Development troubleshooting (and some other questions)

[MattKing]

Technidol is a discontined, special purpose developer designed to be used with an unusual film. It probably won't be the best choice for your purposes, and it might very well command a decent price if you re-sold it.

Use something else that is both much more common and cheaper. D76 comes to mind.

 

[Miles51]

Technidol is a discontined, special purpose developer designed to be used with an unusual film. It probably won't be the best choice for your purposes, and it might very well command a decent price if you re-sold it.

Use something else that is both much more common and cheaper. D76 comes to mind.

Well, I bought it like a month ago, and it was the cheapest one they had at the store

 

[Xmas]

Please scan one of the lab scan negatives and compare your scan with theirs.

 

[Rudeofus]

There is no need to replace all chems, but as you indicated, your fixer is most definitely dysfunctional. Since color fixer is pretty much indestructible, you must have done something very wrong with it. Are you 100% sure you followed the mixing instructions to the letter? What does the concentrate look like?

The good thing is that you can rebleach and refix your negs as often as you need. As things look right now, you can leave your Technidol in the shelf and shift all your focus on getting a working fixer bath. When you prepare your next batch of color fixer, perform that clip clearing test before you commit further film to it, it works pretty much the same as clip clearing test for B&W fixers.

 

[Miles51]

There is no need to replace all chems, but as you indicated, your fixer is most definitely dysfunctional. Since color fixer is pretty much indestructible, you must have done something very wrong with it. Are you 100% sure you followed the mixing instructions to the letter? What does the concentrate look like?

The good thing is that you can rebleach and refix your negs as often as you need. As things look right now, you can leave your Technidol in the shelf and shift all your focus on getting a working fixer bath. When you prepare your next batch of color fixer, perform that clip clearing test before you commit further film to it, it works pretty much the same as clip clearing test for B&W fixers.

Well, like I said before, I buy my chems pre-mixed (I know, not the best, but no other option is available to me) so I don't know how it looked like. It's a trustworthy source thoug, so I trust it was good when they sold it to me. But there is a very good chance that the fixer got seriously contaminated with bleach, so that is probably the issue, since all my chems are probably contaminated because of developing errors on my side, I will replace them all just to be sure.

 

[Rudeofus]

Just to be 100% sure that we're talking about the same thing: you dipped a fresh, unprocessed negative test clip into fixer for several minutes and it had no visible effect?

 

[Miles51]

Just to be 100% sure that we're talking about the same thing: you dipped a fresh, unprocessed negative test clip into fixer for several minutes and it had no visible effect?

It did have effect, but it wasn't 100% clear (save the orange mask, of course). It did clear quite a bit, but not fully.

 

[Rudeofus]

It did have effect, but it wasn't 100% clear (save the orange mask, of course). It did clear quite a bit, but not fully.

In this case your fixer is toast. If you can't get your hands onto fresh fixer soon, you could try to refix your existing negs by extending fixer time to at least three times as long as it takes to completely clear a test clip in this soup. Even then you should refix the negs with fresh fixer once you have it.

 

[Miles51]

In this case your fixer is toast. If you can't get your hands onto fresh fixer soon, you could try to refix your existing negs by extending fixer time to at least three times as long as it takes to completely clear a test clip in this soup. Even then you should refix the negs with fresh fixer once you have it.

Thanks!! I'm travelling to the city this weekend and am gonna get a new batch of chems from there, and the try refixing this roll and see what happens!

 

[Rudeofus]

In the meantime you could try leaving an already processed strip in this fixer for 10+ minutes, then wash and STAB, just to see whether this resolves all your processing issues or whether we need to solve some more. You could also check whether rebleach/wash/refix/wash/STAB gives better results than refix/wash/STAB, as this would suggest that your bleach needs work, too. There is nothing you can do afterwards in case the color developer was faulty, but from what you showed this one step worked anyways.

BTW your processing problems proved me dead wrong in one very important point: there indeed exists a processing fault which creates very blurry images. Retained silver halide is milky white/yellow and obviously can create such an effect.

 

[Miles51]

In this case your fixer is toast. If you can't get your hands onto fresh fixer soon, you could try to refix your existing negs by extending fixer time to at least three times as long as it takes to completely clear a test clip in this soup. Even then you should refix the negs with fresh fixer once you have it.

Question: How do I know how long it takes the fixer to clear the test strip if that strip has to be inside the developing tank, out of the light? At least I understood that, since if the light hits it, it is not "unexposed" anymore

 

[Rudeofus]

Question: How do I know how long it takes the fixer to clear the test strip if that strip has to be inside the developing tank, out of the light? At least I understood that, since if the light hits it, it is not "unexposed" anymore

A clip clearing test can be done in normal room light. Since you don't want to develop this clip, and since there will be very little printout silver formed in the short time frame most fixers need, ambient light will have no effect on the results. The term "unexposed" is meant to be the short form of "a short strip of film which contains no image matter you would possibly care about, which hasn't been processed yet and which hasn't been exposed to light for more than a day".

 

[Miles51]

I did as you said and scanned with my camera and compared with the ones from the lab. The quality is significantly lower, as expected, but it is the best I can do for now. I know that lab uses a kickass scanner, so they have really good resolution.
Still, the quality loss is visible mainly as blurred edges, not added noise (in fact, the scans were noisier than the photos). I did what I could to match the colors, so it would be easier to compare, but I did no further editing, sharpening masks or anything.

BTW, how do you get good color from your scans? Even Color Perfect was giving me really bad colors on these photos

I tested my fixer again after googling a bit what I should be looking for. It seems to be ok, but I will still replace it, just in case, a new bottle is not expensive, and I'd rather be on the safe side.
Still, I rebleached and refixed the whole roll (8 min bleach and 10 min fix) and it is drying now, I'll post the results tomorrow =)

Photo

Scan from the lab

Photo

Scan from the lab

 

[Rudeofus]

I did as you said and scanned with my camera and compared with the ones from the lab. The quality is significantly lower, as expected, but it is the best I can do for now. I know that lab uses a kickass scanner, so they have really good resolution.
Still, the quality loss is visible mainly as blurred edges, not added noise (in fact, the scans were noisier than the photos). I did what I could to match the colors, so it would be easier to compare, but I did no further editing, sharpening masks or anything.

BTW, how do you get good color from your scans? Even Color Perfect was giving me really bad colors on these photos

There is a whole forum dedicated to scanning and post processing of analog photography based imagery here. That forum doesn't look as busy as this one, but if you state your question there you usually get answers very quickly, and you get the answer from people with much more experience in digital post processing than you will likely find here on APUG.

I tested my fixer again after googling a bit what I should be looking for. It seems to be ok, but I will still replace it, just in case, a new bottle is not expensive, and I'd rather be on the safe side.
Still, I rebleached and refixed the whole roll (8 min bleach and 10 min fix) and it is drying now, I'll post the results tomorrow =)

Curious to see whether it improved things. If it did, then you should simply extend your bleach and fixer times to six minutes each for future process runs.

 

[Miles51]

I rescanned everything after re cleaching and fixing and it improved, but not too much, by now I'm pretty convinced that it was the scanning after all,and reverted back to my original method =). The sharpness isn't the best, but it will have to do until I can get a macro lens
Thanks for everyone's help!