First Real Mistake, Yet No Effect?

So after developing almost a full bottle of HC-110's worth of film, I *finally* muffed a roll. On Saturday last weekend I processed my final roll of Kodak film, a roll of TMAX 400 (120 size).. Everything looked fine. The next day I processed a roll of Ilford Delta 400 (also 120 size). While preparing the DD-X solution ( I used DD-X both times), I realized that my Saturday roll was processed with the 35mm amount of fluid! I put 300 mls into the tank, not 500. That's a HUGE difference. Also, I fixed with that amount as well. Thankfully, I realized this mistake and processed the Delta 400 roll as normal.

The strange thing is, my TMAX 400 roll looks OK! It's a bit thin, but I shot it at ISO800, not 400. There is no sign of any uneven processing due to the fluid level not covering the entire sheet of film.

I find that very strange. I guess I got very lucky and certainly do not intend to do this again.

Anyone else find this lack of evidence of a problem strange?

If you did frequent agitation so the emulsion was being refreshed with wet developer, I think it could work. When the film is wet out, it seems normal that a nice film of liquid adheres to the emulsion surface. Other stuff I read back in 2005 or so implied 3 mL of HC110 was enough to do a roll, but now folks are saying 6, so even the reduced amount of developing agent probably wasn't critical.

You must be using constant agitation or at least very frequent agitation then or you should see a line of different density.

In my early days of color developing I had this "great" idea: why bother shaking the tank, just put the tank upright, wait 15 seconds, put it upside down, wait 15 seconds, ... and since the developer did not fully cover the film half the time, I had visible unevenness in the developed film strips, the negs were mostly useless.

You must have agitated very well, and/or you were very lucky. BTW since negs are quite low contrast, you should try printing them (scanning if you must), there may be unevenness in your negs that doesn't show during visual inspection.

So the key info we need, Rattymouse, is how frequent was your agitation? I have often wondered if the Kodak pattern of I think, 5 secs of inversions every 30 secs might be enough to be successful.

In my case I probably go over 5 secs and have noticed that by the time of my last inversion there is only a short gap before the next 30 second interval begins again. My guess is that by the time the developer drains from the film after the last inversion the interval is so short that nothing shows up to reveal it on the neg.

That's not to say that with an instrument or high magnification loupe on a lightbox nothing would show and as Rudeofus says a straight print is the best test. It is most likely to show up on a section of the neg that should have a regular tone but doesn't. A wall of stone or bricks for instance which should be one shade of grey but varies in the depth of grey.

A grey sky where you''d expect to see different shades as you nearly always do in real life may provide the perfect disguise

pentaxuser

In a stainless tank, 300ml JUST comes to the under side of the upper end of the reel, so I could see that making sense that there isn't any issue with development. If the OP used a plastic set, it should have had an impact on how film developed.

We are assuming that you weren't using rotary agitation. If you were, than this isn't at all surprising!

I was using a Paterson tank with 1 min of constant agitation and then 10 seconds of agitation every minute after that. I'm going to fill my tank with 300 mlx while a 120 reel is in there and see where the water line is. Perhaps there was enough fluid in there.

300 ml of liquid only comes up about 2/3 of the way on my plastic spool. I think if you try to print the first set of negatives you will see what really happened to them. BTW you only need to use water, no need to waste anything else checking it out.

RattyMouse said:

I was using a Paterson tank with 1 min of constant agitation and then 10 seconds of agitation every minute after that. I'm going to fill my tank with 300 mlx while a 120 reel is in there and see where the water line is. Perhaps there was enough fluid in there.

Click to expand...

I for one would be very interested in your findings. If 300mls doesn't cover the frame area on a 120 then it suggests that 10 secs per min is enough to keep a layer of developer on the film which is quite surprising. We might have to re-examine what we thought was needed in terms of developer quantities to ensure even development

I take it that from what you can see the neg doesn't seem to be affected and have you made a print to see if this non effect on the neg transfers to the print. That's still key to any conclusions we might reasonably reach

Thanks

pentaxuser

pentaxuser said:

I for one would be very interested in your findings. If 300mls doesn't cover the frame area on a 120 then it suggests that 10 secs per min is enough to keep a layer of developer on the film which is quite surprising. We might have to re-examine what we thought was needed in terms of developer quantities to ensure even development

I take it that from what you can see the neg doesn't seem to be affected and have you made a print to see if this non effect on the neg transfers to the print. That's still key to any conclusions we might reasonably reach

Thanks

pentaxuser

Click to expand...

I don't have a print or even a scan yet. I was merely looking at the negatives, which had images of a beautiful sky in it, and it was fully and evenly developed all across this area. There was no detectable line of any kind across all the 10 frames of the film. Perhaps the scans will show otherwise. I'll post when I get them back, early next week.

OK thanks. This is an interesting one.

pentaxuser

he's my one example of doing this. Was a Paterson System 4 tank

I once did exactly the same with a 120 TMax (also same agitation) and the film was unusably spoiled like Niges above, only difference it was 6x9 landscape orientation. So ????