First (and badly) developed film for 25 years - need advice

fish95th · Dec 26, 2012

Good morning!

Here's hoping somebody can help

I've not developed a film for 25 years, have recently sold my digital and gone back to film.

The detail below is from a frame using Kentmere 400, developed in D74 1:15 for 7 mins, fixed in AG Plus for 6 mins, and scanned from neg on a HP Scanjet 4850.

The entire frame is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fish95th/8309433923/

I don't ever remember (ok, it was years ago) with ID11 ever seeing this effect. Can anybody comment on this? - I'm sure there's something I've done wrong - and I think the frame is rather low contrast as well - suggesting that 7 mins was too short? The packet suggested that Kentmere at 320 should be 5.25 mins (and HP5 at 320 fr 5 mins), yet elsewhere a D74 datasheet gives (for example) HP5 400 1:15 at 8.5 mins.

hoshisato · Dec 26, 2012

I had some weird effects not unlike you have when I left the Digital ICE enabled when scanning B&W negatives. The question is, do you see it in the negative or only in the scanned image?

fish95th · Dec 26, 2012

Well I can't enlarge the negative enough to see - however I did rescan using Vuescan - lower resolution than the non-ICE HP sofware and the effect seems to have gone - so I guess it must be the software - which has no setting for B&W negative - only colour (unlike Vuescan). Thanks for suggesting that! Looks like I'll be buying a copy to activate my Vuescan trail!

Seeing as I'm paranoid however - I am right about the neg being too low in contrast?

bdial · Dec 26, 2012

The contrast looks ok to me, as rendered in the flicker post, but it's a little hard to judge from a posted scan. You can tweak the contrast by increasing your agitation or the total development time. Getting to a time that fits the way you would like the negs to look will take a little experimentation.
To boost the contrast a little, try adding 30 seconds to 1 minute to the development time and see how that looks.

Most scanning questions are OT for apug, but you will find lots of help for that in the dpug sister site (www.dpug.org)/

fish95th · Dec 26, 2012

bdial - thanks for the response. The negs do have that 'thin' look so I'll play around with the timing.

The scanning, btw, is really only a temp measure until I can clear a room and get the Durst enlarger setup and so on. I wanted however to get confident with film processing before going back to printing.

rawhead · Dec 26, 2012

The weird artifacting definitely is introduced with the scanning; like mentioned, make sure ICE / infrared dust removal is turned OFF in your settings.

DSLR · Dec 26, 2012

rawhead said:
The weird artifacting definitely is introduced with the scanning; like mentioned, make sure ICE / infrared dust removal is turned OFF in your settings.

That's the same problem I had when I scanned my first roll. I thought the ICE was suppose to be a good thing.

Prof_Pixel · Dec 26, 2012

DSLR said:
I thought the ICE was suppose to be a good thing.

.. but NOT with Ag containing images!

DSLR · Dec 26, 2012

Prof_Pixel said:
.. but NOT with Ag containing images!

What's AG? :confused:

Vaughn · Dec 26, 2012

Ag = silver (Symbol for silver on the Periodic Chart of Elements)

Prof_Pixel · Dec 26, 2012

DSLR said:
What's AG? :confused:

Element 47 on the Periodic Table of the Elements with a relative atomic mass of 107.868. It's classified as one of the Transition metals and has a melting point of 1763.42F. It's often referred to as SILVER.

ic-racer · Dec 26, 2012

This thread belongs in the digital section.

Prof_Pixel · Dec 26, 2012

ic-racer said:
This thread belongs in the digital section.

Why? The original poster had a question about his B&W development process.

fish95th · Dec 27, 2012

Prof_Pixel said:
Why? The original poster had a question about his B&W development process.

Which, thanks to people here, I've now resolved as a scanning problem.

I've just developed my second Kentmere at 400 with D74 and extended the developing time from the earlier 7 to 7.5 mins - the negs look a tad better and Vuescan is working well - it's now showing up deficiences in the flatbed scanner

DSLR · Dec 27, 2012

Maybe there should be a hybrid section for those who develop and scan?

perkeleellinen · Dec 27, 2012

fish95th said:
I've just developed my second Kentmere at 400

Hello fish95th, whereabouts in Oxfordshire are you?

fish95th · Dec 28, 2012

perkeleellinen said:
Hello fish95th, whereabouts in Oxfordshire are you?

Near Wallingford. If you look on my Flickr space you may recognise the local scenery! It's all since I returned to using film a few months ago - plus some slides from the 80s. How about yourself?

BMbikerider · Dec 28, 2012

DSLR said:
What's AG? :confused:

IN the context of the post I would think the AG he is referring to is the name of a photographic materials supplier in Birmingham UK

StoneNYC · Dec 28, 2012

I know it's solved but this is specifically the Digital ICE feature being left on, just to confirm, it won't happen as long as you have Digital ICE turned off / unchecked

fish95th · Dec 28, 2012

StoneNYC said:
I know it's solved but this is specifically the Digital ICE feature being left on, just to confirm, it won't happen as long as you have Digital ICE turned off / unchecked

On this scanner, a HP Scanjet 4850, it has dust removal (but not ICE) - even with this turned off it still produces the effect (albeit less so) - whereas Vuescan on the same scanner does not. I can't say that I'm impressed with HP.

StoneNYC · Dec 28, 2012

fish95th said:
On this scanner, a HP Scanjet 4850, it has dust removal (but not ICE) - even with this turned off it still produces the effect (albeit less so) - whereas Vuescan on the same scanner does not. I can't say that I'm impressed with HP.

Hmm well HP as a company has been low quality since it bought up gateway and never returned from that.

As far as the program, there must be a function in the menus that you aren't seeing that's causing the DICE to function. You did say its on color negative which CAN take advantage of Digital ICE so perhaps it's automatically on for that setting....

I found the PDF instructions.

http://www.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c00437630.pdf

But you are right there isn't much for options.

My only other suggestion is to scan as a transparency and invert the image from negative to positive in post.

I've heard viewscan is great, I have Silverfast but I can't figure it out honestly it's a terribly non-intuitive program, so I've gone back to the supplied Epson scan program which seems to work much easier, so I hope viewscan isn't as complicated as Silverfast...

~Stone

Mamiya: 7 II, RZ67 Pro II / Canon: 1V, AE-1, 5DmkII / Kodak: No 1 Pocket Autographic, No 1A Pocket Autographic | Sent w/ iPhone using Tapatalk

perkeleellinen · Dec 28, 2012

fish95th said:
Near Wallingford. If you look on my Flickr space you may recognise the local scenery! It's all since I returned to using film a few months ago - plus some slides from the 80s. How about yourself?

I'm just South of Banbury, the other end of the county.

First (and badly) developed film for 25 years - need advice

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