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Before I chuck this film, sanity check please

Rich Ullsmith

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Jan 26, 2007
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1,159
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Medium Format
What I have is two boxes of 4X5: Delta 100, nearly full (expiration 01) and Tmax400 (nearly full, no expiry).

I took snips of the film from both the opened and unopened portion of each box. Of each, one strip went in rodinal 1+50 for 10m, and the other strip in a holding bath. Then both went into the fixer.

These were four separate tests. In each case, the developed and fixed strip came out with a slight pink tinge; the developed and fixed strip was definitely gray.

All temperatures were constant 72f.

It seems pretty clear to me, but if there is something here I am missing, I would like to know.
 
In each case, the developed and fixed strip came out with a slight pink tinge; the developed and fixed strip was definitely gray.
Click to expand...

Please revise so that this makes sense.
 
Pink is under washed/underfixed. You must use FRESH Rapid Fix without hardener or TF4 or you can wash until the cows come home and it remaims pink.

If frozen, 12 year old delta will be fine. Not frozen it is a garbage can candidate.

Grey is fogged film or light struck film or under fixed. It is fogged from age or a dim light. Not much you can do with fogged film unless you had a large batch and were willing to experiment.
 
I may be misunderstanding your post, but I would urge you to mix some absolutely fresh film strength fix from a fresh and new batch of fixer and then repeat your test. When you say gray, I'm wondering if you have old and or very weak fix resulting in opaque unfixed emulsion gray appearance along with the pink dyes that have to be fixed / washed out of the film.
 
Some fog is normal even for 100% fresh film! For paper, it's of course not acceptable as you usually want whites in your prints. You have actually done a usual paper test which is not meant for film. And, even a bit fogged film is completely usable if you overexpose and print through the fog.

Test it by shooting some real scenes.

Slight pink -- if only very slight -- is normal and not a sign of underfixing or underwashing. You can read this from Kodak datasheet. This is also one of the most discussed things here, look at the sticky topic.
 
Sorry, I was in a hurry this morning. The developed and fixed strips had gray density. The fixed strips were slightly pinkish, probably because I didn't bother to wash them.

My assumption is if the film is good, both strips should appear identical.

Yes, I know that putting it through the camera would be a better test, but to be honest, I am not confident enough of my shutter accuracy or my darkroom procedures with LF to be certain of what I am looking at.

The question is, if the film is good, shouldn't the undeveloped strip appear identical to the developed one?
 


Sounds like iffy film, which I think is the ideal learning tool for getting your groove down for LF. True you can't count on image quality, but if the film turns out to be OK, when you get your work flow fine tuned you'll see that the film is good.

Even if the film is fogged a little, if it happens to be fogged uniformly you can just give it an extra stop and print through the base fog.

In theory there is a little base fog even on new film if you develop it unexposed, but not much.

I'd suggest you develop a whole sheet and see if it's got big lines of fog, or looks pretty uniform.
 
Even if it is a bit fogged, if you've never processed 4x5 and you are using trays you will scratch some, get some with uneven density due to agitation etc.

I would shoot a few sheets (at least) and practice on your technique.

This will give you some experience with dealing with/evaluating 4x5.
 
you can use film with some base fog. base fog is normal, if the fog is nearing opaque or very dense you can have problems. compare the base density to that of known, developed, fresh film. It shouldn't be too much worse for 100 speed film. I know that 7-10 years makes 400 speed film very dark, but still usable. 100 speed film has much longer.
 
The test strips are definitely fogged, compared to the borders of other negs. I think it's time to actually buy new LF film.
 
Rich Ullsmith said:
My assumption is if the film is good, both strips should appear identical.
Click to expand...

But, as I said, this assumption is just wrong! It's true for testing paper but not for testing film.

Rich Ullsmith said:
The question is, if the film is good, shouldn't the undeveloped strip appear identical to the developed one?
Click to expand...

No, it shouldn't! You are doing a wrong test.


As said before, there is some fog even in perfectly fresh film. Then, as it ages, the fog level rises, but not rendering film unusable straight away; you just change your printing time to compensate for increased density.

If you have enough experience, you can try to evaluate the fog level with your eyes, but it would be so much easier to just shoot some frames at a few different EIs and see if you like the results -- then you can see the situation between image vs. fog.

If you are not sure enough about your shutter accuracy to do even a simple test shot, what are you going to do with fresh film anyway?
 
Fresh film is going to eliminate a variable. I can see the stuff is fogged. I just picked up a box of Foma 100 for something like 35 bucks. A few hours in the darkroom is worth more than that to me, at this stage.
 
Save it for a rainy day

I have some Double-X 5222 from back in 1986 in my freezer, and it has quite strong fog. But I did some test shots and was surprised at how good the proof sheet I made with it came out. I was almost disappointed as I was looking for an excuse to toss it. Instead I will have to think of places wehre I can use it, (I have about 200 ft all in cassettes left of what had been a 400 ft roll.)

You may want to stick both boxes in a zip-lock bag and tuck them in a corner of your fridge. unless they are REAL BAd, you will probaly find them useful once you have your processing under control.
 
Well, I just donated them to a pinhole project, and am pretty happy with the decision. I have new film on the way. Haven't worked with Foma 100 before, but the price was right.
 
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