E6 film that got wet

[wirehead]

So I was out a few weekends ago with another film shooting friend in a ghost down and managed to fall down into a wet sinkhole with all of my camera gear.

Of the rolls we were shooting, most of them were OK because they were in plasic. One roll was in my pocket and I thought I hadn't gotten it wet, so I sent it along.... but the lab called me and said that the film was sticky and they think the film had gotten wet and they were putting it in a taped-up canister and giving it back undeveloped because they didn't want to risk their chemestry getting screwed up.

It's not the end of the world if the film's toast, but it would be nice if I could see if anything on the roll is usable.

However, I don't want to screw up somebody's chemestry... and potentially ruin somebody else's rolls. Is there anybody who specializes in cases like these that I can boot the roll off to?

(Note I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area)

 

[srs5694]

Getting film wet per se won't ruin chemistry. Many people use a pre-wet in their development processes -- I do for both C-41 and E-6, to bring the film up to development temperature. I'm not sure if wetting the film hours or days before development would have some other adverse effects, though. If the film's "sticky," then that implies that either it's still wet, and is therefore difficult to load onto plastic reels; or that it's been contaminated by something else (something like pond scum, perhaps).

If you do your own B&W processing, you might consider buying an E-6 kit to do this roll, and presumably at least a handful more. If you use the chemistry (at least for this one roll) one-shot, you won't have any worries about contaminating subsequent rolls. I'm sure there are small pro labs that would be quite happy to do the same for you; a concern about contaminating chemistry suggests that the lab you used does enough E-6 volume to use a replenished system. You might try pulling out a phone book and calling a few places; just tell them your tale and see how they respond.

 

[bob100684]

my boss allways said if you soak your wet film in distilled water and bring it to the lab immediatly after inittially getitng it wet it would help, If I'm remembering...he said once it dried some and got sticky it was toast and bad to put through the chemistry.