film partially soaked in water too long

this was an accident, but just to show you the result.

it was late night, I had developed a couple rolls, had one more but needed to take some rest.
For C41 I use Paterson tanks, faster to fill and empty than steel tanks. I use a circulator in a sink to keep water at 38c. I fill the tank and leave it in the sink 3 to 5 mn for soaking just before processing.
But now i had to get some rest and I just put the tank loaded with the roll but no water of course, in the sink, lid on. Like this.





couple hours after I woke up and went to process the film, BUT I saw the tank was partially SUNK into the water. Just partially, part of the bottom and sideways . i didn't snap fully the lid, damn, so some water went inside. Couple hours of soaking...

So this is how it looks, I get 2 frames out of 8 and maybe 2/3 of another, And I spend time composing these ones....

Sorry to hear that. Make sure you are well rested before going to process your film. If I'm too tired, I put it off until I'm more alert.

I sometimes use very long prewash cycles, which can easily turn into hours when I get distracted by other errands (kids not wanting to sleep, ...), but I have never seen any effect like this. Is there a chance, that there were traces of developer, fixer or bleach in this water bath? Regular tap water should not be able to do that.

Rudeofus said:

I sometimes use very long prewash cycles, which can easily turn into hours when I get distracted by other errands (kids not wanting to sleep, ...), but I have never seen any effect like this. Is there a chance, that there were traces of developer, fixer or bleach in this water bath? Regular tap water should not be able to do that.

Click to expand...

That's a good point.

It would have been better to either empty the tank and let the film dry out, the prewet and develop OR put more water in and let it sit for 10 minutes for even wetting and then develop.

The soaked areas look fogged; that suggests there was a trace of bleach in the water, C-41 bleach is a weak foggant, but soaking for several hours will do it. At the same time, its bleaching action destroys the latent image in the film.

Donald Qualls said:

The soaked areas look fogged; that suggests there was a trace of bleach in the water, C-41 bleach is a weak foggant, but soaking for several hours will do it. At the same time, its bleaching action destroys the latent image in the film.

Click to expand...

Chlorinated water will do that.

Rick A said:

Chlorinated water will do that.

Click to expand...

True. I don't think about that, I'm on a well.

yes there may have been traces of bleach and/or fixer in the sink. From foam generated by the agitation and that got into the water after I removed the lid.... The water has no chlore at all.
I have already forgot tanks in soaking while I was doing something else, but never more than half hour, and never had a problem..

some frames I did spend time composing because the place was uneasy (on top of unfenced fortress wall, trying to not fall to my death), but otherwise no important pictures, as I was just playing with my Moskva-5 and a 2018 roll of Fuji 160NS, metered at 320. The recently discontinued Fuji 160

Only one frame was almost ok:




others could be salvaged partially. By selecting an unaffected area, otherwise the scanner (V700) was confused.

for instance, full frame scan positive:




but with a cut:



then bigger cut with only a little bit of affected area top corner (it was getting dark, hence the light cast by the lamp in the middle on the ground to the right):




or this full frame:



when cut:





so all in all an "interesting" experiment. Well it had better happened with a roll of Lomography-400 than a Fuji 160NS.


I did check Fuji specs of the 160NS roll base, it's cellulose triacetate (sheet is polyester), no idea if this plays a role..

one of the idea of this toying with the Moskva-5 was also to see how well i could manage low speeds.

the trees (1st picture) were taken f16 1/25 . By the 8th frame it was getting too dark, I took this one at f11 1/5, the full frame positive was botched but the salvaged chunk is ok, so yes I can shot the Moskva-5 down to 1/5" if careful:








the Industar-24 of the Moskva-5 is soft before f8, but the advarsel sign on the wall was taken at f3.5 1/100. Not too bad.



Before that roll, with a Lomography-400, which isn't very sharp anyway, these two at f11 (1/100) are acceptable:










100% of the gate with the year over it:




but well, that would be another topic

Front-focusing Tessar type lenses (which that Industar-24 is) have their limits -- the faster they get, the more image quality suffers at wide openings. The f/2.8 Tessar on my Super Ikonta B has this same quality -- it gets soft when opened up.