. Then adjust development time to get the desired result, while keeping the other factors constant. This is the most common and intuitive way to controlling negative contrast.

ogxtina said:

2) Although the negatives are dense, they seem to scan okay (last photo). Is a dense negative like this a dealbreaker for things like printing? I was able to scan them fine using my plustek, but as they're photos from an out of state job I had this past year, it's of a location I probably won't return to, so it's this or nothing for the shots.

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Overly dense negative don't print very well in the darkroom, and when scanned, they also yield sub-optimal results. In the darkroom, you will find yourself resorting to lower contrast grades (grade 0 or 1 or so) and that gives you little room to control runaway highlights without resorting to local burning. In general, it's easier if your negatives are more middle-of-the-road contrast-wise, or even slightly on the thin side, as long as there's good shadow detail (but this is also a matter of preference).
Too much density in the negatives has a couple of effects that are generally undesirable. Firstly, grain tends to be emphasized due to a combination of factors, including the actual physical enlargement of grain due to overdevelopment, optical effects of a mass of large grains that the light (for scanning or printing) needs to work its way through, and increased digital noise when scanning (because there's less light for the scanner to work with in thick areas of the film). Moreover, overexposure tends to emphasize halation effects, which degrades contrast and detail especially around areas of bright highlights.

Going out on a limb, I'd say that the main cause of your rather heavy-handed negatives is unfortunate decisions in metering the scene. There's a small chance that there's an aperture problem on the lens you used; lens apertures sometimes get a little sluggish if the aperture blades are dirty/oily and stick together. This prevents the aperture from stopping down fast enough when taking the shot (the aperture is wide open normally since this gives the best viewfinder image; it only stops down momentarily for taking the shot on a camera like yours). You can verify this by working the aperture with the lens removed from the camera body, visually inspecting the aperture blades as the lens is stopped down, verifying that the aperture closes and opens instantly when exercising the shutter, and testing some film with a known-good lens. It's wise to eliminate this factor, even though (or, perhaps, especially because) the odds are about 95%-5% that the heart of the problem is basically just operator error in terms of wrong metering and overdevelopment.

koraks said:

This really isn't about agitation.
Your negatives look overdeveloped, and most of them look overexposed, too. The one with the waste bin that you provided a bigger scan of, looks more or less correctly exposed. The frames at the top row look overexposed by a stop or two.

The rate of development is dictated by the inherent activity of the developer, dilution of the developer, development time, temperature and agitation. From this set of parameters, agitation is the least significant. In general, if you stick to Ilford or Kodak recommended agitation (i.e. agitate constantly for the first 30 seconds and then an agitation cycle every 30 or 60 seconds), you should be fine - always. Then adjust development time to get the desired result, while keeping the other factors constant. This is the most common and intuitive way to controlling negative contrast.


Overly dense negative don't print very well in the darkroom, and when scanned, they also yield sub-optimal results. In the darkroom, you will find yourself resorting to lower contrast grades (grade 0 or 1 or so) and that gives you little room to control runaway highlights without resorting to local burning. In general, it's easier if your negatives are more middle-of-the-road contrast-wise, or even slightly on the thin side, as long as there's good shadow detail (but this is also a matter of preference).
Too much density in the negatives has a couple of effects that are generally undesirable. Firstly, grain tends to be emphasized due to a combination of factors, including the actual physical enlargement of grain due to overdevelopment, optical effects of a mass of large grains that the light (for scanning or printing) needs to work its way through, and increased digital noise when scanning (because there's less light for the scanner to work with in thick areas of the film). Moreover, overexposure tends to emphasize halation effects, which degrades contrast and detail especially around areas of bright highlights.

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Great summary! Should be pinned somewhere.

Happy New Year!

ogxtina said:

How much agitation is TOO MUCH agitation that could cause a problem like this?

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Too much agitation is not the cause here.

ogxtina said:

I was doing 10 secs every minute, but I just did a roll at 5 secs every minute and liked the results better. I developed this before I changed methods, hence why I thought over agitation might be the problem

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This kind of change to agitation may well result in a change to two separate but identical films taken of the same scene at the same time under the same lighting conditions but is very unlikely to make an appreciable difference IMO and certainly not to the prints that are capable of being produced - in my opinion and experience

pentaxuser

MattKing said:

Welcome to Photrio..
The one much more consequential variable that you didn't mention is temperature - how sure are you that you didn't use too high a temperature for the development? A few degrees C off - or even a few degrees F off - will cause a much greater change than the type of variation in agitation you describe.
And by the way, I will respectively disagree with those who believe your negatives reveal variation in exposure - this does look like over-development to me, based at least partially on the edge printing characters.

Click to expand...

Thank you! I also was wondering if it could be the temperture. I never did a pre wash, so I originally thought it couldn't have made the difference, but it was the last roll I developed that night, so I probably SHOULD have checked that the temp of the chemicals was still good before processing this one, but I didn't. A good practice I'll keep up with going forward, and in general I don't keep good enough track of my temps. This was my first time where I had a backlog of rolls to go through, so I didn't think to check it after processing a couple rolls.

loccdor said:

I can't tell if the edge printing is darker on one due to development or due to the uneven illumination behind the film.

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The light box in the community darkroom was photographing really weird on my iPhone, so probably the latter

koraks said:

Overly dense negative don't print very well in the darkroom, and when scanned, they also yield sub-optimal results. In the darkroom, you will find yourself resorting to lower contrast grades (grade 0 or 1 or so) and that gives you little room to control runaway highlights without resorting to local burning. In general, it's easier if your negatives are more middle-of-the-road contrast-wise, or even slightly on the thin side, as long as there's good shadow detail (but this is also a matter of preference).
Too much density in the negatives has a couple of effects that are generally undesirable. Firstly, grain tends to be emphasized due to a combination of factors, including the actual physical enlargement of grain due to overdevelopment, optical effects of a mass of large grains that the light (for scanning or printing) needs to work its way through, and increased digital noise when scanning (because there's less light for the scanner to work with in thick areas of the film). Moreover, overexposure tends to emphasize halation effects, which degrades contrast and detail especially around areas of bright highlights.

Going out on a limb, I'd say that the main cause of your rather heavy-handed negatives is unfortunate decisions in metering the scene. There's a small chance that there's an aperture problem on the lens you used; lens apertures sometimes get a little sluggish if the aperture blades are dirty/oily and stick together. This prevents the aperture from stopping down fast enough when taking the shot (the aperture is wide open normally since this gives the best viewfinder image; it only stops down momentarily for taking the shot on a camera like yours). You can verify this by working the aperture with the lens removed from the camera body, visually inspecting the aperture blades as the lens is stopped down, verifying that the aperture closes and opens instantly when exercising the shutter, and testing some film with a known-good lens. It's wise to eliminate this factor, even though (or, perhaps, especially because) the odds are about 95%-5% that the heart of the problem is basically just operator error in terms of wrong metering and overdevelopment.

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I was worried that the grain would be too much for a print, so thanks for saving me the paper. The scans took me extra long to get the usable results I have, so I had a feeling that the time I would need to spend in the darkroom to make a usable print wouldn't be worth it. But I'm keeping this advice to judge some of my other negs as candidates for printing.

And yeah, I've basically eliminated any camera gear problems in the last year, during the pandemic I had bought a bunch of cheap, but barely-working stuff from eBay, but now it's all gone and what I still have is tested and working (including buying better lenses to replace the plasticky "Ritz Camera exclusive!" lenses I had inherited from my dad which had those aperture problems)

What I've learned here:
-Agitation needs to be consistent, but won't make that much of a difference
-I need to keep better track of temperatures when developing
-dense negatives are difficult to print
-one of the lightboxes in the community darkroom photographs worse than the other (but for $15 an hour, chemicals included, I'm not complaining too much)

ogxtina said:

Thank you! I also was wondering if it could be the temperture. I never did a pre wash, so I originally thought it couldn't have made the difference, but it was the last roll I developed that night, so I probably SHOULD have checked that the temp of the chemicals was still good before processing this one, but I didn't. A good practice I'll keep up with going forward, and in general I don't keep good enough track of my temps. This was my first time where I had a backlog of rolls to go through, so I didn't think to check it after processing a couple rolls.

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I do all my processing at the ambient room temperature.
As a result, I always measure the temperature of the developer, and then use that temperature to calculate the developing time for that particular run.
Your dense negatives could very well have been developed at a too high temperature - say 24C, rather than a target of 20C.

ogxtina said:

What I've learned here

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Sounds good!

ogxtina said:

so thanks for saving me the paper.

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In fact...I'd recommend printing one or two of the problematic negatives just as an exercise. It's a valuable experience to 'feel' how a negative like this behaves in the darkroom. It'll help you to understand what to expect in cases like these - and also what can be done to make a reasonable print after all (which, generally, is possible).

koraks said:

Sounds good!



In fact...I'd recommend printing one or two of the problematic negatives just as an exercise. It's a valuable experience to 'feel' how a negative like this behaves in the darkroom. It'll help you to understand what to expect in cases like these - and also what can be done to make a reasonable print after all (which, generally, is possible).

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+1. And my guestimate is that those negatives will still make pretty decent prints. For instance, looking at the enlarged print the first post i would add a bit of extra light in the highlights around the sky and the grey tree leaves around that area using a grade 5 filter to balance contrast a bit better. And making the whole print a bit darker - but that could be the image on my screen - could help to improve the print as well.

Wasn't it Les McLean of split grade printing fame ( some members here will remember him) who conducted an experiment in which the difference between constant agitation of the cocktail shaker variety and very gentle and slow agitation was about half a grade in printing terms?

pentaxuser