Efke IR820 overdeveloped blotches

[polyglot]

I have a problem with the last few rolls of IR820 in 120 I've used - they have these blotches on them that look like overdevelopment. Or fungus, or something, I don't know.

For example, some 6x7 frames:

This is the only film I develop in stock D-76 and wonder if there's maybe a problem with my mixture that goes away when I dilute to 1+1 for all the other films.

Any ideas what might be causing these splotches? Is it my development or a known film fault? I really like shooting IR but this ruins the shots.

Alternatively, does anyone have suggestions for a time in D-76 1+1?

 

[cmo]

Looks like air bubbles. How did you agitate the tank?

 

[polyglot]

But these are overdevelopment (dense patches on the negs) not underdevelopment. Agitation is the same I use for other films: 70s of inversions at start then 10s of inversions per minute. One inversion per second. Tank gets rapped on the sink and I use a few drops of photoflo in the developer to prevent bubbles (there was a url link here which no longer exists).

 

[cmo]

In that case, I have a question.

What exactly did you do after development? Did you use a stop bath? Was there a delay between developer and stop bath?

 

[polyglot]

I use a water stop-bath. It goes in as soon as the dev is poured out, and it gets usually 4 changes of water (500mL Paterson tank) with 5-10 inversions each.

 

[dr5chrome]

..cant see the defects in your posted images, but from what you describe, this is damaged film. We have found that such damage is caused by a few factors; age. moisture in refrigeration - before or after exposure.

There is a strange defect with the 120 & large-format efke films caused by the paper. We believe it to be moisture related. It is caused by improper handling or storage of the film.

dw

 

[polyglot]

dr5: have a look at the lower part of the sky, there are little pale mouldy-looking things.

Water/mould does sound interesting - I keep mine in the refrigerator but it's still in the little plastic foil sleeves, which (I presume) are sealed. I haven't had this problem with 135, which is in a very well-sealed little canister. I'll post again when I find out how it goes in Rodinal.

 

[polyglot]

I finally did the Rodinal (1+50, 11:00, 20C) test, and have a roll of IR820 sitting here with no marks on it other than a cat hair and a drip line. So I guess the conclusion is that the D76 was the problem, perhaps something in it was not quite dissolved at the stock concentration (we have kind of hard water) that goes into solution at 1+1.

The only drawback is that it is so very very grainy. Very tight grain (high spatial frequency), but it has a huge amplitude. Stock D-76 was taming that very very well.

Edit: can anyone tell me what a suitable time would be with D-76 1+1?

 

[cmo]

No, but I can tell you that XTol 1:1 is a very good match.

 

[polyglot]

What time & dilution do you use in xtol? MDC gives a bunch of conflicting suggestions.

 

[cmo]

15-18 min, depending on how much contrast I want.

 

[polyglot]

I finally got around to trying the XTOL (1+1 15:00 20C) and it worked very very well, thankyou:

(click for higher-res)

 

[PKM-25]

Is this the newer version without the anti-halation backing? I never had any luck with the older stuff, gave up on it.

 

[polyglot]

It is Aura, yes. Exposed with an R72 at EI1 (assuming f/11 light 60 mins before sunset on a warm/clear summer day). I don't find any real difference between the two except for halation though and AFAIK they're both equally available.

What problems did you have?

 

[PKM-25]

What problems did you have?

No matter what water or developer I used, I got thousands of little black pits all over the neg making thousands of white dots in the final image, it made me not want to use any Efke products.

Thankfully I have 50 rolls of HIE in 120 ala' David Romano and 75 rolls of last batch HIE in 35mm.

 

[polyglot]

Ah, the famous Efke Black Dots. Can't say I've ever suffered that one myself; the consensus on apug seems to be that it's a batch issue but I can certainly see how it'd put you off a brand. I have had a couple of emulsion pinholes but that's it.

If you've got a 120 roll or two of something interesting in B&W that I haven't tried, we could swap it for an IR820 from my stash with no dots.

 

[Dave Krueger]

No matter what water or developer I used, I got thousands of little black pits all over the neg making thousands of white dots in the final image, it made me not want to use any Efke products.

I had that same problem with IR820. I'm hoping it was a batch problem and that I won't see it in the future. I tried it both with and without the AH backing. I think it was the film with the AH layer that had the problem. A gazillion very tiny black specks on the negative (white specks on print). Aside from that, I loved the film.