Another 'what happened to these negatives?' thread

logan2z · May 3, 2022

jnamia said:
hi logan2z
how are you printing your film, is it all scans or are these prints from an enlarger ? sometimes smudgy glass from a scanner causes problems with scanned film, I don't think it was your photo Flo, I've been putting a couple of drops / film tank or try for 40 years after the film is in there and never had an issue. when you look at the negatives with a "loupe" and on a light table or through a white piece of paper and a bright window is it the same streaks ?
otherwise I'd read what gbleas said

Sorry for the late reply. I haven't printed any of these negatives yet, I've only scanned them. But I can see the streaks on the negatives when I look at them closely.

jnamia said:
a lot of people use really dilute developer or don't agitate well enough and it causes trouble, and it doesn't matter what developer they used ...
good luck fixing your problems!
john
'

Bromide drag is something that was mentioned earlier in the thread but I think it was (mostly) discounted because of the direction of the streaks - primarily along the long axis of the negatives.

logan2z · May 3, 2022

Well, I used my new changing bag to load my last roll onto the reel and into the tank, and some of the frames still show those vertical high density 'streaks' . Not sure what to try next. Maybe try a more 'standard' dilution like B? I will try re-fixing a strip as was suggested earlier to see if that improves anything but I'm not hopeful.

Any other suggestions are welcome. In the meantime I guess my only other option is to start sending my film to a lab again. I've got a bunch of film sitting here waiting to be processed that I don't want to bugger up myself.

FotoD · May 3, 2022

I've had similar streaks on my 135 film. And I also have very hard water, could that be part of it? Never could figure out how to completely avoid it, so not much help I guess.

logan2z · May 3, 2022

FotoD said:
I've had similar streaks on my 135 film. And I also have very hard water, could that be part of it? Never could figure out how to completely avoid it, so not much help I guess.

We do have pretty hard water. I'm doing the final rinse of the wash with distilled water but perhaps I should try another roll and mix all of the chemistry with distilled. Might be worth a try. I'm out of other ideas...

snusmumriken · May 3, 2022

I hope you figure this out pretty soon, I can't bear the suspense! Also can't accept that you would give up home processing.

logan2z · May 3, 2022

snusmumriken said:
I hope you figure this out pretty soon, I can't bear the suspense! Also can't accept that you would give up home processing.

The suspense is killing me too

I'll probably try a couple more things before putting this effort on hold.

glbeas · May 4, 2022

Have you tried developing an unexposed strip of film to rule out fogging in the darkroom or film issues?

Scott J. · May 5, 2022

logan2z said:
Not sure what to try next. Maybe try a more 'standard' dilution like B? I will try re-fixing a strip as was suggested earlier to see if that improves anything but I'm not hopeful.

logan2z said:
We do have pretty hard water. I'm doing the final rinse of the wash with distilled water but perhaps I should try another roll and mix all of the chemistry with distilled.

I think all three of those are great ideas. The first thing I'd try is refixing, since it doesn't require you to develop a new roll.

logan2z · May 5, 2022

Scott J. said:
I think all three of those are great ideas. The first thing I'd try is refixing, since it doesn't require you to develop a new roll.

Yes, I'll try re-fixing first and see how that goes. Then I'll try developing a roll using Dilution B. Finally I'll try mixing all of the chemistry with distilled water.

Hopefully one of those things will resolve this issue.

logan2z · May 7, 2022

Ok, so I tried re-fixing one of the affected strips and no change. So I guess under-fixing isn't the source of this issue. On to Dilution B...

logan2z · May 9, 2022

In case there's one or two of you left who still cares about this...

I developed a roll using Dilution B and...I see the same bloody streaks on some of my frames - from sky to ground, regardless of orientation.

This is becoming super annoying. Apparently, I'm the only person on the planet who can't successfully develop a roll of film at home

I decided to drop more money on this experiment and bought a Jobo 1520 to give it a try. I really don't think there's any issue with the tank I'm using since I've tried two different steel tanks, but what the heck. I guess I'll try mixing all of my chemistry with distilled water too to see if that has any effect. Other than that, I'm completely out of ideas.

Craig · May 9, 2022

Could you revisit the location where you had the streaks and try shooting again under as similar conditions as you can (weather, sun, time of day etc) and then take both a horizontal and vertical shot. If the direction of the streak changes, then you know it's a camera problem, not a processing problem.

Another thought might be to pick up a 1litre pack of ID-11 and try a different developer and see if there is any change.

I think the photo-flo is a red herring, I have hard water as well and have not had streaks like that.

A final thought might be that the film is touching itself on the reel. I'm not familiar with Hewes reels to know if that's possible or not. I've always used Patterson tanks for 35mm film and I've not had a problem with the film touching each other.

EDIT: I see you mentioned you tried changing the camera orientation - did the streaks stay the same, i.e. oriented along the length of the film?

logan2z · May 10, 2022

Craig said:
Could you revisit the location where you had the streaks and try shooting again under as similar conditions as you can (weather, sun, time of day etc) and then take both a horizontal and vertical shot. If the direction of the streak changes, then you know it's a camera problem, not a processing problem.

Thanks for taking a shot at this.

I do have a couple of examples of vertical and horizontal shots taken with the same camera/lens seconds apart, and the direction of the streak is different in the two photos. Like these, for example:

However, this same thing has happened with a different camera/lens too, and I've seen the streaks when the photos were taken using a third camera system as well. So that tells me it's not a hardware problem.

Craig said:
Another thought might be to pick up a 1litre pack of ID-11 and try a different developer and see if there is any change.

I could try another developer, yes.

Craig said:
I think the photo-flo is a red herring, I have hard water as well and have not had streaks like that.

I think I've ruled out photoflo as a possible cause. One thing I haven't tried is mixing all of my chemistry with distilled water. I'll probably give that a go just to rule out a hard water problem.

Craig said:
A final thought might be that the film is touching itself on the reel. I'm not familiar with Hewes reels to know if that's possible or not. I've always used Patterson tanks for 35mm film and I've not had a problem with the film touching each other.

I don't think that's an issue, the film seems to be loaded properly on the reel without any part of the film being in contact with any other part. I'm not sure that film contact would result in high-density bands anyway, I'd expect the opposite if the developer was not able to reach certain parts of the film due to contact. But what do I know

Craig said:
EDIT: I see you mentioned you tried changing the camera orientation - did the streaks stay the same, i.e. oriented along the length of the film?

See above photos. The streaks changed direction, but that happened with multiple cameras/lenses. I know, it's baffling

logan2z · May 10, 2022

So here's one that looks a bit different than some of the others:

The 'streak' looks like it starts with a funnel shape and then narrows into a band like the others. This is from the roll I developed using Dilution B.

I think this may have been mentioned way back at the start of this thread, but is it possible that this area of higher density is being created while I'm pouring the developer into the tank? I'm angling the tank in order to pour the developer in as quickly as possible, but it probably still takes me 8 or so seconds to get the developer completely poured into the tank. I'm wondering if the developer is dribbling through the lid, randomly hitting the film and running down in some areas before other areas of the film are contacted with developer, leaving an area of higher density in those areas hit earlier during the pour. It seems unlikely since people have been successfully developing film using this type of tank/lid for decades, but the shape of this streak sort of looked like something a liquid might leave behind while being poured. Maybe I'm grasping at straws.

Maybe it's worth trying my recently acquired Jobo 1520 for the next roll to see how that works out. It seems to have a different lid design that directs the fluids down through a central core so that tank fills more uniformly from the bottom up. I guess it can't hurt...

Jay Schrotenboer · May 10, 2022

Another option you could try is to change your initial agitation from just 5 seconds to 30-60 seconds. I have heard that this can avoid many problems with developing. I personally agitate for the first minute and then 10 seconds every minute after. Might be worth a try.

Sirius Glass · May 10, 2022

Since camera equipment and PhotoFlo have been eliminated, I would suspect 1) the speed and way that the developer is poured into the tank and 2) well as possibly developing at a colder temperature to have development times over five minutes are the source of your problem.

logan2z · May 10, 2022

Sirius Glass said:
Since camera equipment and PhotoFlo have been eliminated, I would suspect 1) the speed and way that the developer is poured into the tank and

That's what I'm leaning towards at this point. I'm going to try the Jobo 1520/1501 for my next roll and see how that goes.

Sirius Glass said:
2) well as possibly developing at a colder temperature to have development times over five minutes are the source of your problem.

All of my chemistry is at 68 degrees Fahrenheit while developing. I used development times > 5 minutes for both Dilution E (6.5 mins) and Dilution B (5.5 minutes).

logan2z · May 10, 2022

Jay Schrotenboer said:
Another option you could try is to change your initial agitation from just 5 seconds to 30-60 seconds. I have heard that this can avoid many problems with developing. I personally agitate for the first minute and then 10 seconds every minute after. Might be worth a try.

Thanks. I might try that as well.

Sirius Glass · May 10, 2022

logan2z said:
That's what I'm leaning towards at this point. I'm going to try the Jobo 1520/1501 for my next roll and see how that goes.

√

logan2z said:
All of my chemistry is at 68 degrees Fahrenheit while developing. I used development times > 5 minutes for both Dilution E (6.5 mins) and Dilution B (5.5 minutes).

√

Craig · May 10, 2022

logan2z said:
The 'streak' looks like it starts with a funnel shape and then narrows into a band like the others. This is from the roll I developed using Dilution B.

That looks like a chemical stain to me. That was why I was thinking of a lower energy developer than HC110, in order to have longer developing times and less chance of uneven development.

Agitation may play a part here too. Since you said you have refixed in fresh fixer, I suspect this is in the development, rather than any subsequent chemicals.

logan2z · May 15, 2022

Another update:

I developed my latest roll using the Jobo 1520 tank and 1501 reel and went back to Dilution E. The good news is that most of the frames look fine and I think my negatives have the most even development I've seen yet. The Jobo tank was also very nice to use - no leaks.

Now the bad news: I've attached two frames of the same scene (there was minor camera movement between them, I was shooting handheld) that were adjacent on the roll that seem to exhibit two subtle, straight vertical streaks - nearly equidistant from the edge of the frame - in almost the exact same locations on the two frames. I've darkened the images a bit to emphasize the issue. Oh, I forgot to mention - I mixed all of my chemistry and performed the entire wash/final photoflo rinse with distilled water to eliminate any potential hard water issues.

I honestly don't know how this can still be happening, but I'm completely out of things to try at this point...

snusmumriken · May 16, 2022

Craig said:
Another thought might be to pick up a 1litre pack of ID-11 and try a different developer and see if there is any change.

+1 for this suggestion. I have no experience with HC110 myself, but it sounds like it is quite reluctant to mix. Even though you detailed your mixing procedure earlier, and it sounded pretty thorough, using some other more miscible developer would eliminate whether the problem does actually relate to HC110 somehow.

logan2z · May 16, 2022

snusmumriken said:
+1 for this suggestion. I have no experience with HC110 myself, but it sounds like it is quite reluctant to mix. Even though you detailed your mixing procedure earlier, and it sounded pretty thorough, using some other more miscible developer would eliminate whether the problem does actually relate to HC110 somehow.

I don't know, I mixed the cr*p out of it so I doubt it's a mixing issue.

Maybe I'm not agitating properly/enough, but I'm strictly following Kodak's agitation instructions (I know, Kodax isn't exactly infallible when it comes to their instructions).

I could try the unofficial dilution H since that will lengthen the developing time and/or try a different agitation protocol. I just find it really odd that the streaks on the images above are straight as arrows and essentially equidistant from the frame edges in both cases. That just seems too perfect to me to be a mixing/agitation issue.

I do have a new bottle of Ilford DD-X on hand that I was going to use to develop some HP5+ if I ever had success with Tri-X. I guess I could give that a whirl too. I'd prefer to avoid powdered developers.

-- Despondent in California

MattKing · May 16, 2022

FWIW, I can't see the most recent streaks.
Can you try digitizing your results with the negatives flipped upside down? I.e., if these are done with the emulsion side down, try them with the emulsion side up.
I'm looking as much for a change in the appearance of the streak as for anything else.

Sirius Glass · May 16, 2022

MattKing said:
FWIW, I can't see the most recent streaks.
Can you try digitizing your results with the negatives flipped upside down? I.e., if these are done with the emulsion side down, try them with the emulsion side up.
I'm looking as much for a change in the appearance of the streak as for anything else.

I agree with Matt, I cannot see any streaks either. This could be a scanning problem.

Another 'what happened to these negatives?' thread

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