Can someone settle an issue ? ... a super n00bish one

Right, im trying to work out what went wrong when i developed a roll of formapan 35mm 400iso film in Promicrol.

Massive dev lists promicrol should be diluted at 1+14 and developed for 15 minutes.

Firstly i let my friend mix the developer and he did it at 70mls of promicrol to 800mls of water which i think may be the issue, if 1+14 is 1 part dev to 14 parts water it should be

10mls dev - 140mls water
20mls dev - 280mls water
40mls dev - 560mls water
60mls dev - 840mls water
70mls dev - 980mls water

Is this right because there was a lengthy discussion as to whether it was or not.

So lets say we mixed it a bit to concentrated i only let it develop for 8 minutes as i was concerned about the ratios and it has still come out totally over developed.

The other variable in this is that formapan came from ebay and from thailand and in some shifty packaging so could it be that ?

and finally any tips for successfully printing over developed film ? (exposing the paper for longer etc)

In conclusion developing film at 3am having not slept for 3 days is never going to end well i was just wondering where it all went wrong, also does anyone know of of a developer calculator where you type in your X+X ratio and it tells you ?


many thanks for this rambling silly question

Samuel

70-980 sounds right. the amount of developer would just be X/(X+Y)*(required solution) and the amount of water is just Y/(X+Y)*(required solution) where in your case X is 1 and Y is 14. Doesn't need a calculator, and if your a bit over in final solution quantity, what of it?


Obvious question that you didn't address: did you over-expose? How do you know exposure is correct? If you have an old camera/meter, is it accurate? Did you accidentally set ISO100? (I've made those mistakes a few times)

Sounds like too many uncontrolled variables.

The dilution might be a little too strong, but what was the temperature? If it was too warm, then the strong solution was compounded. If colder, then maybe it points back to the exposure. Also, the massive chart has 15 min for exposing it at 800 - a one stop push. So if you shot at 400, then 15 is off anyway. How do the film edges look? Definitely overdeveloped or maybe overexposed?

70+980 is correct, though that's a lot of liquid to develop one (?) roll, not that I know anything about Promicrol. You also need to be very careful of the temp - if you were at 23C or something, you will get hugely overdeveloped negs.

I wouldn't worry about the film's provenance or the shifty-looking packaging unless the film came out blank or badly fogged. Is the edge of the film fairly clear?

Printing overdeveloped film is annoying because a low-grade VC paper will often have flatspots in the tonal response and therefore look ugly. You can also look into using a bleach ("Farmer's Reducer") to reduce the negative density, though that may have bad effects on your shadows and it's not something I've ever tried. Have you tried printing it? Is it possible that some dextrous dodging and burning can save the image without resorting to a contrast lower than #1 ? Then there's masking, but we're getting into serious levels of effort there.

Scanning can almost certainly save it too.

I reckon your development dilution is correct and your friend got it wrong... but to be honest it is a small error. I can't imagine it would make such a big difference. I think your problem lies elsewhere.

When using any new film or developer or combination for the first time you need to experiment to find the ideal times, anyway. The manufacturers instructions give you a rough guide, the massive development chart sometimes gives you a very rough guide!

You could continue to dilute the developer 'wrongly', I bet many do, and still get good results by tweaking the time.

The first time I developed Tri-X in Rodinal I took some times off the internet. The film came out almost totally black and completely unprintable. The only thing that turned out to be wrong was the development time was none-sense. When I used about half the time everything was fine.

In order to print the overdeveloped film I used some farmers reducer... but whether you want to bother buying and experimenting with this depends on whether there is anything really worthwhile on your film. It might be easier, quicker and cheaper to just re-shoot a new film?

I usually just use

Total volume/(dilution wanted +1) => amount of developer.
Then I just fill the tank to the total volume I wanted.

Thus: For a 600ml total volume (reccomended in my tank for one 120 film) and a wanted dilution of 1+20, I take 600/21 => 28,57 ml of developer in tank and then fill with water to 600ml.

Rodinal 1+50 for 600ml total volume gives: 600/51 => 11.76ml of dev and then fill to 600ml

If I am unlucky with a strip of film and cannot print it, I consider it a failure and try and scan them instead, my experience is that you can actually salvage _a lot_ if you scan a problematic negative as a positive and then mess with the curves and levels to "normalize" them.

I like fomapan very much, one of my favorites, along with the Rollei films. (I use Tetenal Ultrafin and Rodinal mostly).

Tetenal 1+20, 7,5 mins in 20 degrees for Fomapan 100, worked fine so far for me, but I see that the dev-chart doesn't list the 400 with this dev.

rodinal 1+100 45 minutes

You've two issues, first Foma films are a bit quirky in that they require shorter development times than most other films, and they build up density very much faster with over development.

A second is that Foma films tend to have a true EI below the marked box speed, that Massive Devlopment chart time of 15mins @ 20°C 1+14 is for the film PUSHED to 800EI

You don't state what temperature you're using Champion give two working temperatures in their data sheets 20°C and 24°C for 1+9 nnd 1+14.

Based on my experiences of Foma films and how they compare to Ilford/Kodak/Fuji and EFKE I'd suggest that a developmentt time of 9 mins @200 EI and 20°C at 1+14 is going to be closer to the mark.

Once you nail the correct EI and Dev time Foma films give great results, but you really need to do some testing to establish that EI/Dev time combination for yourself.

Ian

At a ratio of 1+14, simply divide the amount of liquid needed, in your instance 800ml H2O should have 55ml of developer added for a total of 855ml solution.

hey guys thanks for your replies, there was a LOT of variables that i should address especially temperature.

This is the third roll i have deved not with rodinal, i think i will be returning to 1+100 ive never had an issue.


one thing i noticed is that when viewed at an angle to the image appears positive which if im not mistaken points to EXTREME underexposure, i noticed today my light meter/f stop thing is no longer clicking back to the 2.8 and leaving me set at f16 all the time but not adjusting the in viewfinder needle.



So i see no better time (broken camera + payday) to finally get the AE1 that has been in the window of my local camera shop for a year.


i imagine the combo of weird film, poorly used developer, broken meter and difficult metering conditions have done this to my film, now i know the problem i can address it... by getting a new camera.

thanks for all your guidance the people on this forum are the best.

Samuel

To the OP : yes,in my experience,if you can get a good visual reading of your negs - the positive viewing effect,of the emulsion side, your film is well underexposed. I have never seen this effect with negatives I consider well-exposed.
Better luck next time..

I have been experminting with Promicrol for the last year and above is a dev chart that I now use for Promicrol. I have been happy with my results so far but I would also welcome anyone's comments.