Folks, I have developed film since I was 14 (1964) and by far this is the most maddening problem I have ever had. If I always got bad negs I would simply chalk it up to my stupidity with using processes that I had no right to expect to work. But, just a few days ago: SAME RA4 dev stock, SAME film stock, SAME everything. Honestly, sometimes I think solutions depend upon the moon phase (like my Italian grandmother said that the wine (that she and my grandfather made), depends upon!)
Seriously, there is no safelight (ultra conservative here with darkroom) and the evenness of the stain precludes kink marks or 'splashes'. It is even as can be. I have checked everything and am just about to state, without equivocation, that this developer solution has a mind of its own (and I am agnostic to boot!) Maybe, just maybe, science goes only so far.
The stain (for the past two days) is green, slightly darker than the beautiful orange mask would have imparted. It HAS to be a slight fogging, like a contamination. NOBODY is cleaner than I am in the darkroom. But nothing has changed with the solutions for the past week and during the past week I was getting knock-out, beautiful negs (sometimes the neg is more 'beautiful' than the print because of the delicacy of the tones). Now, an ugly green stain, still printable but the fun in doing that has been deleted. (True, others have worse problems than complaining about stuff like this).
Now that I have bared my soul (and beared my soul, also) I want to thank all for at least trying to understand this dilemma. And, again, there are more important things to complain about, for sure. - David Lyga.