Foggy/cloudy negative

mugenmoonz0 · Jul 29, 2022

Hi everyone,

I have just received my scans from the lab and all of the photos on one roll have this cloudy or foggy appearance on it. This was an ilford XP2 exposed for 30 sec using an ND filter on my pentax 6x7. What is the most likely cause for this foggy appearance? Thanks!

koraks · Jul 29, 2022

Usually a problem with moisture in the backing paper. Was this roll stored outside its original wrapper and/or in high temperatures?

Alternatively it might be an agitation issue, but it would have to be the worst lab on earth for the problem to be this bad.

PS: incomplete fixing might also cause this; in this case there would be a sort of thin, milky veil over the images if you inspect the negatives. But this would also fall under the "worst lab in earth" category, so somewhat less likely than a film storage problem.

Sirius Glass · Jul 29, 2022

The water is foggy from the water motion. The sky is foggy from the clouds moving. That is part of long exposures.

MattKing · Jul 29, 2022

Welcome to Photrio.
Are the foggy bits on the negatives themselves, or are they just in the scans.
It would help if you can post backlit photos of the negatives themselves, being sure to include the rebates and lettering on the edge and the spaces between frames.
A blank monitor screen or a window with sky (but not direct sun) behind it works great for the backlight, and a cel phone pic resized to post here works fine.

Donald Qualls · Jul 29, 2022

Sirius Glass said:
The water is foggy from the water motion. The sky is foggy from the clouds moving. That is part of long exposures.

Sirius, did you even look at the image? If not, perhaps you should do so and reassess. That's not any kind of motion blur. It's mottling; the kind of thing you get when 120 film has been out of the wrapper for a long time (years?) before it's loaded and short or after it was shot and before it was developed.

Sirius Glass · Jul 29, 2022

Donald Qualls said:
Sirius, did you even look at the image? If not, perhaps you should do so and reassess. That's not any kind of motion blur. It's mottling; the kind of thing you get when 120 film has been out of the wrapper for a long time (years?) before it's loaded and short or after it was shot and before it was developed.

I see the mottling all over the photograph except for the subject in the middle of the frame, which seems to contradict the 120 paper problem. The rest of the photograph does look like the 120 paper problem but a sharp center image would not be there in that case. Something for both of us to ponder. There is no print through of numbers which is common with the 120 paper problem.

pentaxuser · Jul 29, 2022

I imagine the actual negs hold the answer so assuming the OP receives the neg then it might pay us to wait until then

I hope that the fact that the OP has only got the scans is simply the fact that the scans were sent electronically and the negs are on their way but I am not holding my breath. Did we have a similar issue very recently?

pentaxuser

MattKing · Jul 29, 2022

We don’t know that the OP hasn’t got the negatives at hand.

koraks · Jul 29, 2022

Sirius Glass said:
I see the mottling all over the photograph except for the subject in the middle of the frame, which seems to contradict the 120 paper problem.

There's no contradiction of the 120 backing paper mottling problem. It just doesn't show all that well on a low-density area of the negative. This doesn't mean it isn't there. I'm sure if you were to enhance the thing in Photoshop (which frankly I can't be bothered to) you'll see it in the center part of the frame as well.

250swb · Jul 29, 2022

It's not a typical backing paper problem, but it may be the cause, and unless all the exposures on the roll are of entirely the same scene it would be unusual for all of them to have the same problem, but the OP doesn't say. Neither does he say if there was spray coming off the rocks or any other possibly relevant information. Given the lack of effort information I'm going to guess it is a processing problem, but it's a wild guess.

mugenmoonz0 · Jul 29, 2022

Hi guys, thanks all for chiming in.
The negs are on its way, will inspect them once it’s arrived.

I think this issue is caused by me improperly storing the film. I took 4 exposures of this scene but all of the exposures on this roll have this same issues. It is quite humid here, and I actually loaded the film the day before I went to photograph. I guess this is where I was wrong.

This roll was processed C41 btw, I also shot a roll of ektar of this scene and sent it to the same lab with this roll. The ektar doesn’t have any of this issues, so less likely a lab problem. Live and learn I guess.

Cheers

Sirius Glass · Jul 29, 2022

If the film was in the refrigerator or the freezer, then one must wait until the film has come to room [ambient] temperature. If the film was not cold, then there should be no reason that the film could not be loaded the day before. I am sure you will provide more background information later.

Welcome to ~~APUG~~ Photrio!!

gone · Jul 29, 2022

It's as humid in New Orleans as where you are, so I don't think it's a humidity issue. Just looking at the pic w/o having seen what the camera saw, it's almost as if the shot is supposed to look like that. It resembles actual fog, not film fog. So seeing the neg scan should tell us the story.

MattKing · Jul 29, 2022

The reason I asked to see the negatives was that if they turn out to be extremely over-exposed, random fogging may actually be simply the result of the scanning process having trouble with the density.

Sirius Glass · Jul 29, 2022

MattKing said:
The reason I asked to see the negatives was that if they turn out to be extremely over-exposed, random fogging may actually be simply the result of the scanning process having trouble with the density.

Read: "See" means taking a photo of the negative with the edge markings with an cell phone.

koraks · Jul 30, 2022

mugenmoonz0 said:
It is quite humid here, and I actually loaded the film the day before I went to photograph.

That's not the problem.

What would be a problem is if the roll was stored in let's say a hot windowsill for a week or more etc. The kind of backing paper problem I think this is, will generally take longer periods of adverse storage conditions than just a day.

Fridge-related condensation would have looked different from this.

Let's see good photos of the actual negatives once they arrive; that will surely help.

pentaxuser · Jul 30, 2022

Well at least we know the negs are on their way to him and we saw scans because that was all he had to show us.

pentaxuser

mugenmoonz0 · Jul 30, 2022

Hi everyone,
I’ve inspected the negs. Apparently the fogging is also seen on the film border, so further supporting the backing paper problem hypothesis..

Another possibility I’m thinking of is that the seller who I bought this roll from might have stored it improperly. If this was the case, is there any way to restore the film which has been improperly stored previously? Would storing it on the fridge reverse the issue?

Thanks

koraks · Jul 31, 2022

mugenmoonz0 said:
Apparently the fogging is also seen on the film border, so further supporting the backing paper problem hypothesis..

Well, yes, but it doesn't exclude other possibilities. The first thing to check now is if the fog is the same on both ends of the roll. You've shown the beginning; what does the end look like? If the end is better (i.e. less fogged), it's probably exposure to light, not a backing paper problem. In that case the most likely culprit was loading the film into the camera in too bright conditions. If the problem is the same on both ends of the film, I'll stick with backing paper and a storage conditions issue.

mugenmoonz0 said:
Would storing it on the fridge reverse the issue?

This problem cannot be reversed, but perhaps you meant 'prevent'. In that case: it might certainly help, but only as long as you keep the film in its original packaging and let it come to temperature before loading it into a camera, otherwise you might have a new set of problems at your hands. Also, it only helps if the film was reasonably fresh and stored properly at the time you received it from the seller.

hiketripenjoy · Jul 31, 2022

I reckon its awesome how it is! nice sense of movement but still too..

Sirius Glass · Jul 31, 2022

mugenmoonz0 said:
Hi everyone,
I’ve inspected the negs. Apparently the fogging is also seen on the film border, so further supporting the backing paper problem hypothesis..

Another possibility I’m thinking of is that the seller who I bought this roll from might have stored it improperly. If this was the case, is there any way to restore the film which has been improperly stored previously? Would storing it on the fridge reverse the issue?

Thanks

There is no way to undo the problems caused by improperly stored film; neither is it possible to undo manufacturing problems in film.

grat · Jul 31, 2022

I know anti-fog agents can reduce fog on very old film-- would something like that work for this? I assume not, if it's a backing paper issue (which Ilford has had before-- the OP could contact them and find out if it's consistent with the problems they've had in the past. They might even comp him a new roll of film or two).

koraks · Aug 1, 2022

grat said:
I assume not, if it's a backing paper issue

There you go.
Nothing fixes unevenness.

Foggy/cloudy negative

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