Filthy Film...

Here is my very first frame of IR film. It is Efke IR 820 / R72 in 120mm souped in Rodinal, 1+50, 11 minutes, 68F.

I have been using regular tap water for the whole show, then photo-flo and squeegee. For the most part, my film as been fairly clean, but not this time around...

All of my frames have hundreds of little specks and blobs all over it. What is the deal?

And yes, this frame is out of focus, I forgot to re-focus with the filter on..

Could it be particulate in your dev? I get these crystal precipitate thingies in my Rodinal bottles after a while.

Is this the dreaded "Efke pinhole effect" mentioned in previous posts?

It looks like the "Dreaded Efke pinhole effect!" I used to get some of this with Efke 25. Great film, bad QC. BTW, good shot.

I learned to take two, if not three, shots of everything.

You could imagine they're stars.

Pinholes in the negative would print out as black on the positive print, I believe. These look like substance on the neg.
I would think that if there were particles in the developer, they would be long rinsed out by drying time. If they rested on the emulsion, maybe they could causes dark places, but only if no agitation.
My vote would be particles in the final rinse, which, for me is always distilled water and P-Flo.
What about dust in the drying environment? Anything unusual that day?

I have had these spots before, infrequently and unexpectedly, on every type of film I have used in the past. The crud that causes these probelms comes from everywhere, dust in the environment that gets on the film while it is wet, chemicals that are stored and reused whether filtered or not, like fixer or developer, and particles in the water. I have never had spots like these on any print when I processed the film in fresh chemicals, used one shot, and when I have used distilled water to mix the fixer, as a final rinse before photoflo, and to mix with the final photoflo application before hanging the film to dry in a reasonably dust free environment. Tap water is not a constant, by that I mean, your tap water can vary considerably in content and quality due to variables that you may not be able to predict. The information you get from a local water facility about quality is no guarantee of the actual quality of the water you get from your tap on any given day. You can have particles in your tap water at times that will produce these problems and at other times your water may have fewer particles in it and you will not notice spots on your prints. Some particles seem to be almost impossible to dissolve. When you happen to hit a bad water day with a particular film, it is easy to make the mistake of blaming it on your film.
Good luck,
Doug Webb

Never reuse fix. Never use stop or water. Develope and fix. Use up the fix on test prints. TF4 is alkaline fix and a wonderful product

I never got pin holes with Efke film and never prewashed or presoaked either.

I do have water and airfilters in my dark room.

BTW, throw the squeegee and keep fingers and everything else off wet film except photoflow from an ear syringe that has been cleaned as new and then cleaned before and after each use.

Interesting...

My quart of fix now has 12 rolls of 120 on it with these last two rolls of Efke.

Time to mix up a new batch I spose'.

My darkroom for now is my kitchen in my 2 bedroom condo, houses are 3.8 million on the average where I live so my buddy and I are putting together a darkroom in his basement about 30 minutes away.

But no stop bath? Straight to fix?

And drip dry from photoflo?

Tell me more...

I am shooting on location in DC this week, so I will amass this info and give it another go.

Ronald Moravec said:

Never reuse fix. Never use stop or water. Develope and fix. Use up the fix on test prints. TF4 is alkaline fix and a wonderful product

I never got pin holes with Efke film and never prewashed or presoaked either.

I do have water and airfilters in my dark room.

BTW, throw the squeegee and keep fingers and everything else off wet film except photoflow from an ear syringe that has been cleaned as new and then cleaned before and after each use.

Click to expand...

So here we are some 6 months later, same crap. It's embedded in the emulsion, specks of some sort. I have used fresh everything, even switched it up just now to D76 straight, fresh, distilled water stop bath, etc. and I get the same crap all over my negs.

It's really too bad, the film is really nice, great IR effect, tonality. I have a roll of Efke 25 to soup tomorrow, I'll see if it does the same thing, because not one other roll has this junk show on it.

If Efke's Q/C is this bad, I had better get rid of all my stock of it, I can't afford this problem as a pro. At this point, I have one shot that needs to go to print that can not be redone that is going to cost me at least $200 in outside photoshop work to be press ready.

What a drag...

It's most likely to be frilling of the edges of the emulsion. Tiny particles of emulsion coming off the edges of the film, any undue temperature variations between Dev, Stop, fix, wash etc will exacerbate this. EFKE films aren't particularly well hardened so a re prone to theses problems. You can use a pre-hardening bath before developing, some are listed in the Darkroom Cookbook, (the 3rd Edition is out very soon).

Using a tanning developer like Pyrocat, or PMK will help too as the Pyrocatechin or Pyrogallol tans & hardens the emulsion. If you've processed EFKE films its worth filtering and solutions you're going to re-use.

With good tight processing controls particularly with solution & washing temperature you shouldn't get a problem.

Ian

PKM-25 said:

o
...because not one other roll has this junk show on it.

Click to expand...

Other than Efke clean film? I wouldn't put up with it. Dan

I quit using Efke film for just this reason. I had the same problems as you have plus some gigantic hunks of crud that always seemed to pop up on my best negs. I was using 35mm. I went through 10 rolls and not a good one in the lot.

Never again,

-Fred

Ian Grant said:

any undue temperature variations between Dev, Stop, fix, wash etc will exacerbate this.

Click to expand...

I was within 1 degree on everything last night, the film is still hanging in the rack, I will take a close look at it to see if there is at least less of this due to my tight control on souping it last night.

It should not be this hard to do, other films are no where near this finicky.

Fred Aspen said:

I quit using Efke film for just this reason. I had the same problems as you have plus some gigantic hunks of crud that always seemed to pop up on my best negs. I was using 35mm. I went through 10 rolls and not a good one in the lot.

Never again,

-Fred

Click to expand...

I am leaning towards this. I have 10 100 foot rolls of 25 I'll need to put on the bay.

Nice handle, that is where I live...

PKM-25 said:

I am leaning towards this. I have 10 100 foot rolls of 25.
I'll need to put on the bay.

Click to expand...

Bummer! At least let whoever what may be in store.
How about a refund? Dan

I had this with expired Fortepan 400 film.. It was a bad batch, there are posts here and elsewhere detailing it.. There were emulsion defects and every frame had specks in it, regardless of how you developed the film or handled it. The specks were visible when you viewed the negs through a loupe or made an enlargement. Very fine little specks and totally randomly spread about.

I also use tap water and reuse my stop and fix. I usually don't filter. I do use a drop of photo-flo for the final wash.. Have you developed anything since? Particularly from the same batch of film?

oops should have read the posts above a bit better..

dancqu said:

Bummer! At least let whoever what may be in store.
How about a refund? Dan

Click to expand...

That's a misunderstanding, different film. The IR is going back to the shop for an exchange. I am going to shoot Rollei IR until this gets sorted out.

I am souping a test roll of Efke 25 tonight, if it looks good, I will keep the bulk rolls of Efke.

Is the junk on the film able to be felt, like sandpaper or sand or debris in teh emulsion? Is what you see on all films you process or only this specific film?

It's getting late and I am not quite following what the stuff is on the film. Post a bit more on whether it happens to more than one specific film or if it is more than one. Or do you go a few rolls with no troubles and then it crops up again?

Last night, a roll of Efke 25 and two rolls of Rollei IR 400 came out fine, I think I just got a bad batch of Efke IR is what is the problem.